My grandmother graduated from high school in 1915 in Bronson, Kansas, where she had gone to live with her Uncle Dave and Aunt Lillian McCarty. Here's a photo of her diploma, which I am going to scan at school where I can access a flatbed scanner of a considerably larger size.
Grandma was one of the "yeomanettes," or Special Yeoman F's, who joined the Navy during WWI. I have photos of her in uniform somewhere--in fact, there's a cute picture of both of my grandparents in uniform, saluting each other on the Mall.
Here's a link to an online exhibit of the war, featuring a uniform like my grandmother's.
Here are some photos of my grandparents and my Aunt Louise, taken during their stay in Baguo, PI.
I read Nella Last's War a few weeks ago, and, while I enjoyed the story of a British housewife writing during WWII as part of a larger storytelling project, it also occurred to me that I ought to think about shaping or sorting my grandmother's writing into different sections. At least, until I can think of what next to do with them.
Most of her letters are to my grandfather over in France during the war, and their diaries at the end of the war segue into her next chunk of writing, done during the years they spent in the P.I. This chunk is also a batch of letters sent to her aunt in Kansas.
Her writing peters off when they settle in Cheyenne and have another child.
So the story is about a young teacher from Tennessee who leaves the farm to get an education and see the world.
I have an idea of a visual--the photo of grandmother sitting on her trunk on board a boat in the sea of Japan, and all of the photos and postcards taken during that time. She has so many photos and albums that those alone would be documents enough. All of it will be scanned into a mega-document someday--I want each of my nieces and nephew to have a copy.
My grandmother, Verlin Lemarr Goins. who left the world too early, I think, but who left behind journals, letters, chapters, speeches and so forth. I'm going to learn to how to podcast and record some of these letters as well as use voice-to-text programs to compile much of her writing.
Why blog? Well, Typepad's pages lack the ability to make typelists and to categorize, so each page winds up being one long strip of text. For this project, I am going to be creating so many categories that it makes sense to be able to tag and reference things for easy access.
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