Do you have a favorite aunt/uncle or great-aunt/great-uncle? Identifying a favorite is this week’s #SaturdayNightGenealogyFun writing prompt.
Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It’s Saturday Night again –
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):
1) Most people have aunts and uncles in their life, the siblings of their parents, and in some cases, great-aunts or uncles, the siblings of their grandparents. Who are/were our favorite aunts and/or uncles?
2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook. Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.
In thinking about this question, I have to admit I don’t really have a favorite.
As a young child, I likely would have answered this question by identifying my “uncle LR“. I think one of the reasons that I identify him as a favorite is because his death as a young man is one of my childhood memories that still impacts me today.
As I was writing this, I was curious about how old I was when he died. That’s when I discovered a tool within RootsMagic that I don’t think I’ve used before: the Date Calculator. Basically, this tool allows me to enter two dates and calculate an age. Thus, I entered my birthdate and LR’s death date.
With this tool, I realized that I was under 9 years old when he died. So, what was it about LR that separates him from my other aunts and uncle?
Looking back, I would have to say it is because he was present in my life. LR became a major presence in my life when my parents moved to Dodge City when I was about 3 years old. Even though he was attending college in Emporia and then in Wisconsin for most of that time, he was home for holidays and summers. It was one of those summers that LR was a major help for my mother as the mumps, measles and chicken pox ruled that summer.
It was LR’s presence and then his death that causes me to pick him as a favorite.
It’s very sad that your favorite uncle died before his time. BTW, the Date Calculator in RootsMagic is very handy, isn’t it?
My great uncle Frank was a favorite with all of us. He did not have children of his own, so he would treat us like adults or play with us like kids. He was a commercial flower grower and we loved to play in his hothouse or run through the fields when the gladiolas were in bloom. He was the subject of my first blog post. His alma mater asked me for a biographical sketch and I later decided it could be a good foray into blogging.
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