Genealogy Reviews Online

Memorial Day Success at Fort Logan National Cemetery

This is kind of a late Memorial Day post, but I thought it was interesting enough to write about anyway.  Both of my parents are buried at Fort Logan National Cemetery located on the southwest edge of the Denver city line.  While both served in the military, the headstone on their burial plot only shows my father as a World War II veteran.  My mother is listed as the "Wife of..." and shows no indication of her service as a Navy WAVE during the same time period.

My brother and I had talked about this occasionally over the years, but it never went any further than talk.  This past Memorial Day my brother was visiting our parent's grave, and thought it was about time to do something about it.  I believe he emailed the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington DC to ask if there was anything we could do, and about 48 hours later they called him with contact information for someone at Fort Logan he could work with.  This kind of response was pretty amazing considering we are at war and the rate at which older veterans are dying.  He now wandered what we could put on her headstone.  He emailed me and asked if I had any thoughts.

This was easy.  Being the genealogy guy I am, I went into my trusty electronic files and pulled up her entire Navy record to include her discharge paperwork from 1946.  I figured the VA already had this, but I sent the discharge paperwork anyway because it listed her rank, place, and years of service so my brother would have something to work with.  It turns out the VA had no record of her time in the Navy and this piece of information was essential to getting the headstone re-worked as we wanted it.

Once we tell the Fort Logan National Cemetery personnel exactly what we want on the headstone, withing 6 weeks or so it will reflect my mother's service in the Navy WAVES during World War II.  Rarely is working with a government agency this easy...trust me on this because I work for one. 

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Memorial Day Weekend at Gettysburg

Greetings from Gettysburg, PA where we will be spending most of the Memorial Day Weekend.  We usually never travel anywhere on these long weekends because the traffic is horrible when everyone tries leaving the Washington DC area at the same time.  This holiday weekend is different because my son's soccer team is taking part in the annual Blue Gray Cup soccer tournament.  Let me tell you, with the thousands of people coming in here for the tournament AND with all of the Memorial Day activities at the battlefield, I think this little town is more crowded than it was 145 years ago. 

I have not been to Gettysburg for at least 12-13 years and it's changed quite a bit.  The last time I was here the main destination was the battlefield park and there wasn't much to the town.  All that has changed.  Much of the town center has been restored and this is now a pretty little place.  I hope to spend a little time at the battlefield if time permits.  I'd really like to see the new visitors center and roam around the battlefield a little.

My son plays 4 games today and around 3-4 on Sunday...no sleeping in this weekend.

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Happy Mother's Day - Mary J. Zaring (Dec 24, 1920-May 13, 1971)

I found some cool photo's of my mother as a child up through her young adult years and thought it would be a good tribute to her life.  What I like about these photos is they show how vital and active she was.  By the time I was born she became a typical parent trying to balance work and a family with two small boys.  Now that I'm the same age as she was when she died, and we have 11 year old twins, I realize she was just tired like most parents.

The first photo is probably one of the earliest I have of her.  She's standing with her arm around her little brother (Franklin E. Zaring Jr.).  I don't know the exact date of the picture, but she appears about 6 or 7 years old so the year was approximately 1926-1927.  It's probably somewhere in the Denver area because of the flat paved road on the left and the cement sidewalk on the right.   I love the car in the background.

The second photo appears to be my mother's high school graduation day in 1937 - she's the young woman on the right.  I have a lot of photos of my mother during her high school years at Saint Francis De Sales - this was a Catholic school.  Some of these photos will be highlighted in upcoming "Who Are These People?" posts - many of are of unidentified boys.  I love this photo because the smile you see here is the one I remember when I was growing up - she was a very warm and affectionate woman and I think this photo shows it. 

The next two pictures of her skiing are cool.  I love the group photo on a ski slope with her friends.  My mother is the short one who's the 5th person from the left.  With the exception of the clothes and hairstyle, she looks like the typical ski bum you see in the Colorado mountains today.  For some reason, she stopped skiing after my brother and I were born.  I don't know if she got hurt when she was younger, but she still encouraged my brother and I to ski and we started at a young age.  An interesting note on the skis she is using in both photos...we still have those skis and poles.  I remember playing with them when I was a kid and my brother has them mounted on a wall in his house.

This last photo is one of my mother either shortly before she married my father or shortly after - meaning me and my brother are only a few years away.  She's standing at the gate of the Kenosha Trout Club up in the mountains in Park County, Colorado.  This was a members only club where the well-to-do had cabins and an big private lake to fish in.  My grandparents were the caretakers of this club and were given a place to live - the stone building behind my mother was their house.  I spent many fun summers and Christmas vacations at this place.

I have many other photos of my mother and letters from her scrapbook that I will eventually process and post, but I love these because they show her as a young, attractive, and very active woman.  I've actually learned more about my mother after she died (I was 14 at the time), through my genealogy efforts, than I learned when she was alive.  You know what?  The more I learn about her the more proud I am of her being my mother - Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

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