Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Happy Halloween! October 30, 2012

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Deliver us,
O Lord!
~Ancient Scottish Prayer

Hello Family and Friends,

Happy Halloween! Tomorrow is the day of Ghosts and Goblins, a day loved by children and all those who enjoy "things that go bump in the night." The following is a family photo presentation to celebrate Halloween. It includes many different family members in costume over the years. To all those whose pictures are included here... thanks for being such good sports about it all! 



 
Happy Birthday Pam! Today is the birthday of Pam Engan Shepard. She is the mother of Linda and Steven Shepard, and for 25 years was the wife of my brother Russell Shepard.

Pam is a native Washingtonian, and has lived her entire life in Anacortes, Washington. Best wishes and many happy returns to Pam! 

The first picture shows Pam Engan Shepard and was taken a year ago at the Shepard family reunion in Anacortes, Washington.  

Happy Birthday to Maida! This Thursday, Nov 1, is the birthday of my mother Maida Gower Shepard. The second picture (below) shows Maida on the right with Cindy's mom Paula Harris of San Diego on the left. Maida is holding William Quincy Shepard of Alameda, California, the youngest Ggrandson of both of them. This picture was taken in San Diego this past August.

Maida was born in Mountain View, Arkansas, and was raised in Okemah, Oklahoma, but lived for 36 years in San Diego where she met and married Eugene Shepard. In San Diego was also where she bore and raised their 6 children before moving to Western Washington in 1978. 

Maida makes her home today in Anacortes, Washington where she lives on Wildwood Lane with her daughter Barbara and her grandson Steven. She stays busy with her yard and garden, and her Church, as well as her occasional travels to California.

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Steve

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Fall Family Photos, October 25, 2012

The only person
you should try to be better than
is the person you were
yesterday.

Hello Family and Friends,

Greetings to all of you from San Diego, California on this pleasant day in October.

Tomorrow, October 26, is the 20th birthday of Mandi Aquiningoc, the sister of Lyndsey, and the daughter of Kerri Aquiningoc.

Mandi is the 2nd GG grandchild of both Leroy and Nola Shannon Gower, and Will and Bura Davis Shepard. She is the granddaughter of Gary Shepard and Jackie Perry, and the Ggranddaughter of Maida Gower Shepard. 

Mandi was born in San Diego in 1992 but lives today in Granbury, Texas. The first picture is of Mandi and was taken just a couple of months ago in July. Best wishes to Mandi for a wonderful birthday!

Fall is a great time of the year for families to be active and busy.  The stifling heat of summer is past and the cold of winter is not yet upon us. I came across a couple that I would like to share with you. They show family members having a good time this fall. 

One of the fun fall family photos I am including today was taken last week and shows our son Nathan Shepard with two of his and Chenda's children having a great time on a slide at Washington Park in Alameda, California where they live. On the left is Logan and scrunched in the middle is Preslea. Thanks to Chenda for taking this picture and sending it to me.
 
The final fun fall family photo features friends Nicole Haw Shepard and her sister-in-law Rachel Shepard. Nicole lives with husband Patrick in Bothell, Washington, while Rachel lives with her folks in Kirkland, Washington. 

This photo was taken while the whole family was on an outing to a pumpkin farm in Snohomish, Washington. 
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Steve

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A Trio of Celebrations, Oct 18, 2012

I don't know who my grandfather was.
I am much more concerned 
to know what his grandson will be.
~Abraham Lincoln

Hello Family and Friends,

Greetings to all of you from Southern California here in the midst of fall leaves and cooler temperatures and finally the end of warm summer weather. Or so I thought. As I write this the temperatures have moved back into the 90s, so evidently we are not finished yet with some hot days.

Happy Birthday to Korilyn! Today, October 18, is the 15th birthday of Korilyn Boyd, who is the 20th of the 21 Ggrandchildren of Will and Bura Davis Shepard. She is also the youngest grandchild of Terry and Thelma Boyd of Blue Springs, Missouri and the youngest child of Darren Boyd and Victoria Boyd. She lives in Coronado, California and is a freshman at Coronado High School.
 
My Uncle Bill Russell. Today is the anniversary of the birthday of my late uncle Bill Russell (1908-1997), who I remember well as a terrific man with a great sense of humor. He and my aunt Pauline Shepard Russell were among the first in our family to move around 1940 from Colorado to San Diego where they lived the rest of their lives. Their descendants today are their grandson Eric Russell and his wife Ruthie of Red Rock, Nevada, and their granddaughter Shannon Wilk and her daughter Emma of Atchison, Kansas.

Happy Birthday to Vicki! And thirdly, today is also the birthday of my aunt Vicki Gower Johnston of Oak Harbor, Washington where she lives with her husband Duke Johnston. Vicki is the only member of our part of the Gower family to have been born in Oklahoma. As a girl she moved with her family in 1942 to San Diego where she was raised. For nearly 35 years now she has made her home on Whidbey Island in Western Washington.

The second picture shows Vicki in the middle, with her older daughter Paula Tuzzolino on the left, and her granddaughter Heather Cotton on the right. Heather tells me that this picture was taken in 2009 in Washington when she was visiting her mom and grandmother and they took the opportunity to get this three generation picture. The third picture shows Vicki's Ggranddaughter Heather in costume on Halloween.

