Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, August 6, 2011

Another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun activity was posted by Randy, GeneaMusings:

Good evening, genea-heirheads (a new genea-word!) -- it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, if you decide to accept it is to:

1) Review Denise Levenick's (The Family Curator) three blog posts on the Present Photo Challenge. World Photography Day is coming up Aug 19, and this seemed like a fun thing to do something genealogy-wise.

* http://www.thefamilycurator.com/home/2011/7/27/the-past-is-present-genealogy-photo-challenge-for-world-phot.html

* http://www.thefamilycurator.com/home/2011/7/26/dear-photograph-35th-wedding-anniversary-edition-for-tech-tu.html

* http://www.thefamilycurator.com/home/2011/8/3/5-tips-for-snapping-the-perfect-dear-photograph-picture-a-no.html

2) Identify one or more photographs from your own photograph collection that you could use for the Present Photo Challenge.

3) Show us the photographs that you could use on your blog, a Facebook status or a Google Plus Stream.

4) Please post a link on Denise's blog about your blog post, and/or on this blog post linking to your blog post.
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Well, I packed up a few members of my family, and we headed to downtown Sandusky to try to re-capture some family moments from the past. I am very much an amateur, and I could not get the right angle or perspective....but here are my results. All are pictures of my Great Grandmother Irene Risko in the early 1950's outside her apartment building on West Market Street in Sandusky, Ohio. In the first shot, the perspective is off, but you can still see my great grandma fairly well.






















Here is the next attempt; it is a little better, but still too low.





















The third try had a bit better perspective, but the original photo of Gram Irene is blurry!






















So, I do not think these pictures merit being submitted to Dear Photograph, but I wanted to share my attempts with you. We had a lot of fun in the process, and told a lot of stories during the drive there!

The caption for this shot, had it turned out, would have been, Dear Photograph, Everyone in downtown Sandusky misses you Gram Irene, and so do I!

Gram Irene Received the Last Rites

While I was on a mission to assist someone in researching their family history, I ran into a death record for my beloved Great Grandma Irene.

Below is the Interment Record from Holy Angels Church in Sandusky, Ohio, which is accessible online at Family Search, under the category: Ohio Diocese of Toledo, Catholic Parish Records, 1796-2004. (Click on the image for an enlarged view.)






Irene Larkins Risko, who died from heart disease on September 17, 1961, was interred at Calvary Cemetery on September 20, 1961. The record states that Father Bishop administered sacraments to her. The website of the American Catholic states that the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, formerly known as the Last Rites, is a ritual of healing appropriate not only for physical but also for mental and spiritual sickness.

My mom always thought that Grandma Irene felt she was out of favor with the church because she had been divorced (and more than once.) In spite of that, she had a deep faith, and she felt very strongly that if prayers were offered up on Good Friday, that they were more likely to be answered. It gives me great joy to know that she received sacraments that were very important to her at the end of her life, which was filled with many ups and downs, and a lot of heartache. Had I not been browsing through church records online at Family Search, I never would have known this small, but so meaningful reassurance that my great grandmother found spiritual peace before she passed away. Grandma Irene had many failed relationships, and she lost both her parents and daughter before she died, but when I knew her, she was funny, generous, kind, and she had a heart that was filled with love for her family.