Memory Lane

My soon to be 74 year old mom is staying with us. She has been since last October when I made a trip down to Florida and brought her home with me. I've noticed that as time as progressed her memory is starting to fade.

Several years ago I told my family that if they would allow me to scan their old photo albums I would replace the old albums (if that is what they wanted) with a new Acid free album to protect their photo's. My mom was the first to step up with all her albums. What a relief having those photo's scanned. Growing up on the gulf coast of south Florida, the threat of a hurricane & the damage it can inflict certainly stays in my mind. She also lives in a mobile home which also has dangers of its own when it comes to protecting family photo's.

One of the albums that my mom shared with me was one of my grandmother's albums. Many of the animals in the albums were named - horses, cows, dogs etc., but to my dismay none of the people were named at all.

Yesterday I noted that mom seemed to be having a very good day, we talked about some of my childhood memories & we seemed to be on the same page. I decided to take it a step higher. I had made some tenative identification on many of the photo's in my grandmother's album based on family traits and other photo's I had seen. So after chatting with mom for a bit I asked if she could look at some photo's with me, possibly help in identifying some of the parties.

We went thru about 50 photo's and of those 50 she identified 44. Of those 44 only one photo that I had tenatively identified differed from hers. The rest all matched. Some of the photo's I also was lucky enough to get some "history" behind the photo.

My mom is the oldest of five children of Ray Phillips & his wife, Pauline Kreitzer Phillips. Now that I have tenatively identified the 44 photo's with her, maybe I'll see if any of her other siblings agree with the identification.

Sure beats only having names for Bessie & Spot....

Happy Researching!

Karen