You Just Never Know

 

It’s been an interesting weekend.  Helene came through and even though this is Ohio, and the effects are not nearly as catastrophic as most impacted areas, we still had some damage by a hurricane in Ohio.  This happened 16 or so years ago when Ike came through, and I remember writing then how I never expected to experience a hurricane (technically a tropical storm) in Ohio, but there you go!!!

The experience brought up many old memories.  When you grow up with hurricanes as a rather common experience, your instincts have an active status as the storm approaches.  For me, on Thursday, it was sending out emails to my Scrabble friends, suggesting that we might want to move our Scrabble date from Friday to a new date.  One friend suggested that it wasn’t a big deal, just wind and rain and we would be inside.  Yeah, true, but 60+mph forecasted winds is a different ball of wax when that phenomenon is rare in Southwest Ohio.  I’m definitely glad we moved it. 

The day started out rainy, not a big deal, but as 2pm approached the wind started to catch our attention.  And as forecasted, the winds picked up significantly to the point I was pacing the house, watching for the possibility of falling trees.  By 7pm the worst was over and only large limbs had made their way to our yard.  We were lucky, never lost our power.  Many folks I talked to did loose their power, and out here in the farm lands, the repair trucks often take a while to fix the problem.

So many memories….first one was in 1957-58, newly arrived to Florida and my family spent the night in a storage room of our home, thanks to a storm coming through.  Dad moved all the mattresses from our beds into the small laundry room and that’s where the four of us spent the night. 

Next vivid memory was June 1966, graduation week from high school.  Dixie Hollins High School didn’t have indoor hallways between classrooms, everything was outside.  For our Baccalaureate Service our class lined up outside, under the awning of the roof, in the pouring rain of a passing hurricane.  Obviously, it wasn’t a direct hit, but wet and wild nonetheless. 

Then there was Typhoon Pamela in 1976 on Guam.  I’ve written about it before, and that was the one that caused significant trauma for me.  200 mph winds is nothing to fool around with.  I was very lucky to escape alive and very grateful to leave the island 3 days later, as soon as the airport reopened. 

Between 1975 and 1990 there were 2 times I had to fly home to Florida and force Mom out of her mobile home in Seminole, Florida as she refused to leave her trailer for approaching storms.  Even though there was a storm shelter directly across the street from their home, Mom refused to leave which meant Dad refused to leave her.  So, I would fly down, pack up their car with their essentials and head north.  Both times all ended well, but you just never know!!!

That’s the problem….you just never know. For all those people who think they can out smart a hurricane, out maneuver it, out live an evacuation order, they are just about as stupid as you can get!  And I make no apologies for that statement.

Looking for Treasures

 A few weeks ago, I wrote about the history of the Hallsted family with the Blanchester High School.  Today I need to share a little more of that story.

In my attempt to find out if my grandmother had ever taught at that school, I had called the school to find out if they had a collection of old year books where I might be able to look back to the years 1911-1913 to see if Marie showed up as a teacher in the yearbooks.

I was given a staff member’s email address to reach out to and ask the questions I had.  Eventually I reached Michael England who is an art teacher and the yearbook advisor.  The school’s collection of year books only goes back to 1990 (really!!!!!), but after we went back and forth a couple of times, he let me know that as a result of our conversation, he was moving his collection into the school’s library.  Since I have Dad’s 1938 yearbook I asked if he would like to add it to the school’s collection.  He said ‘Yes’!

Through the course of the conversation, I learned that while there is a room, where the library used to be, the school officially no longer has a library or a librarian!!  What???!!!  The room is evidentially now used as a testing site and for meetings, etc. 

No library???  How could a high school no longer have a library???  Times have really changed.  Sure, I get it, that students now have access to technology that technically, I guess, can replace a library, but … really???  I just can’t imagine a school with no library and I’m wondering, are there any libraries in schools anymore??  I found out this information totally by accident, so I have no idea if this is a current thing. (Turns out in Ohio, it is a thing, (actually, a law) schools are no longer required to maintain libraries!!!)

Later, I shared this information with a friend and we discussed if libraries are fading away generally.  She was adamant that there will always be libraries, that society could never exist without libraries, but I wonder???

I for one can’t imagine not having a library.  As I’ve shared in prior blogs, I’ve spent a lot of time in libraries throughout my life. They served a much wider use for me than just borrowing books, although borrowing books is the best!  Seriously, I have to ask, are libraries slowly fading into the sunset??

