I suppose my birthday has put me in a nostalgic mood. 

Looking through a box of photos today, I came across also a few letters written way back when. One was a letter from my mother to my father on Nov 22, 1955. It was the year after they were married and the year before I was born. She was in Columbus, Ohio with his sister, waiting on the feds in DC to call her up to take her US citizenship test. The Army had just sent him back to Germany. In the letter, she tells him that she is expecting, with a due date of July 9, and she is happy about this. Born May 21, I was seven weeks early, then, not nine weeks as I have always thought. Interesting to read these things all these years later! 

I think that I never opened this envelope before because a lot of the correspondence was in German which I do no read well. But this one was in English and I can't believe how good my mother's English already was. Ever the dog lover, she mentions Blackie, the Cocker spaniel that she says "is a lot of company to me right now." She writes a lot about how she cannot wait until they are together again, and sealed the letter with lipstick. : ) 

I have been thinking about my nephew Michael Nance ever since I realized, after the fact, that his 30th Birthday was this month. Today's throwback Thursday photo, then, had to be one of Michael. Here he is with me in 1996.

Michael, age 12, had flown by himself from South Carolina so that we could participate in the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure that year. GOBA is an annual event with more than 2000 cyclists riding a week-long tour of Ohio.

Starting June 16, the '96 GOBA tour began at the county fairgrounds in Mansfield, Ohio, traveled a circuitous northeastern route up to Cedar Point on Lake Erie, then a southwestern circuit which ended in Mansfield again on 22 June. 350 miles altogether, we saw a lot of Ohio and it is a great state. (Every state is great if we really see something of it!) This photo was taken at Seneca Caverns which was a stop on the tour. Happy 30th Birthday, Michael! I see a German Chocolate Cake in your near future.

It is throwback Thursday again!

My mother Emma, sister Karen, and me in Germany in 1961. My mother had been in the States a few years before and had become a naturalized citizen. Karen and I had not yet been to the US but it wouldn't be long before we set sail. This was our passport photo. Karen had the mumps!

I have two photos of my father as a boy. This is one of them. Owen Dwight Nance is in the back row, first one on the left! He would have been about 11. I believe it is his brother Richard front row, also first on the left. There were three other brothers and two sisters, all older. I don't know if any of them are also in the picture. The only writing on the back says: "The last year class of Arthur School before it was abandoned about 1941-42. Teacher Mrs. Jennie Cummings." It may have been soon after that that the family moved from Oak Hill, Ohio to Columbus.

 I think of the Little Rascals every time I see this picture! I'm pretty sure their families didn't have much; I'm also fairly certain they weren't complaining about it. Can you imagine a bunch of kids barefoot in school these days? Likewise, imagine what these kids would think about what is happening in schools today! For one thing, if you told them that no one could carry a pocketknife or play with a toy gun, they would think we'd gone crazy! Maybe we have.

I have no photos of my mother before age 19 or 20. Early pics would have been in the 30s and 40s in southern Germany so of course also during WWII. She was raised working on a farm in southern Germany. They didn't own the land, but families from the village worked on the farm to get some of the food it produced. Plus my father was raised on a small farm in southern Ohio. Equals I'm pretty sure my love for the country is genetic.

New photos of two of my brother Mike's five awesome grandkids! Emma is on the left and her sister Naomi on the right. I am guessing that they had just gotten dressed for church this morning. Beautiful girls!

There's an interesting little exercise going on on Facebook. If a friend assigns a number to you, you are being requested to list that number of things that people may not know about you. Here is what I wrote and the photo that I posted with it. It has been enjoyable to learn some new things about friends and acquaintances!

Thank you to my father Owen who served 20 years in the US Army, my brother Mike who served 22 years in the Navy, my sister Karen 6 years in the Army, and my sister Lisa 4 years in the Navy. 

I was in the Army for 4 years myself. Due to my wallet being stolen at Ft Knox, Kentucky, I do not have a single photo of myself in uniform. It's okay, the memories are enough. Some good, some bad, some funny, some sad, like every other living situation we all experience. 

Writing of sad, the most difficult for me during this time the night of March 27, 1977. I had just returned to Fort Dix, New Jersey from a week at home in Ohio. That night, I pulled CQ of the lab at Walson Army Hospital. We spent the entire night receiving patients flown in to McGuire Air Force Base. (McGuire and Dix were separated only by a fence.) These were people being brought in from the aviation disaster on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Hundreds of people lost their lives in what remains the deadliest plane crash in history. US servicemen were unloading the 'lesser' burned and injured people and flying the most critically injured on to the (renowned) burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. 

Tragically, some people who were pulled out alive died enroute to New Jersey. As lab CQ, I held the keys to the morgue, too, and accompanied those people to the basement. One of the victims, still with an IV in her arm, was burned so badly I couldn't tell at first if she was a man or a woman. The smells. The sights. The sounds. The phone calls from families. The news media. That night was incredible - and it was one night, safe in the States and not in a war zone! 

I think many people do not comprehend the sheer amount and weight of responsibility borne by those in our Armed Forces - and often at quite a young age. But thankfully, many of us do. 

I gladly - APPRECIATIVELY - join millions of others in saying to our military, "WE SALUTE YOU!"

I did some end of season mowing this afternoon, then began looking at some photos. I do not mind saying that this date is very bittersweet for me. This is a picture of my mother in southern Germany in the late '50s. She is where I got my love for animals.

Emma Nance (nee Neufeld) Nov 18 1931 - Nov 18 1983.

With the tremendous knack my mother had for knowing dates, it was fitting actually that she died on her birthday. As just one example, when our fridge was starting to not work so well, my mother remembered the month, day, and year that we had gotten our Sears Coldspot Refrigerator - 19 years previously! She had a mind for dates.

And she was also a big fan of antique American cars. Since she did not come to the United States until she was 26, I have no idea how she learned what the old cars were but she did. We'd drive down the road and she would see some ancient model car and say "Oh, look at that 19-- ---------" - fill in the blanks. And we'd say "How do you know it's a 19-- ---------?" She'd say something like "By the hood and the bumper, of course." I barely know a 2000 CRV - which I drive - from a 2001!