Seven Years Ago

Seven years ago this date fell on a Sunday. It was our 41st Anniversary but we didn't do anything special.  Our relationship was special every day.  Dave and I went to church where we were eucharistic ministers. After church, we went to our local Publix for supplies.  South Florida was getting ready for a hurricane and we saw several friends at the store.  I remember we discussed driving up to Tampa to ride out the hurricane taking aim at the Naples/ Ft Myers area.

Instead of heading to Tampa, we went home with our supplies.  Dave spent the afternoon boarding the windows to protect the house.  Between putting up boards, there was football to watch and that night the White Sox won the second game of the World Series.  We had a nice steak dinner since we didn't know when we would be able to cook after the hurricane.  Little did I realize how prophetic that was.

That evening Dave had a phone call from his sister Pat and another from an old friend and co-worker.  Nothing in the events of this day could possibly indicate how very awfull the next day would be.

The next day I woke to find Hurricane Wilma doing her best to destroy our house and Dave laying on the floor of our bedroom.  We had no power but we did have phone service.  Dave was unresponsive but the storm needed to pass on before I could call EMS.  Finally I could call 911 and they came immediately.  After it was determined that Dave needed to be transported, they had to figure which hospital could accept Dave.  When the ambulance I called a friend and asked for a ride to the hospital.  Dave was in the emergency room and still unresponsive.  X-rays showed severe head trauma with massive bleeding in the brain.  Since the operating room at the hospital was unusable (hurricane damage) Dave was transported to Lee Memorial Hospital in Ft Myers.  After meeting with the neurosurgeon, with a discouraging prognosis, I decided not to have surgery attempted.  Dave and I had discussed this part of our lives and I knew he wouldn't want this kind of life.

The plan was that I would come back the next day and make that hard decision.  I never went back to the hospital.  Late that night I got a call from the hospital that Dave had died.  The day was over and it was time to mourn and move on.

Doors of Faith - Oberselters, Hesse, Germany

St Antonius Catholic Church, Oberselters, Hesse, Germany

This church was the home of my German Burbach ancestors as far back as 1732.  I have read the records of marriages and baptisms of this church.  Oberselters was a small village outside of Bad Camberg.  The Burbach family attended this church until recent times and may still be members there.  The name still appears in the cemetery.  My Great-great-grandfather Georg Burbach left Oberselters about 1848 and traveled to the nearby village of Villmar where he met and married Catharina Casperi.  They remained in Villmar until 1856 when they immigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin with their sons Hermann and Johann after burying their son Adam in Villmar in 1854.

We visited this church in 2003 and took this photo of an informational plaque posted on the wall.

Photo of St Antonius Church, Oberselters by ({Information |Description = Kirche St. Antonius Bad Camberg-Oberselters, Deutschland|Source = selbst fotografiert |Date = 26.01.2008|Author = Volker Thies (Asdrubal) |Permission = siehe unten |other_versions = }}  used under the creative commons license.

Doors of Faith

St Mel's Catholic Church in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL.

Sometime around 1912 Michael and Alice Connery moved their family of 9 to a new home at 4140 W Washington Boulevard in Chicago.  In doing so, they became members of St Mel Parish.  St Mel Church, located at Washington and Kildare, was only a block away from their house.  This church is where their youngest daughter Elizabeth was baptized.

Seven of their children were confirmed in this church and three of their daughters were married before it's marble altar.  Several of their grandchildren were baptized in this church and one of my cousins received all of her sacraments in this parish. 

Members of my family remained members of this parish for over fifty years and when my Grandfather died in 1953, the grade school was closed on the day of his funeral.  I remember being highly offended that I was not allowed to attend his funeral but all those other kids could.

This church served the needs of my grandparents and their family for many years and was the foundation of our faith.  Our Irish Catholic roots are strong three generations later and I believe that can be traced to the support my grandparents found at St Mel's Church.

photo courtesy of Eric Allix Rogers via Flick'r used under creative commons license.

September 11, 2001 Looking Back

Some things are forever with us.  We remember exactly where we were and what we were doing.  A sudden death is like that.  You remember every detail of the day it happened.  What you said and did, who you were with, and the emotions you felt.

September 11, 2001 is such a day for all of us.  Like other days that live in our memories this is a day most of us remember vividly.  I say most because my 16 year old grandson did not know of it at the time.  Since they were living in Germany at the time, his parents felt that his lack of knowledge would keep him safer.  His   peers and younger children are very aware of the war that has been waged since that terrible day.

I was at work at a moving and storage company in Florida that morning.  Part of my job was to communicate with the trucks that were doing furniture deliveries.  My husband had taken me to work and then returned home.  As he walked in the front door and turned on the Today Show, the first reports were coming in.  As soon as it began to look like more than an accident he called me at work.  As we spoke, the second plane hit and I knew it was war.  One of the first things I did was pick up the microphone and call our crews to give them the news. I remember saying "This is war!" Some of our crews were too young to fully grasp what this meant but those of us who did get it were both scared and angry.  After work when I went home we watched the re-plays over and over again until sickened we had to turn off the TV.

