Saturday, August 15, 2020

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Greatest Achievement

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!



Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) We all need to pass on family stories to our descendants.  Some of the questions can be difficult to write about.  Let's try this one:


2)  What will be the greatest achievement of your life?  Is it behind you, or still ahead of you?

3) 
Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook post, or as a comment on this blog post.

Here's mine:

After 76 years of living, I think my greatest "achievement" was marrying Linda in 1970, then having and raising two smart, beautiful, and wonderful daughters that are kind, tolerant, loving, hard working, and excellent parents.  I think they are better parents than we were.  Lori was born in 1974 and Tami in 1976.  After Lori was born, I continued working as an aerospace engineer, but Linda quit being an elementary schoolteacher to raise the girls, and volunteered at their schools until she went back to teaching in 1989.  


Their childhood and tween years were amazing - it was hard but rewarding work, but they wanted to learn, wanted to have fun, and were relatively easy to raise.  They went to preschool at our church, and then to an elementary school in a gifted program.  We regularly explored San Diego beaches, parks, museums, zoos.  We took family vacations to the Forest Home church camp, to see their San Francisco grandparents, and to sightsee around the country.  They both played girls softball, Lori was a pitcher and Tami a catcher.  

Their teenage and college years were more challenging.  Lori went to Hilltop Junior High and then Chula Vista High School in their Gifted and Talented program, and played softball and was a cheerleader.  Tami went to Hilltop Junior High, and then to Hilltop High School in their Foreign Language and Global Studies program, and studied Russian for six years.  They both participated in the youth group at our home church.  Lori went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the aerospace engineering program, but switched to early childhood education, and spent a year in grad school at Sonoma State University.  Tami went to Azusa Pacific University, and received a degree in Psychology, and went to Russia three times on their Mission program.  They both became very independent at college.  

Tami married in 1997 in our Chula Vista church, and they resided in Long Beach and Victorville, before moving to Huntington Beach in 2013.  She received a Masters and Doctor of Education at LaVerne University after her marriage, and works in management for two online universities.  They have three children, now 15, 12 and almost 6.  

Lori married in 2000 at her current residence in the Santa Cruz mountains, and has two children, ages almost 17 and 14, and works as a nanny and as an office manager for a small architectural firm.  

They both "take care" of their parents in their "old age" - phone calls, FaceTiming, Amazon gifts, visits, etc.

Life has had other challenges for me and I am very proud of:

*  Receiving a BS in Aerospace Engineering at San Diego State University in 1966, and surviving a 38 year career at Rohr Industries/Goodrich Aerospace as an aerodynamicist and Chief of the Aero/Thermo group there, working on and supporting almost all of the aircraft engine programs from 1967 to 2002 with analysis, testing, reporting, and managing resources.

*  With college educations and work ethics, being responsible for our words and actions, obeying the law, being kind and tolerant of other people, saving money for our home, making wise investment, retirement and health decisions, and good luck in not choosing our parents, we are doing OK for older folks.  OTOH, anyone else can do it too.

*  Becoming a decent genealogy researcher, having researched my own ancestry, my wife's ancestry, my grandchildrens' ancestry, and also a number of one name studies since 1988 and still going strong.  Also, becoming a well-known genealogy/family history blogger since 2006 with a worldwide readership, and a presenter, mainly in the southwest, of genealogy oriented programs to genealogy societies and the OASIS senior adult education program in San Diego.  

I think I am still "living in" my greatest achievement - being a husband, father and a grandfather is ongoing and great fun.

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Copyright (c) 2020, Randall J. Seaver

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1 comment:

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here's my link. It looks like others chickened out like me, but I wrote and kept to genealogy research. https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2020/08/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-104/