Kevin's Story, Part 8, read slowly

I guess the family history stopped in Texas some place.  What had happened to that file cabinet?  The answer that my niece needed was in the file cabinet.  If I could just take a look.  I remember they had a son.  I remember his name because it was the same as my Uncle the war hero,  (If you are following along, you will hear a lot about the war hero) I called 411 no help.  I remember only one thing.  He worked for Texas Instruments (TI).  411, I let there fingers do the walkin’ and there fingers found 24 phone numbers, “#@!?”.  This is going to be much harder than I thought.  I get the main number and call ‘em up.  Me; “I would like to talk to my cousin.”,  TI; “We have no one here by that name.”, me; “#@!?”, TI; “He may have transferred to the new division when the company split about 10 years ago.”   So I call up the split off company.  Why not, can’t hurt.  Me; “I would like to talk to my cousin”, TIsplit; “We have no one here by that name”, “we used to have a guy with that last name but that wasn’t his first name.”, me; “may I talk with him please?”  “He hasn’t worked her in years.  “#@!?”  411, not in that town, but we have one in another town.

Ring, ring, ring, “hello”, “are you my cousin?”  He actually was my cousin.  What’s the chance of that?  And he has all his Mom and Dad’s computer records.  I receive them by way of FedEx the next afternoon.  WoW!  Fifteen years labor, thousands of hours, vacation trips, thousands of dollars spent, and in my hand.  What a gift!  There labor of love and devotion, and I will try to honor them by keeping it going.  Any reference to Auntie M has nothing to do with a movie about Oz, but only to give credit where credit is due.

The next 24 hours I spend reading over everything.  So much stuff, now I have to get this organized.  That day Family Tree Maker arrives in the mail.  I load up the program and start to work.  I don’t think I left the chair for days.  With the program comes a trial offer for ancestry.com.  I upload my family tree.  Then something starts happening.  The little green leaf pops up, then another, then hundreds.

To be continued . . .