How do you edit 84 years worth of stories down to just about 6 minutes? The short answer, of course, is that you don't.

 

The video above is only an introduction to my grandfather's life. Over the course of the next 6 minutes he touches on living with my mom and her sister while they were growing up, the very abreviated version of his life's timeline inlcuding high school graduation and enlisting in the United States Air Force  and what it was like growing up with 10 other siblings (and being one of the youngest). He discusses his job at Ridge Tool after serving in the military and almost forgets to mention his marriage to my grandma, Florence (Flo).

 

Of course, much of our 3 hour conversation is taken away (though portions appear on other pages of this site) to edit the video down to a manageable length. When he was discussing his life as a child though, he truly did not give much detail - perhaps many of those stories are now murkey after years of memories being added. When he arrived home from Montana after being discharged from the military, he and Flo moved to Ohio because his sister Francis and her husband Floyd were already living in the area. It was Francis' neighbor who got him the interview at Ridge Tool, and he went to work that same day. His job at Ridge Tool came after a three-and-a-half day stint at General Motors but he didn't like it enough there to stay. Of course, his job at Ridge Tool was also supposed to be temporary ("enough time to buy an automobile"), but that job ended up being his last when he retired after 37 years of service in 1992. 

 

There is much that is not covered in this video, but Papa has never really been a man of many words. Perhaps in the future he will elaborate more on other aspects of his life as a child during the Depression, or what it was like walking the halls of Georges Township High School in the early 1940s; but, in the mean time, let's enjoy the stories that we have and take a short moment to think about how a large family overcame the odds of the Great Depression to bring 11 new families into the word, including my own.