The history of libraries is complex and lengthy.  The oldest still existing library in the world is in Fez, Morocco which was established in 859 AD.  The first libraries housed clay tablets dating back as far as 2600 BC.  The largest library from ancient times was the Library of Alexandria in Egypt which opened in 30 BC.  The first public library opened in the US in Boston in 1711.  So, they’ve been around for a long time.

There is even a fascinating book titled, “A Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books’ about the library that Christopher Columbus’ son, Hernando, built.  The book starts off with a riveting tale of a catalogue found in a library of the Netherlands that was the catalogue of his library.  It was the first known evidence that such a library ever existed.  No one knows how the catalogue made it to the library in the Netherlands, and the catalogue evidentially was shelved there for hundreds of years before it was finally noticed.  Once discovered it led to research that supported the fact that Hernando Columbus did establish a library of renown.  What was so interesting was the catalogue lists items in his library that apparently no longer exist anywhere.  To learn of books that are long gone….wow.  Very fascinating tale in its entirety.

Since one of my passions is genealogy, I keep thinking of how useful a school library could be to genealogist, even though in the next breath I know that would never be on the agenda for a high school.  But, nonetheless, I sure wish Blanchester High School had a school historical section in a thriving school library.  What a treasure that would be!!!

PS – Since I wrote this, I have learned that the Blanchester Area Historical Society & Genealogy Library has a very extensive collection of Blanchester High School memorabilia.  Unfortunately for my purposes, yearbooks didn’t come into existence until 1923, so no follow-up to the Marie Tullis question!!

History Comes To Life

 

There is a very interesting series that has been airing on the Smithsonian Network channel.  Pete and I do a lot of streaming, especially when we didn’t have the chance to watch a show when it first aired.  So, somehow, we stumbled across a show titled “The Pacific War, In Color”.  WWII is of interest to both of us since his father and my mother were active participants in WWII.  We both grew up on their war stories.

As I’ve written many times in these blogs, Mom was a Navy nurse stationed in the south and central Pacific during her time in the Navy.  This series was of great interest as it went island by island as the armed forces made their way toward Japan to end the war.  It is gruesome to watch as it leaves very little to the imagination and was certainly more real than any war movies that have made it to the theaters. 

                         

                                           Mom in her Navy whites              

 

                          Mom and her comrades on New Guinea                                  

On New Guinea

It became even more engaging for me as it told the stories of taking the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, all islands in the Mariana Island chain.   Mom was stationed on Guam for a time and when she learned that I was moving there the first thing she asked was for me to send her photos of the hospital there, she wanted to see if it still looked as she remembered it.  I sent the photos and she was thrilled to recognize the building.

Since I was well aware of Mom’s connection to the island, it was very interesting to learn more, first hand after my arrival.  I remember meeting an elderly lady who had been a child when Japan took control of the island in 1941, during the early years of the war.  Adults were turned into slave labor, but the children were allowed to run free without much supervision.  Since the kids understood what was going on, they did what they could to undermine Japanese projects, like moving construction stakes around to confuse construction projects, sabotage equipment and anything else they could get away with.

I was also interested in the story of Saipan since I had visited that island while I was on Guam.  It was a lovely, quiet little island however it has a very dark history during it’s taking by the US.  The Japanese civilians that lived on the island were convinced when it became apparent the Allied troops were winning the battles, that they would become slaves with the island’s defeat.  Rather than face that possibility, family groups began throwing themselves off the cliffs into the ocean below.  Soldiers attempted to stop them and assure them that slavery was not going to happen, but they did not believe, and continued with their jumps.  The footage of this is absolutely heartbreaking.

While neither Mom nor I were ever on Tinian, its history is crucial to the end of the war in that it was where the bombs were loaded onto B-29s for dropping on Japan.  The island is just 100 miles north of Guam and on clear days when we were out sailing, we could see the island.

Plus, just before I left for Guam I had seen the movie ‘Jaws’.  There is a scene where a person is recounting a memory of horror when a US ship that had delivered one of the bombs was torpedoed by the Japanese and the crew of that ship watched and cheered as US survivors in the water were being eaten in a shark feeding frenzy.  A new acquaintance on Guam confirmed that scene as actually happening, it was not just made up for the movie. 

So, once again, history comes to life.  The series on the Smithsonian channel is really good.  Especially when you have a direct connection to the story line.