Boy, I Love My Job!
Many of you know that I work on the U.S. Army's Repatriation project, tracking down family members of soldiers still unaccounted for from Korea (and occasionally, WWII and Vietnam). Working on these cases, I encounter some truly peculiar circumstances -- and one of my latest cases is definitely on the unexpected side.I just contacted a gentleman in his 70s informing him that he had a brother who was killed in Korea in 1950. Until my call, he had no clue that this brother ever existed. Fortunately, he's an open-minded fellow and fascinated with all this -- curious to know more about his roots.
It's a strange call to make -- to tell someone about a sibling they've never heard of -- but this isn't the first time I've dealt with this set of circumstances. And this -- in addition to the prospect of some soldiers finally being identified and properly interred -- is why I love doing this work.
I just love the curves it tosses at me and the opportunity to give folks pieces of their family history that they never knew about -- just as I got to do on the recent BBC show where I tracked down a woman in Scotland to tell her about her Civil War hero great-uncle. He was one of the fellows who went down on the U.S.S. Monitor, but that knowledge had been lost to the family. Lucky me to get to dwell in history's mysteries practically every day!
posted by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak @ 11:42 AM
Subscribe to Megan's Roots World Blog
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home