My Family History

Family History Fascinates Me!

Maybe it's because I know very little about my ancestors that I want to know who they were, where they came from, what they did in life, and more.

This is why I'm creating this web page. Maybe someday in the future there will be someone like me who wants to know about their ancestors. Maybe he or she will be living in a distant world, come and visit planet Earth, or find this somewhere in cyber space and say, "Hey, that's my great, great, great, Grandmother." Now I know why I'm the way I am. It's in the genes!"

That's me. My mom said the photographer wanted to use it as an ad but she wouldn't let him. Who knows, maybe I could have been the Gerber Baby

Where Do I begin?

Sometimes I am amazed at the wonderful life I’ve lived, considering the circumstances of my birth. In the beginning there was my single mom, my older brother and me. I was born in Lebanon, PA. after the Depression and before America got into World War II, .

We were as poor as you could be without living on the streets, but I didn’t know that. Everyone around us seemed to be in about the same situation, except most of my playmates had fathers who worked in the steel mill or one of the factories. They lived a little better than we did until we moved to a really poorer neighborhood when I was six.

It was a cinder-block, noninsulated two story building in an alley. No heat, but we did have an old coal stove my mother cooked on and a kerosene heater. I remember winter nights when we huddled together in my mom’s bed and covered with our coats to stay warm.

In spite of our poor circumstances, I was a pretty happy kid. I went to St. Mary’s Elementary School from 1st to 4th grade, then Garfield for 5th grade. My mom married my stepfather, Bill Bradley, who was in the military stationed at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation when I was 9. When I was in 6th grade we moved to the Army Post. I went to a rural, one room, little red school house with 1st to 6th grade in the one room. There was an outhouse, a pot belly stove to keep us warm, and we had to go to a local farm house for water in jugs.

I have to admit I was glad when we moved back into town, Lebanon, and I could go to one of the two Jr. High Schools, Harding. Those were three good years and I enjoyed my friends, school dances, cheer-leading and having a crush on this guy or that one until I met my first love. We had a really nice relationship that lasted until I moved to Germany in the middle of my sophomore year, which I’d done at Lebanon High School.

Going to Germany. What an event. Devastating, leaving my friends and my first love. I cried almost the whole nine days sailing across the Atlantic on the USS Butner. I was either crying or throwing up–I was seasick. Yuck. My mom and two year old brother, Bill Bradley III, were fine, just me on that rolling sea. It was awful. I don’t know which was worse, missing my love and friends, or being sick.

The picture is Indiantown Gap Military Reservation.

Early Memories!

My early memories are sporadic at best. I’ve never claimed to have a good memory, and I know the reason for my less than the best memory is lack of concentration–not paying attention. My mind multi tasks. I can be looking right at you, as I often do my adult kids when they are telling me something, and I miss more than half of what they say, or forget it soon after they stop talking. Later, when I don’t recall some significant thing they told me, I get that, ‘we better watch mom for ‘you know’ what’, look.

Their father used to say, ‘you listen but don’t hear’ or was it that ‘I hear but don’t listen’, I don’t remember exactly how he said it, I know he said it often.

It’s like when I get together with some of my high school buddies at a reunion. In all fairness to me we are talking high school over 50 years ago. Someone will regale us with a story about an event at school, and I smile with the others then wonder, “did I really go to school with these people at the same time? I don’t remember that.”

And it usually is some event they all seemed to remember, not something like, ‘remember the time I missed that tackle and we lost to Stuttgart!’ I’m always fascinated about how guys remember almost every play of every game 50 years ago, but forget how long they’ve been married, or retired, or their offspring’s birthdays. I sure don’t remember every cheer we did or fight song we sang, but then we know I’m not exactly a shining example for remembering things.

I do recall our Senior Class trip to Italy. No, we weren’t rich kids from some private school. We were Military Brats who had a parent stationed in Germany, a place that only a few years before we were fighting an enemy we needed to destroy. Then we were helping to rebuild their bombed ruins and keep them safe from cold War enemies.

Funny how memory works, even mine. My original intent, when I started this was to write about the early days in my hometown. I probably jumped to my high school years because those two plus years in Germany were very happy and fulfilling. Great memories, even if most of them aren’t the same as some of my alumni friends.

The picture is me, June 1955, graduation, Kaiserslautern American High School, Kaiserslautern, Germany.