Meet My Grandfather

There are a few things that bring me pure happiness, and one of them is when I can use my creative talents and artistic ability to share my love of family history. It makes me so happy. A seriously deep joy that brings me so much satisfaction. I wish I could do it all day long, every day.

I have wanted my children to learn about their ancestors. Their stories, their heart aches, joys, trials and their personalities. I think it’s extremely important to know your heritage, to learn from their lessons, to find your own identity and to catch a glimpse of who you are.

But too often when we want to learn about them, we are given a very long type written, single space ‘life story’ to read. It hardly makes you want to sit down and read it. (Unless you might be a bit crazy like me.) But most people would rather not. Especially kids. So over the last year or so, I have been coming up with ways to help my kids learn about these amazing people in a more visually appealing way. I want them to KNOW their family stories so that when life gets hard or difficult they will have the stories of their ancestors to fall back on. To remember a story about their great grandfather, who went through a similar trial and how he persevered. I want them to know the faith that helped them do hard things, and I want them to emulate these great people in their own lives, and learn from the stories and experiences that might not have turned out so well.

I first decided I wanted to create a wall in my home of ancestor portraits. One that wasn’t just a picture of the person but would have other objects, memorabilia, or pictures that represented their life and their stories. I decided to start with my own grandfather on my mother’s side. So I created the image above.

But somehow I wanted my kids to know what all the images meant in the picture which then led to me putting together around a 20 page booklet of the stories behind the pictures. I also wanted it to be interactive for little kids, so I used the idea of ‘eye spy’ by having the kids find the object on the cover before reading the story.

This has been so rewarding for me. I have had really neat experiences choosing the stories, learning about the people and feeling a closeness to them. When finishing up this booklet my mom decided she would like to share it with all his descendants and so we made copies for everyone. But as I was finishing the booklet up, I felt my grandfather near. I felt really strongly that he wanted them to know that despite his many weakness, he wanted them to know that he did the very best he could with the lot he had been given in life. I felt deep in my heart that he was a very good man. I have always known this as I knew my grandfather growing up. But it was different this time. I felt it in my entire being. He was a good man, and did the best that he could, and that he loved his family. I felt that I should also include a poem in the back that he had written years ago on his mission that he had specifically written for his posterity and family. It has been such a rewarding experience doing these little books. Even more rewarding when my kids see it and ask if they can find the pictures, or open it up explaining “this is my favorite story,” and reading it to their younger sibling.