52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 52: You (Actually Me)

This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

This is the last post for 2019 and it is supposed to be about ourselves. What would future generations would like to know about me.

I have been the keeper of the family history.  I’m sure other members of my family know family stories, but I am the one who has been researching since the late 1980s. I find researching very interesting and it challenges me in ways that few other things do. When I was in college, I loved to do the research but didn’t like writing the paper. The act of finding the information was fun. Getting it down into logical and meaningful order was hard. I still find it hard to get what I have learned into a coherent story. I am a technical writer, one who can write the facts but have a hard time telling a good tale. Still, I have put together two family history books, one on the Gleeson family and one on the Nilsen family. I hope to work on the Hork family book in 2020.

But there is more to me than being a genealogist. I like to bird watch, take photographs, read mysteries and historical fiction (historical mysteries are the best of both worlds), play word games, do jigsaw puzzles, watch baseball, tennis, and soccer, listen to music, play the ukulele and guitar, travel, and grow native plants. Over the years I have collected stuff: troll dolls, stamps and coins, and lapel pins and post cards of places I have visited. I still have all of the music records I have ever bought and listen to them often.

Back in 2014, I participated in a blogging meme called The Book of Me. Check out some of the posts by searching on Book of Me. I did twenty-one posts but ran out of steam in about July. I think the themes got harder to write and I lost interest.

I am married and have two daughters, who are single. One lives in New York City, and we love to travel there at least twice a year to visit. There is so much to do there. When they were young, we were very active with Girl Scouts, gymnastics, and soccer. I was the Girl Scout leader for both of their troops and volunteered at summer camps for many years. Until they played soccer, I didn’t know anything about the sport, but we loved watching our girls play.

My husband likes to travel by train and we have taken many Amtrak trips over the years. This past year we even took a cruise on the Mississippi River. We have also made trips to England, Wales, Scotland, and Germany. We have traveled to Texas, Florida, Illinois, Arkansas, and Missouri to see family. I have traveled several times to Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City to take genealogy classes. Three times, I have done a road trip with a friend to see the sights and do genealogy research.

I am also active with several organizations. I volunteer and serve on the board of the local historical society. I am a member of several genealogical societies and volunteer with them. I am a member of a local creek group and we are active with a phenology project, native plant gardens, and outreach to the community.

I am also a member of model railroad groups. I’m secretary of the local club, part of a National Convention committee for 2021, and a board member of the Pacific Coast Region of the National Model Railroad Association. I love to run trains at the local club during our open house to the public. I have my own models and need to work on them so run at the club. I would love to have my own layout but don’t see how I have time to work on that.

I retired from the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, where I spent half my career there as a Train Operator and the other half as an instructor of operators. It was a good job and I really enjoyed teaching new operators. 

So that's me, in a nutshell. I'm sure I've left stuff out, so check out the Book of Me for more information.

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.