The Terrible Catsafterme

On Monday, February 5, 2006, I attended the funeral of Russell Willeman. The service was nice and full, as friends and family packed in to pay their final respects to this much-loved man. I was not able to make the viewing the day before, but from what I understand, enormous amounts of people paraded through the Littleton & Rue Funeral Home. It was obvious that that nearly the entire town of Springfield had been touched by Russell in some way. He had spent his career as a  local high school Art teacher for 25 years. Read the rest of this entry »

After posting the “meeting” story of my paternal grandparents and using their wedding photo and marriage certificate (which I own), I decided to seek out the same materials on my maternal grandparents to include as well. Not wanting to disrupt the original posting, I am displaying them seperately here. Obviously the photo at left is not either of them, but rather a cute shot of my Grandparents in later years, looking as they always will in my mind. The marriage certificate yielded a missing piece of information with which I amended the original posting: the name of the maid of honor.

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My Great-Grandmother Mary Edith Heywood Murphy passed away on March 21, 1985. She was 88 at the time. She was the first person I ever lost with whom I was close. I remember that it really scared me when my Mom told me that “Grandma” had passed away, without specifying which one. As close as I was with Great Grandma Murphy, it would have been even more unbearable to lose one of my other two Grandmothers. Her service was held on Monday, March 25th in Dayton and her final resting place was at the Mound Hill Cemetery in Eaton. Read the rest of this entry »

Mom, Bob, Ashleigh, and I took a short weekend trek up to visit with Denise, Aaron, and of course, baby Adam last Saturday, January 27. Just before leaving, Eric Hubble – who I had not spoken with in 20 years – returned my call, so we arranged to meet that afternoon. After we had a couple of drinks in a local pub, Eric took me back to Denise’s, met my family, and took off. Most of us headed out to a Chinese buffet. Aaron was out playing poker, so he had to join us later. The food was great and as always, I ate way more than I -or any human, really- ever should. But, mmm, was it good.

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