Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It’s Saturday Night again –

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along – cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  It’s Father’s Day in the USA on Sunday, so let’s talk about our fathers.

2)  What is your most vivid memory of your father?

My most vivid memory

I was 8 years old and in bed for the evening when the phone rang. Shortly after getting off of the phone, my dad came in to tell me that my uncle, his brother, was in the hospital and very sick. Dad said that he and his parents were going to take the train to Wisconsin to be with his brother. I remember crying because I wanted to go too but couldn’t. My uncle LR died in Wisconsin while a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Even though he was my ‘favorite’ uncle, I have very few memories of him.

When it comes to my dad, I have lots of memories, many of which reflect his role as a teacher.

• Sometime when I was under 10, my dad set up an experiment to teach us about the ‘veins’ in plants. He took a white tulip and placed it in a vase. He placed blue food coloring in the water. Within a couple of days, that water had been absorbed and the blue food coloring revealed the veins in the tulip.
• When I was in 4th grade, I was placed in a ‘separate’ group for math – new math. (And this was way before ‘new math’ became a parental nightmare.) We were working with a concept totally unfamiliar to me at the time: sets. I remember dad sitting down with me and helping me figure out this strange new language of sets. [Think Venn Diagrams]
• Ever the scientist, my dad was not going to allow his daughter (i.e. me) to not enroll in a science class in high school. I remember our discussion (or argument) because I did not want to take chemistry my junior year. I actually won that argument because I enrolled in anatomy and physiology instead of chemistry that year. (However, I took chemistry my senior year.)
• When I enrolled in college, my dad somehow rigged it so that he was my counselor. And he would NOT allow me to major in history! (I’m thankful for that now but was frustrated at the time.) Instead he allowed me to major in math and minor in history. In fact, he worked my schedule so that I was taking – you guessed it — chemistry my first semester. He even went so far as to make sure that I took the test to quiz into accelerated chemistry. I ended up graduating with a bachelor of science in education majoring in the physical sciences (i.e. chemistry and physics). My first teaching job was to teach chemistry and physics in a small rural Kansas high school.
• When it comes to my teaching career, my dad was a role model. Not only was he a member of professional associations, but he was actively involved in them. He served the Kansas Association of Teachers of Science (KATS) as president and planned KATS KAMP where science teachers from across Kansas would get together for a weekend of professional development at a 4-H camp. After I started my teaching career, dad accompanied us to National Science Teachers Association meetings. Sometimes the car would be filled with my dad, my husband, my brother, my sister-in-law and myself. Other times it was just dad, my husband and myself. Even after leaving the classroom to become a school librarian, and technology coordinator I continued to participate in a wide variety of professional opportunities associated with my job duties.

While I have many memories of my dad teaching me to shoot a basketball or ride a bike and taking us camping it is the memories of uncle LR’s death and his influence on my career that are the most vivid.

Thank you Randy for this challenge!