Letter to the Editor: Submitted by Gerald Piittmann

To the Editor:

May this Christmas season be a blessing to everyone. The holiday season is an ideal time to see all of your family. This would be a great time to discuss a lot about your family.

What do you not know about your family? Do you know great-grandparents’ names, where they came from, what nationality they are, or when they arrived in America?

Today, young people seem uninterested in the past. If our senior people do not get family history recorded today, it may very well be lost.

There are all kinds of helps and research available to use, but first you need family names, places, etc. to connect to your family. Christmas is a good time to see the older generations of people and get names of parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and even where family lived and worked.

I have spent time visiting with my father-in-law about when he went to visit his mother and tape-recorded when they talked about early times. If you have someone you can do that with, try it for your own record. It might even make a great gift for other members of your family. Have a great family Christmas.

Gerald Piittmann
Waukon