A blast from the past: Original newspaper obituaries

It is time I jumped back into my genealogy even though I am still in grief mode after losing my dad.  The month of June was filled with bittersweet memories as my mother shared the wild ride of moving from Virginia to Arizona.  While I was in Portland before we lost dad, she gave me a plastic zip lock bag filled with memorabilia she'd saved 'over the years' and thought I'd be interested since I am knee deep in genealogy for many lines of our family.

After mom left for home to face the onslaught of grief she knew lay ahead, I also buried myself in unpacking and ran across the little baggie of papers, so I sat down on the floor in the midst of boxes, furniture strewn across my study and just felt the need to reminisce through tangled memories and felt a little outside myself as I opened the bag and little bits of newspaper clippings fell across my lap.  My mom has always been a saver, very organized and tidy with her files, folders and memories.  I didn't realize the gift she'd bestowed on me until I began to read the clippings and I sat stunned ~

In my hands, lay more than obituaries.  They were human interest stories a bit woven within the obituaries and counting back through my genealogy files, I realized the first one was pulled out when I was only 2 and a half years old!  Great grandpa Frank Garcia Ruiz (May 1949) and Step-great grandma Maria (Mary) Rey Ruiz (also in 1949) and Rita Silvan (my maternal great grandmother in 1953).  Mom cut them all out and saved them and here I sat with them tumbled and yellowed with age.

I was estatic and will add them to the book I am writing about the Silvan and Ruiz families.  For now, I will be happy to email them to family members upon request.  I guess I won't slap myself anymore as I have saved so many items in so many boxes and thought I'd never find a place for them all during my move.  Maybe one day I will offer this wealth of information to descendants also looking for gold.