Our plans had been to fly to Germany the next day in anticipation of meeting a new grandchild arriving shortly.  All planes were grounded indefinitely but finally on Saturday Sept 15, 2001 we were able to board a plane that would take us to Germany to meet Brigid Kathleen, born Sept 14, 2001.  The airline we used was a German one and security was so high that one passenger set off alarms by having a foil wrapped piece of gum in his back pocket.  Our German flight crew had been stranded in the United States for a week and was very relieved to be going home.

My Olympic Memories

Tonight the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics will take place in London.  It has been thrilling to watch all of the athletes compete after they trained so very hard for so many years.

For years the Olympics have a running thread in my life.  In grade school I was able to ice skate every winter at the park a block from our house.  As I skated in circles around the rink, I would pretend that I was Sonja Henie participating in the Olympics.  In the summers as I took a water ballet class, I would dream of being Esther Williams.  I also remember hearing all the talk of Roger Bannister's 4 minute mile.

In 1980 we watched the United States Ice Hockey Team make a miracle happen by winning the gold medal in Lake Placid.  It was a very cold Sunday afternoon when our neighborhood gathered in one house to watch the game together on a big screen TV.  I think maybe it was a 24 inch screen!  There was lots of yelling and cheering involved. A few adult beverages too.

In 1987 the company I worked for won a trip for 2 to the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  3M was the vendor that awarded the trip to my company.  To award the prize, my company based entry into the contest on attendance.  To enter the contest one had to have perfect and on time attendance for the previous three months.  When the drawing was held and my name was announced, I was amazed!  The irony is that the day after the drawing I was late to work due to snow on the roads!  It was a first class trip all the way.  We were flown from Chicago to Minneapolis and spent the night in a hotel with all of the 3M guests.  Our plane to Calgary was entirely 3M personnel and guests.  I still have the jackets we received on arrival in Calgary.  Since 3M had leased the use of a country club for their guests I was able to borrow a pair of  ice skates and finally skate at the Olympics.  (at not in an important distinction)  Some of the events we attended were the opening ceremony, ski jumping, luge, downhill skiing, and ice hockey.

During the 2010 Olympics I began writing this blog after being inspired by Thomas MacEntee's Winter Genealogy Games.  Overall I would have to say that the Olympics has played a recurring part in my life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

SNGF 2012 Genealympics Ancestry Flag

For these 2012 SNGF Genealympics, the motto is "Research, Cite, Analyze, Resolve, Conclude!" 

Competitors can:

a)  Design your own Genealympics flag to represent your ancestry, heritage or personal expression. 


I have chosen to create a personalized flag reflecting my children's heritage. Germany is represented twice since my husband and I both have German heritage. The left side shows my heritage, Norwegian, German, and Irish.  The right side represents my husband's heritage of Scottish, German, and Swedish.
The flags of Ireland and Sweden are a bit larger that the others to reflect a larger percentage of those ancestries.  Of course the American Flag is the central focus since we are both at least 2nd generation Americans.


My blog began during the 2010 Winter Olympics so I definitely want to participate in these Genealympics.  I'll be back!

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy - 2nd Cousin Once Removed

Week #31 – Cousins

Thorolf and Kari about 1949

Week 31: Cousins. One of the best experiences in family history is meeting with new cousins found through your research. Tell us about your favorite cousin meet-up. How did you discover each other? Where did you meet? What type of information was exchanged and how did it benefit your research?

There were several names running through the background of my childhood.  Names like Munger, Dvorak, and Gist.  When I began researching my ancestry these names came back to me but I could not relate them to my genealogy.  One day when I was looking around on ancestry.com, I came across a tree for the Dvorak family.  As I looked at the tree and read the associated stories, I realized this was the Dvorak family of my childhood memories.  Betty Jane and I were playmates until the family moved away in the mid 1950s.  I never knew her mother Lily was my dad's first cousin.  My dad's father immigrated from Norway in 1892 with his sister and brother.  Another brother followed them later and the third brother Thorolf Hansen remained in Norway to raise a family.  Thorolf's daughter Lily immigrated to the United States in 1939 and met and married Otto (Bud) Dvorak.  Their daughter Betty Jane was two months older than I.

After losing touch for about fifty years, Betty and I have been back in touch via e-mail.  The best part is that Betty told me about her Norwegian cousins and gave me her cousin Kari's e-mail address.  This spring my daughter and I flew to Norway for the Legacy Family Tree Cruise.  At the end of the cruise we planned a couple of days in Norway in the hope of meeting Kari.  The day the ship returned to Norway, Kari and her husband picked us up at our hotel and took us to their home for a typical Norwegian meal.  Two of their daughters and three of their grandchildren also came to meet us.  It was a wonderful visit and there were lots of pictures to take.  I even got to hold and take photos of the medals Thorolf received from the Kings of Denmark, Sweden and Norway for his efforts as a resistance fighter during WWII.  

Meeting Kari and her family, seeing Thorolf's medals, and visiting her childhood home have truly brought my Norwegian heritage to life and filled in the missing branches of my family tree.