Memorial Day is here!

Hi neighbors. Today kicks off the Memorial Day weekend for 2018! It’s the weekend for family gatherings, backyard barbecues and visiting relatives. Many will celebrate Memorial Day by placing small American flags on the graves of deceased military members and flowers on graves of other deceased family members.

The weather forecast is for rain all weekend but maybe things won’t get too wet. My extended family no longer has large family reunions, but we still all end up meeting each other in the family cemeteries.

Many American families are scattered throughout our large nation and everyone getting together is a difficult task. I hope you can all manage to meet some of your family members at least.

If I wanted to visit the graves of just my grandparents, I would have to go to Cedar County and Stark County, Ohio. For great-grandparents, I’d have to travel to Scott and Morgan Counties in Tennessee. I’d also have to go to Kentucky to find one set of great-grandparents.

I do enjoy genealogy! Chasing down deceased relatives, finding out their family lives, where they lived, went to school, married and settled down always fascinates me. Of course, American history has been a changing panorama since the first settlements were settled.

It is amazing that we can discover so much about our ancestors. Having a young country helps to give us a starting point. Going back across the pond to our Old World ancestors makes things a lot more complicated. But tracing our heritage back to where our ancestors came from is necessary for we Americans.

Remember, we all have roots from somewhere else!

Unless you are Native American that is. Genealogy for Native Americans is a wonderful field of research and there are many websites and organizations to help with finding your Native American ancestors.

Since I’ve spent so much time in cemeteries, dragging my children along with the hopes of inspiring them to learn more about their families, I’m always on the look-out for games to play while there. It is also important to teach children to respect the tombstones in cemeteries and know what the stones represent.

One game that you will have to do some research for, or carry your tablet, smartphone or laptop for, is guessing the country of origin for people’s last names on tombstones. Some last names may have obvious roots, but some might be more difficult to guess. Finding some of the places represented by last names can be a great geography lesson as well as showing America’s immigration patterns.

Most of us are interested in finding our own ancestors, placing the flowers and getting out of the cemetery as quickly as possible. Children tend to roam about looking at things that interest them unmindful of the relationship to themselves.

Tombstones with angels, lambs or puppies on them always attract the small children. Pre-teens like tombstones with hearts on them, no doubt thinking that indicates a Romeo and Juliet scenario.

There are newer tombstones with actual full-color pictures engraved on them of trucks, dogs, horses, fishing poles, etc. People of all ages like to see these and read what is written on the stones.

This weekend, let your children show you what tombstones they find interesting and discuss the stone and the engraved history of the person buried there, whether they are related or not.

Whether or not you have a loved one buried in a National Cemetery, it’s always an inspiring sight to see the hundreds of crosses honoring our military heroes. Seeing the seemingly endless rows of graves of servicemen and women can open many conversations with your children and offers a wonderful opportunity to discuss the wars America has fought and why. All we baby boomer grandparents can recall the song we sang for our classmates going off to Viet Nam, “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” Who knows, perhaps our grandchildren’s generation will be the ones who have no burials in a National Cemetery.

Until the next time friends enjoy your memories whether kind or painful and the people living or dead that you created those memories with. Time is passing, and history repeats itself only because we choose to forget it, instead of remembering it.