Eve, presumably it is possible they knew each other - feel free to email me if you really want to find out. (She went to Radcliffe, took her advanced math classes at Harvard - they didn’t have computer programming classes back then, everything was under the heading of ‘math.’) Redhead, quiet, Scottish dancer, not from the Boston area.
I had never thought to check it out before, but it turns out the family name is on the Roll of the Battle Abbey. Does that in any way mean the prof’s laughter was a bit, ahem, hasty?
Who was a jerk, Charles Willden or Brigham Young? I’m curious because Brigham Young was my great-great-great-grandfather. (I think. It might be 4 greats.)
My ancestors witnessed the Ten Plagues, the splitting of the Sea, and the giving of the Ten Commandments…
is the the sort of thing you were wondering about?
During WWII, both my grandfathers worked at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. This is where plutonium was made for the A-bombs dropped on Japan. They were both low level workers (pipefitter and machinist) so they were never told what they were working on. Imagine their surprize when the govenment announced that they had helped make the A-bomb. They had thought all along that they were working on some sort of secret airplane or space ship.
My great-great (great?) grandfather lead the Creek Indians on the Trail OF Tears. He was the Chief of the Creek Nation the time. My great-great-great (great?) Uncle was President Dwight Eisenhower and I suppose he got to see all sorts of history, he even made some!
My maternal grandfather served under Patton (as infantry, not a tank commander). He didn’t talk much about his experiences, but he was present at the liberation of a concentration camp, too. I wonder if it was Dachau? He’s also was supposedly on the cover of Life magazine (in a group shot) during the war. We’re trying to track it down.
Nah, after all it was Lee who ordered the charge.
Anyway, according to a great aunt we no longer talk to, George Pickett is an uncle of ours. I haven’t been able to find the link independently, though. I will give credence to her claim since she’s done extensive research of the family’s history.
Well shiyut, I thought that would include plnnr’s quote as well.
Charles. He was trying to coerce my great-great grandparents to take on a second wife, that being the thing at the time, and in order to get away from that, they tried to leave Utah. Willden went to the sheriff and said that his son-in-law had stolen a bunch of grain and the sheriff took a posse out and arrested him. By the time they got it straightened out, winter had set in, the grain had been confiscated, and they still left in order to get away from her father. Almost starved before they made it to California.
My father was a radioman on board the USS Raleigh 12/7/1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. They were anchored at Ford Island, near the Utah. The Raleigh took one of the first torpedo hits, and although it was badly damaged and had to be tied up to the dock to keep it from capsizing, it survived.
My dad wasn’t on duty that Sunday morning, so he was in his bunk below deck. He said the first inkling they had that something was going on was a kind of a loud bang and the whole shipped rocked and shuddered. They had no idea what had happened, but thought maybe they had been rammed by another ship. Even so, they were scrambling for their gear and emergency stations even before the official call came a few seconds later.
It was a little over a week before he got a letter through to his fiancé back in Utah. In later years, my mother always said that was a very long week.
Ugly
Zoff that’s interesting. Wonder if they ever crossed paths. Unfortunately, my great uncle passed on in 2000, so I guess we’ll never know.
BTW, do you know when your grandfather was on the cover?
Here’s a searchable database of covers from 1936-1972, though it could take a while to go through if you don’t know at least the year.
Good luck!
My great-great grandfather was in the Union Army at Shiloh. I don’t know if he was one of the few who stood & fought or among the many who broke & ran. If he stood & fought I guess I should be proud. But if he broke & ran then I guess I’m glad to be alive.
One of my grandfathers was in the first US Navy battalion to arrive in Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped. 
For the rest of his life, he refused to talk about it. He died when I was really young, but I get the impression he wasn’t very vocal about his military record. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if everyone else had only found out after his death, when his military records were released. The only way I found out was through one of my relatives wondering if the fallout had been what caused the brain cancer that eventually killed him.
He came home to Iowa, made a living as a traveling salesman, and by everyone’s account had a happy life. I’m having a hard time imagining it too.
The closest I’ve coming to witnessing history myself is that my high school marching band was playing at Candlestick Park as part of the pregame festivities the day of the World Series Earthquake. But I was home sick that day.
My maternal grandfather was a relatively prominent logician/computer scientist/rocket scientist during WWII and the cold war. Thus, he was present at many of the meetings planning the space program, along with mingling with various famous scientists. Anecdotes I recall include:
-The astronauts demanded a computer on board the spacecraft, and the people from IBM showed up with their proposal for the first computer ever to use transistors (or maybe integrated circuits), which was about 2/3 as powerful as the enormous room-sized machines of the day, but no bigger than a breadbox
-He personally (it is claimed) realized that the reason some of the early unmanned satellite launches had failed to achieve orbit was due to calculation differences between solar time and sidereal time (I think I have those terms right) (one measures days by the earth rotating wrt the sun, one measures days by the earth rotating wrt stars, so they differ in a ratio of 366/365)
-His wife, my grandmother, played in a string quartet with Einstein
-His daughter, my mother, once sold a bicycle to the brother of the hydrogen bomb. (See, Edward Teller was “the father of the hydgrogen bomb”, so his son, who was at some conference along with my mom’s family, was “the brother of the hydrogen bomb”. Yuk yuk yuk.)
-He (my grandfather) was the director of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin/Madison, which was bombed during the '60s
I have a Great-Great-Great Grandpa Joseph Fletcher who was one of two delegates from Irwin County sent to the Seccession(I have no idea if I spelled that right) Convention for Georgia in 1861. After the war he was a delegate for writing the Georgia State Constitution. I have another Great-Great-Great Grandpa Daniel Henderson that was a senetor for Georgia in the Confederate Senate. He was also a Captain in the Confederate Army. I would guess that both of them witnessed some history. I also have another relative who was injured in the battle of Gettysburg. He died of complications from that injury and his wife was able to recive pension for it. His name was Nicholas Miller.
My great-great-grandfather was a Union soldier interned in the infamous Andersonville prison. He told his granddaughter(my maternal grandmother) that off and on, for the rest of his life, he had had stomach problems. Part of it was poor food and sanitation, part of it was being kicked and beaten in the gut by the Confederate guards.
I’m pretty sure a relative of mine, by the name of Scott Crossfield (of The Right Stuff fame), witnessed Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier.
My 5th great-uncle, Daniel Boone, witnessed much in the pioneering movement in the (then) western US.
My great-uncle was a member of the Irish Volunteers, precursor to the IRA, and killed by the Black & Tans in his own living room.
My grandfather was a survivor of the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.