Monday, October 17, 2011

Coming Around Full Circle - or - Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

I always seem to be going back to my favorite source of family history information - old newspapers. I subscribe to at least four online databases that provide newspaper articles. A recent search on family surnames turned up something I haven't seen in, dare I admit it, 37 years?

What I discovered is an article that I wrote for the Omaha World Herald's Magazine of the Midlands. This Sunday supplement ceased publication several years ago, which is sad. The magazine's editor, Hollis Limprecht, was freelancer friendly and published several of my articles over the years. This was the first and was published February 24, 1974.

It should come as no surprise that the focus of the story is not only history, but history in Cass County, Nebraska, where many of my family roots are. When I visited Elmwood Public Schools on a work assignment, I was pretty excited to see the students getting excited about the history of their community. The inspirational teacher behind the local history project was Mary Skalak. Sadly, Mary died a year ago this month.

Below is what Hollis wrote about me in his preface to this issue of the magazine. Some things never change. I'm still interested in history. I'm still interested in Cass County, and I'm still writing about it.


The more things change, the more they stay the same.

9 comments:

  1. How fun, and how true, they change, they stay the same.

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  2. What a neat thing to find - and it's definitely better than finding something you wrote a while back in a dusty box in the attic! (You can tell where I've been spending my time.)

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  3. Wonderful story! Thanks for sharing! It is the kind that keeps us going... ;-)

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  4. You're all so kind to post such nice thoughts about this! It is fun to go back and read such things. And I see that my writing style hasn't changed much in four decades, either. I'm glad that others enjoyed my bit of self-indulgence.

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  5. Susan, what a nice post. Can I ask what are the newspaper sites that you subscribe to? The only one I pay for is GenealogyBank. Just curious. thanks

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  6. I was going to ask the same question as onerhodeislandfamily. A few of the newspapers I need are on either ancestry or Fold3 but I don't pay for anything else.

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  7. In addition to those sites mentioned, I also use newspaperarchive.com and Archives.com. PLUS all of the free newspaper sites, the best of which is Chronicling America by the Library of Congress.

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  8. What a trip down memory lane for you!

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