Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween, Ancestors, and Genealogy

On my soap box: I was kind of put off today by a story in the Dallas Morning News that they are preparing for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Somehow commemorating his assassination is unseemly to me. His birth, okay. His WWII exploit, okay. His election, okay. His role in civil rights, okay. His murder, nope.
That coincides with my idea that we need to stop commemorating the death of people we love, honor, or miss and commemorate something else in their lives: birth, some achievement, some remarkable good life event.
The link is Halloween. I have gone from seeing Halloween as a child as a dress-up, make believe, candy getting time to a time to remember those ancestors and friends who past on before that particular Halloween date.
I remember in my family my sister, LaNell, my Dad, Deason Sr., and my mother, Ozie Mae or Koko to her grandkids, who lived until age 96 and died last November. And, should I add the two grandparents I knew, the two who died before I was born, and generations of their ancestors known to me by names, places, and a few life events.
It seems that we in genealogy are missing something on this the scariest night of the year which I think we could make into one of the most poignant nights of the year.

You'll find this on my genealogy society blog, my Google+ stream, Facebook wall, and a Twitter post. I thought it might just be the right thing for my first post of substance on my newly pointed "talking roots" blog. -- dh

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