Thanks, cousin Jane.

My cousin Jane Huggins did the sweetest thing the other day. She sent my brother and me copies of an old photo she had found at her mother and father’s home (Charlie and Iris Powers). It was from 1946, going by the approximate age of my brother Harold.

It was a photograph of the family of Dewey Wilbur Powers, Sr. (my grandfather, known to us grandkids as “Da.”) W. D. Powers, Sr. and Family

I had never seen this picture before. From left to right, the people are as follows:

Back row: W. Palmer Powers, aka “Ponk,” Dewey W. Powers, Sr., aka “Da,” Charles H. Powers, aka “Charlie,” Dewey W. Powers, Jr., aka “Dub,” Harold W. Motte (my father), aka “Motte,” and in his arms, Harold W. Motte, Jr., aka “Bud.”

Front row: Michael D. Powers, aka “Mike,” Marena S. Powers, aka “Mimi” or “Boots,” Martha Elizabeth Motte (myself), aka in those days “Betty” or “Bets,” Bertha Madeline Powers Motte (my mother), aka “Sister” in younger years, “Beth” later on.

Doing family tree research I had located my granddaddy’s WWI military registration card and saw that he had written out his entire name: Dewey Wilbur Powers. He was 18 years old.

His first-born son’s first name is Wilbur, Wilbur Palmer Powers. His second son, D. W. Jr., however, has William as a middle name, not Wilbur.

Then I discovered that in earlier days, Sr. and Jr. did not necessarily mean the same thing they do today. Sr. simply meant the older of two men in a community with similar names, whether or not they were father and son. They might not even be related to each other. The names didn’t have to be identical, just similar.

That goes a long way toward explaining the mystery of the middle names.

This is the only photograph I’ve ever seen where all my mother’s siblings are together in a photo. As you can see, the three oldest Powers boys were in the Navy during WWII. Mike was far too young for military service then. My father Harold was in the Army Air Force, though not in uniform for the photo.

I am very grateful to my cousin for sending us the copies of this photograph. It means a lot to me.

This has been a sad week

One of Tim’s classmates, James Hugh (better known as Hubie) McCutchen, died Sunday a week ago.  He and his wife were at the beach when he had a cerebral hemorrhage.  He died later that same day.

Then on Thursday, another classmate, Anne Marie Carson Martin, who lived in Leesville above Columbia, died from cancer.  The KHS64 class sent flowers for both funerals, and about 20 made it to Hubie’s service.  Only Jane Richardson was able to go to Anne Marie’s service.

Sunday night I got a phone call from Ed Tanner, Tim’s cousin, saying that he’d just learned of a death in the family – Frank Sieveno had died Sunday.  Frank was married to one of Tim’s cousins, Aline, who died several years ago.  He was several years younger than Ora Lee, actually.  Aline’s mother and Ora Lee were half-sisters.  Aline’s mom was a lot older than Ora Lee,  being in the “first” Tanner family, and over the years Aline and Ora Lee were more like sisters themselves.

Frank had been living in Sumter with Mary (his daughter) and Rich Wagner, in poor health for quite a while, and then developing cancer.

He was a fairly quiet man when I was around him, except that he loved playing the organ.  Reading his obituary gave me a much greater appreciation for his life; he was ex-military, flying planes during WWII in the Army Air Force.  I don’t know why I never knew that while he was alive and I could have talked to him about that.  Since my own daddy was also in the Army Air Force in WWII, I could have thought up lots of questions for Frank.  I’m sorry I didn’t do it.  I did know that Frank and Aline ran the office for Captain Dick’s Marina inMurrells Inlet, but that’s about all I knew.

But Frank and Aline are re-united now, and I can just see Frank sitting down at a heavenly organ and playing to his heart’s content — once he’s visited everybody he wants to see, taken a tour around, etc.

Busy, busy, busy

I’ve had a wonderful time learning new things the past few weeks. New software is my current chore… but I’ve had to learn how to use new software frequently in the past, that’s not too big a problem.

It is interesting, however, that this particular software drives the OM Ships website, and to see how something looks I have to put it out there “live” and take a look. No real preview menu that I’ve been able to find…

So I’m being a bit more careful with poofreading — oops — proofreading.

I’m also reading everything I can find about the various aspects of the ships ministry, the port visits, the behind-the-scenes work, the people aboard ship, the visitors to the ships, everything. There’s a lot!

This week I read two interesting news articles about the upcoming visit of the Logos II to English port cities. One is purely secular in its viewpoint and never mentions Christianity, Christian literature or evangelism. The other does mention all that. Click to read them.

http://www.thisisdorset.net/display.var.1433438.0.giant_book_fair_steams_to_the_island.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/articles/2007/05/27/logos_feature.shtml

I don’t think I’m going to run out of background material as I write newsletter articles, local website pages or e-mail updates!  The first newsletter is almost ready to mail, and within another week or so the first local “Carolina” website pages will be ready to go live.