Good Morning All!
My Mom is resting at home after quite an adventure at Deaconess Medical Center. She’s doing remarkably well and received the best care possible from the Cardiac Care team there. Lord willing, she’ll be back to normal activities in the near future. Now it’s rest and chicken soup! The human body is an amazing piece of equipment and God really guided Mom’s care every step of the way. We’re so thankful for the 7th Floor Cardiac Care team at Deaconess and the dedication and care given by Drs. Wyrick & Wysham. If you’re in Spokane and need help with heart issues, there’s no place better than being with the team at Deaconess!
Our dear friend and family member, Sheryl Martin, sent me some interesting family history info the other day. Come to find out, my great-grandfather, John Newbold, came to America from England aboard the ship “Wyoming” in 1874. He settled in the Draper, Utah area and is buried there. The 1880 census shows his place of residence as Draper, Utah. It’s my understanding that all of the Newbolds were dry land farmers in Northern Utah and around Preston, Idaho (do you remember the movie “Napoleon Dynamite”?). I find family history fascinating…it’s like a treasure hunt…information pops up along the way from many different sources (some good, some bad…you have to be careful). For example, the 1900 U.S. Census reported that George Newbold, my great-great grandfather had immigrated to the U.S. in 1869. However, he appears on a census in England in 1871 with his wife, Mary, and 2 children, Eliza and John. George likely immigrated in 1872 since his son, William, was born in March, 1873 in Farmington, Utah (and then the family moved to Draper, Utah, as reported in the 1880 census). Whew!…as I say, it’s like going on a treasure hunt, or more appropriately, solving a mystery. Thanks for the new info, Sheryl!
Happy Birthday to friend Moriah Simpson who celebrates her birthday today and to long-time family friend and member of the U.S. Coast Guard extraordinaire, Keinyn Hudson who celebrates his birthday tomorrow, June 14th. Here’s to you two! And Happy Birthday to comedian Tim Allen of “Home Improvement” and “Toy Story” fame, who celebrates his 66th birthday today!…”to infinity and beyond!”
Speaking of history here’s some more of the story of my recent World War II related trip with my friend Harold Voltz:
May 19, 2019
Harold & I met up with our “Beyond Band Of Brothers” tour group at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I’m glad we originally flew into Brussels. The Paris airport was “organized chaos”…lots of construction, missing signs, congestion & confusion. However, we did figure out where to meet the bus after Roland dropped us off at the airport. Our bus is modern, spacious and will provide a comfortable ride for us. Our tour guide is Charlie Koves, a native of Hungary with a great command of the English language and an extensive background in World War II history and European history. Our bus driver, Tomas (Tom), is a great guy. He, too, is originally from Hungary. His only child is on the Hungarian National Women’s Volleyball Team. Harold & I had fun greeting all of our fellow passengers and we could tell it was going to a convivial group. Lots of folks were veterans themselves and/or had parents who served in the war effort in World War II. A retired Navy Seabee and his son sat close by to us. I told him that my Dad had the greatest respect and admiration for the work the Seabees do, particularly what they did for the Marines on Iwo Jima. What a great group of people to share this World War II-related experience with in France, Belgium & Germany. We hit the road heading toward our first stop, which was the city of Caen, France. Caen was the scene of heavy fighting during the Normandy invasion. It’s a beautiful city now…hard to imagine that 70% of the city was completely destroyed during the war. We stayed at a great hotel right along the Orne River, a place called “Aparthotel Adagio Caen Centre”. It’s not far from the castle built by William The Conqueror in approximately 1100 A.D.. What a terrific city to visit! I ran different routes the two mornings we were there….once to the castle and the other time to a technology park near a nuclear power plant…talk about the juxtaposition with the old and the new! We had a great room with a good bed and a great shower…who could ask for anything more! And this is supposedly “the budget tour!” We headed out from Caen toward Utah Beach in Normandy. We picked up a Brit who served as our guide for the day at Utah Beach, Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont (loved that village!) and St. Mere Eglise…all important sites at D-Day. General Rommel, commander of German forces at Normandy, cleverly flooded all of the fields inland from the beaches, as the Germans left the dikes/canal dams open to let the sea water come in during the tides, making it a rough go for our GIs. Consequently, our forces had to move along the causeways and bridges in order to get anywhere during the invasion and the Germans focused their efforts on defending those places with lots of heavy armor, artillery, machine gun nests and the like. Tough duty for our guys, for sure! Our guide spoke of the good judgment exhibited by the Utah Beach commander, General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.. Instead of insisting on trying to find were they were supposed to exit the beach according to written invasion plan (they landed at a different place on the beach than originally planned, he ordered his soldiers to head inland on the first causeway entrance they found, saving precious time and saving lives too, for sure! Otherwise, they would have been pinned down on the beach for a long time and who knows what the outcome would have been! The paratroopers who came in at night had lots of challenges…poor communication, not being dropped where they were supposed to be dropped, glider mishaps (crashes), etc.. For example, a paratrooper by the name of Ambrose Allie landed on the roof of a town house near the town square of Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont. He slid down the roof and used a drain pipe to get down to the ground. In the meantime, German soldiers were about to shoot him when a fellow paratrooper was able to shoot the Germans first, but lost his life in saving Ambrose’s life. Many stories about individual acts of self-sacrifice throughout Normandy on D-Day…There also so many intertwining stories of World War I and World II. We happened to notice a monument in the town square of this tiny village Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont, honoring the war dead from the village in World War II…some 70 soldiers from just that area of Normandy alone!
Here’s the silly question for the day:
Q: What do you call a number always on the move?
A: A roamin’ numeral.
Here are some thoughts for the day:
“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks, American poet (1917-2000)
“When I started recording, I thought I’d be able to do all kinds of records…jazz, country, dance—and I’ve always wanted to do a gospel album.”
—Tom Jones, Welch singer of “It’s Not Unusual” fame
“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day…”
—C.S. Lewis, “The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, as quoted in “C.S. Lewis’ Little Book Of Wisdom” (2018)
Here’s to a great Thursday and lots of love always!
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, etc.)