Besides starting the summer holiday season, Memorial Day is a time to think on those who served our country in the armed forces. Many gave their lives. We were blessed that many came back to us. I am grateful we live in a place that still remembers, even if most of us think this is the start to barbecuing season.
My grandfather, Denver Dunbar Roos, served in the navy in the first world war. He was from Otoe, Nebraska. They have a record of those who served at:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~neotoe/warbook/warbook-69.htm
This is the entry for my grandfather:
My dad served in the second world war in the army air corps as a mechanic.
He loved the time he spent in England and visited his friends their frequently for the rest of his life. He had to wait until he was old enough to join, so he didn't join up when his cousins did. The article below is about those cousins.
I recently received a magazine 'The Self Service Grocer,' February 1949 issue. It features the following article about Alpha Beta, the supermarket chain started by my grandfather. I thought our family members would enjoy seeing this article. It scanned through as the four pictures below. I have it in a pdf file for anyone who would like that.
I remember Dad talking about many of the men mentioned in the article. According to family lore, Grandma was the one who thought they should alphabetize the stock as mentioned in the article (although she isn't given the credit).
We spent last week being grandparents and it was wonderful. We were able to see all of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren at some point during the week.
One granddaughter supplied us with a very comfortable room. That allowed us to spend time with her daughter who is quite fun to play with.
Another granddaughter (4) had a gymnastics demonstration we attended. I must admit that I teared up a few times watching how much it mattered to these little ones. Their coaches were so wonderful helping them go through each of the routines: floor, vault, bars, and balance beam. Everyone received a medal, balloon, and box of animal crackers.
After gymnastics, we were off to church. The 10 year old had a recognition for the hard work they've done in Activity Days this past year. Here is part of the group of girls singing for us. Ours is the one with the owl on her shirt.
We had a very special event on this trip-the baby blessing for the Pro's namesake. A huge gathering of family at the home of the dad's parents witnessed this special rite. Almost the whole family was able to attend.
The circle included dad giving the blessing, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and uncles. The baby spent the entire time watching his father pronounce the blessing.
Here we have great-grandfather, mom, namesake, dad, and grandpa. The outfit the baby is wearing is made from some material left over from grandma's wedding dress, as well as from one of the other grandpa's white shirts.
Spending time with family is always wonderful. Seeing all the little ones and their families is great. If retirement allows us to make more of these family events, we will really enjoy it. We are so grateful we had a chance to be at these special occasions last week.
In the days when home movies were complicated, we didn't take many in my family. We didn't have a movie camera but an uncle did, so my early home movies were taken by him. We had a video camcorder once, but it ended up falling overboard and was never replaced. Now, it is so easy to take video with a smart phone. I take mine with a digital camera as it gives a little better quality. And there are far more ways to share these videos. I think this is Progress (with a capital P), making it much easier to capture memories.
I spent quite a lot of time this week digitizing some VHS tapes. One of these was converted into VHS, so the quality is definitely not HD. However, these short 5-15 minute movies were wonderful to see. I miss my dad, and seeing him again was great. I vaguely remember him like he was in the early shots, and definitely as he was in the later ones.
A while back, I spent time doing this with dance recitals my daughter was in. I'm not quite finished with that, but I turned to these as a favor to my niece. I'll put them on DVD for her and others in the family as well as posting them to the YouTube channel I've created.
Sharing these on YouTube will allow others who are interested to have access. I hope other family members will also enjoy these. I hope we will continue to take advantage of technology to preserve these moments.
My sister uploaded a video of a treasure hunt with my grandkids. I never want to lose track of such wonderful times together.
My daughter uploads movies to her channel so we can see the major events in her kids lives. She shares them on Facebook, but YouTube provides a nice archive for us.
If you have old movies to convert, there are many services which do that. We had some converted to VHS in the 80s, and those were some of what I digitized this week. As technology changes, we often have to go back and do this all over again. Watching as I convert has been very nostalgic. What a great way to spend some tube time.
Intel was a very challenging place to work. Expectations were high and almost everyone I worked with was extremely intelligent. I loved it.
One aspect of Intel culture that I loved was the regular recognition of effort. While the annual ranking was not a fun part of the meritocracy, the regular recognition was. I was able to reward great service and receive a number of rewards. Most the recognitions came along with a gift card. Both were appreciated. Some of these are certificates for completion of classes. They were also fun to get.
As I am digitizing a lot of my memorabilia, I thought I'd put those in a blog post.They all hung on my cube wall at some point except the Instructor one which was too heavy. As you can see, they only sent me one year for the plaque although I did get awards from them a number of years.
This one says IU, Instructor High Achievement although the flash on the camera drowns out the writing.
