If I may today I will take a page from my friend and fellow blogger Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist) who sometimes in her blog will pay tribute to different family members.
I think as a genealogist one of the saddest things is when you have to update your files or software to indicate a death. I had to do this in the last few days when my dad called to say that his aunt, my grand-aunt Mary had passed away. She was the last of her five siblings and leaves a daughter Christina and a son-in-law Ed behind. Her oldest sibling Herschel Jr. didn’t even live to be a year old, her only sister my grandmother passed away in 1982.
We can’t forget about the two brothers who did live, Bob who died much too early in 1976 and Jack who passed away in 2008. Mary was born in Oklahoma in 1935 in Oklahoma, though if the 1940 Census is the be believed the family also lived in North Dakota in 1935. Her parents were the type that liked to move and liked to scatter records from state to state. A lesson I guess in that sometimes you may not find a record, because someone is in a place you least expected them to be. Mary attended school both in Alabama and in Missouri where she was in the Future Homemakers of America club. In 1954 she married Ronald Zelek in Virginia. Ronnie and Mary were married until his death in 2009. Another lesson in that it is good to do new online searches from time to time because you never know what new records may have been added, their marriage record being one of those new records.
Mary was a sweet lady, when I met her at 19 it was a chance to know a little of her sister, my grandmother who died before I was old enough to remember her. A lady who was petite in stature, but tough in spirit. Mary will be greatly missed by all those who knew her and I pay tribute to her and remind us all to talk to our elderly family members and get their stories before they too are gone.
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