• Sunday-What'sUP June 26 - 11:53 pm

Later this week we will have our regular end-of-the-month memorial, but for today's Shoebox Memory we recall a lovely lady who was honored at her memorial service here in the U.P. The notes and photos come from our daughter-in-law, Dr. Katriina Hopper, who traveled to the funeral this weekend with Jonathan:

My grandma, Irene (Maatta) Wills, was born in Calumet, MI in 1923. She grew up on Pine St (near the intersection w/ U.S. 41), and her father worked as a miner for Calumet & Hecla. The first photo above is of her and her childhood friend, Verna Myers. It must have been taken in 1931 or '32. (Irene is the petite dark-haired girl on the right.) She and Verna remained friends throughout their lives, and my grandmother saved every letter that Verna wrote to her, from the 1950's to 2008. The other photos were found in a photo album of my grandpa's travels during WWII. They were taken around the time they married in 1944. These photos must have traveled with him to Germany... then to the Pacific.

Beautiful...

I think old family photos and the history behind them is such a pleasure. I gladly took on the title of my families Family Historian.

Love the story there, and awesome photos. I have quite a few old photos of my grandparents. I love looking at them. Thanks so much for sharing yours.

Family history is valueable for later generations. The stories are as important as photos I feel. I'm so glad I taped 4 tapes of my mom telling not only family history but glimpses of her life in Hubbell aand life as a child there. Just wish I had been able to do so with my dad. Riding the rails in the Depression, what old Milwaukee was like in the 3rd Ward. Hardly know anything of his childhood. I wish one of my kids would tape their dad's stories of tenant farming, growing up in a large family. But especially his job as an enginer on the steam locomotives at the steel mill.

kay Moore (Mskatie):
"Family history is valueable for later generations. The stories are as important as photos I feel. I'm so glad I taped 4 tapes of my mom telling not only family history but glimpses of her life in Hubbell aand life as a child there. …"

Very true, Mskatie, but perhaps you should consider converting those priceless (audio? video?) tapes to a digital format (with backups as well) before that "tape" technology gets left in the dustbin of history. It would be a real shame to lose that valuable history for lack of a mechanism to retrieve it from its present recording media! We could easily reach that point in another decade or so.

My dad died in 1999 and i remember some of the stories he told that i am working on capturing in a collection for my children. Sadly, my mother died just Friday and I didn't find the time to document what life was like before radio and television, etc . . . but do have some items that i will add as well. Time passes way too fast and family history may not seem more important than this week's programming on the tube but in the long run take the time to write it down. once they are gone with all those tales it is too late.

My condolences, Richard.

Richard I'm so sorry to hear of your mothers passing. Now matter at what age, it's so final and all the stories are lost. Hope you got some of the family history. Please write down what you remember so you decendants will have them.