Last Call For Halloween Pictures! If you have any family Halloween pictures that you would like for me to include in this year's Halloween photoshow, the time is now to send them to me. I need to have pictures by October 23 in order to include them. I would like to have pictures from all parts of our family.
- - -
Steve

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Our Family on Facebook, October 13, 2012

People will not look forward to posterity
who never look backward to their ancestors.
~Edmund Burke

Hello Family and Friends,

Halloween Pictures Anyone? I am putting together a Halloween photo presentation and would welcome any pictures you might have of family members -- young or old -- in costume. Send them to me and I will include them in the presentation that I will share with you later in the month. The first picture of Kaylan and Nathan Shepard is just one of those that will be included in the photo presentation. (Thanks to their father Dane Shepard for this picture.)

The Shepard's Crook on Facebook. The news was stunning last week that Facebook now has over 1 billion active users around the world. Despite the fact that there are still hold outs among us who refuse to share in this social media, as a communications tool it is alluring to most of us.

As a matter of fact, for more and more of us, Facebook (for good or for bad) is a primary way of keeping in touch with friends and family. Some even find Facebook preferable to basic email. In view of all this I have established a Facebook account for The Shepard's Crook, as one more way of staying connected. (The second photo is the cover picture for The Shepard's Crook on Facebook. It shows my grandfather William Shepard in 1932, and my grandson William Quincy Shepard in 2012.)

What all this means is that when you are on Facebook you can "friend" The Shepard's Crook and in that way get updates regarding recent blog posts, notices about our family, and you can see family pictures and comments that will be posted there (and post your own). It will be one more way of staying in touch with those around the country to whom you are related. 

Evertalk: Your Digital Afterlife. Part of the impetus for all this was an email I received recently from my cousin Mike Harrell of Mountain View, California (son of Vicki Gower Johnston). He told me about a special feature of Facebook that might be of interest to those of us focused on family. It is called Evertalk, and is designed to enable people like you and me to create a "digital afterlife." Evertalk says that people can "Pick-up where the Facebook timeline ends and celebrate the lives of friends, heroes, and family members" when they pass away. If that sounds intriguing, visit this website and find out more about Evertalk

I have not yet downloaded the free app and started using Evertalk, so stay tuned for more about this in weeks to come. If any of you try this out -- or have already tried it -- please let me know what you think.

Speaking of Mike Harrell, the third picture is a real historic gem and shows Mike with his father Carl Harrell (1931-2002). It was taken in 1955 in Tokyo, Japan, where Mike and his brother David were born and where Carl was stationed at the time. This is an example of a memorable family picture -- perhaps way TOO memorable as far as Mike is concerned! -- which is now viewable via Facebook and will be available to the "friends" of "The Shepard's Crook" for generations to come.
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Steve

Saturday, October 06, 2012

A Far Less Than Exact Science, October 6, 2012

You live as long as you are remembered. 
~Russian proverb

Hello Family and Friends,

Greetings to all of you from our home in San Diego where Cindy and I have returned after visiting family in Northern California and Western Washington. 

Patrick and Nicole's House Warming. Among the people we visited were nephew Patrick and his wife Nicole Haw Shepard in their wonderful new home in Bothell, Washington. Congratu- lations to Patrick and Nicole on the purchase of their new home! 

They had a house warming party last Saturday to celebrate their home with family and friends. The first picture, taken by Patrick's sister Rachel Shepard, was taken at the housewarming and shows Patrick's brother Christopher Shepard, holding Patrick's father Darrell Shepard, and being encouraged in this silliness by Patrick's grandmother Maida Shepard. It was obviously a fun time!

Kim's Surgery. I received an email from my cousin Kim Boyd Clark in Missouri, with the sobering news that she has recently developed breast cancer. As  result she will be having surgery on Oct 17. Ours is a family that has not had a lot of cancer in it. But Kim did remind me that our aunt Pauline Shepard Russell did struggle (successfully) with ovarian cancer back in the 1980s. Our prayers and best wishes go out to Kim and her family at this time, especially as she prepares for surgery later this month.


A Corrected Birth Certi- ficate. That was the serious and most important part of the email I received from Kim. She also updated me on her mother Thelma's crazy birth certificate. In a blog post back on Sept 3, I detailed the snafu regarding some very incorrect information recorded by her (not very sober?) birthing doctor in 1936 in the small Southeast Colorado town where she was born.

The second picture from June, 1963 in San Diego shows Thelma Shepard Boyd on the right holding her daughter Kim, next to Thelma's parents Will and Bura Davis Shepard. On the far left is Will and Bura's other daughter Pauline Shepard Russell.

Kim reported in her email to me that the state of Colorado has now issued her mom a corrected birth certificate, after much effort and great frustration. Among the corrections that were made is the important detail that she is female. I have known Thelma as my "aunt" for 64 years, but only now is her gender officially correct, as far as Colorado is concerned. We can only imagine the hoops Thelma had to jump through to prove her gender to her home state. (On second thought, no, let's not.) Nevertheless, congratulations to Thelma!

The whole crazy episode illustrates how genealogy is not an exact science. Sometimes it is far less than that. To put on it a positive spin, it just goes to show you that occasionally life's great annoyances DO get resolved. Even though it took 76 years in this case, we can find some small measure of comfort knowing that the wheels of justice do grind, albeit ever so slowly.
- - -
Steve