The Ancestral Home

The most striking thing that I learned on this trip concerned my grandparents' commitment to the education of their children. In the home shown in this first picture, located in the community known as Windfall, Ohio, my grandparents lived more than 110 years ago and witnessed the birth of six children, with the premature death of one. I've never been told why my grandparents were so committed to the education of their children, and I must admit that I was quite startled to learn that they sold the farm on which this home is located as soon as the eldest child was ready to enter high school in the (relatively) nearby town of Galion, Ohio. Without any form of transportation for the trek from home to school, and with five kids to go through it, there was apparently no alternative. [They bought a home in Galion, not far from the school, also not far from the house where I was born.] Actually, there was a sixth child since for some reason that no one knows today, my grandparents also raised Bill, son of my grandfather's brother. My grandfather, a farmer before, became custodian at the high school and stayed with that until retirement.

Beyond high school, at least two of the boys (my father and his older brother Arla) and their cousin Bill went on to college at Tri-State College in Angola, Indiana where Bill later became an engineering professor. One of my cousins (Jack, son of Arla) also went to college there.

Four of the children later married and each, coincidentally, had two children. Of the eight of us of my generation, two have already died, and two were not able to be present, but the remaining four of us had a great time together at various times over three days. In the picture the cousins alternate with in-laws, not by design, but purely by happen-stance.

One interesting sidelight was a trip to nearby Bucyrus to see some murals, painted by Eric Grohe of Marysville, WA – how about that? And further, one of the murals was a tribute to American veterans and included representations of veterans from the local area, including my eldest cousin.