My Grandparents’ War

1941. A group of 77 Squadron pilots posed next to a P-40 Kittyhawk aircraft looking at a board. The nose art of a blonde woman can be seen in the background. Goodenough Island, New Guinea Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

This week’s blog is brief. I’ve started watching a couple of documentaries recently. The first was Ken Burn’s The American Revolution and the second was My Grandparents’ War. Both are available on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). The second documentary is focused on celebrities and how World War II impacted their grandparents. All very real and human experiences of love, loss, bravery and the ordinary. While we are further away from the American Revolution, letters read during the documentary show that people that lived two hundred years ago experiences the joys and heartaches of life like we all do.
I suspect if you do family history and genealogy, you have an affinity for historical information. Both of these programs present new and different information about key events in the American Revolution and in World War II. There are so many stories that are lost to time and as family historians, it is our privilege to find and share those stories. While we likely won’t create our own documentaries, we can capture those key moments where our ancestors’ lives are intersected with key events in the world. I hope you are inspired by the stories that are shared in these documentaries. We think of heroes as famous men and women but it was often the individuals (who made key differences. Look at your research again and tease out those stories about your family.