The Origin Of Our 59-Year Romance

I met Bob Dickinson on Tuesday, September 15, 1964, (a leap year), one week into my senior year at Suitland High School. I remember this date well because it was the day I started my first job behind the soda fountain at People's Drug Store (now CVS), located in Forestville's Penn Mar Shopping Center. Then, …

Our First Thanksgiving in Plymouth (1575-1653)

Pilgrims and Indians celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts in the early 1600s. Puritans fled England and Holland during the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln created the holiday in 1863 to practice their religion freely. The colonists wanted to celebrate their first good harvest of corn and barley harvested with generous assistance from …

SLÛ-Bi`

By: R J Dickinson, II Note to readers:  This account of SLÛ-Bi` is only to be read by those who first have read the post entitled “Fast  and Furious on Bee Oak Road” dated May 27, 2021, by author Joanne Dickinson as told to her by my sibling.  My tale that follows is a mere …

“Love, me.”

Please excuse me once more.  Our family remains in that mourning season of life. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, Wednesday, August 22, 2018.  Dad asked his children to take him to mom's gravesite in honor of what would have been her 91st birthday and their nearly 76 years together.  We took flowers, mostly purple--mom's favorite …

Sit’n on the Porch to Make a Stand

The year was 1981.  The day was Friday, December 4.   I had just finished a visit with Sister Kathleen, who was the director for the religious education program that prepared 7th-grade children for their sacrament of confirmation into the Catholic religion at Mount Calvary Church and School in Forestville, MD. The backstory goes something like …

Happy National Dog Day!

National Dog Day, founded by Pet & Family Lifestyle Expert and Animal Advocate, Colleen Paige and has been celebrated annually since August 26, 2004.  To honor man's best friends, this day especially encourages dog ownership and embraces the opportunity for all dogs to live happy, safe and “abuse-free lives”.   The goal for celebrating National Dog …

You Little Dickens!

My mom has told me a story about my relationship with my Cherokee maternal great-grandmother, Mary Susan Morris Ford, ever since I was old enough to talk. Unfortunately, I was only 14 months old when Grandma Susan passed at 73 years old. The story goes like this.  My great-grandmother went to sleep one night and when she …

The Family “Do You Know” Scale

Yesterday's post Family Stories that Bind Us included a few family questions from Emory University's Do You Know Scale.  Below are all the questions asked within Emory's study. I'm going to try them out on my family and see just how much we have communicated our stories among the generations--and their different spins on the information. …

Remembering Robert

About Grandsons Grandsons make us Proud. Grandsons listen to Family stories, even when they go on and on. Grandsons Surprise and delight us, and sometimes shock us a little. Grandsons know what's Cool, and they keep us up on it, too. Grandsons make us feel Important and wise. Grandsons add Fun to any occasion. Everybody should be …

My Blog is Likely to Hit 10,000 Viewers Today!

A Great Big Thanks to all of my Viewers and Subscribers!   While I was away playing with our youngest grandchildren in Ocean City last week, I nearly lost track of how many of you were continuing to view this site.  Looking back on the past 18 or so months since I started posting my …

Nearly 75 Years Later – A Family’s Unanswered Questions and Unsolved Mysteries Unravel

My Family of Secrets A year ago, nearly exactly to the day, I wrote a rather long and personal post about my paternal grandparents and great-grandparents--the Bollings and the Chambers.  From its title, you can infer that there were some unanswered questions and mysteries surrounding these people and their relationships that dated back years before …

“Life Interrupted–Navigating the Unexpected”

I "borrowed" this post's title, above, from Priscilla Shirer's 2011 inspirational book of the same title, as well as the opening description about it: "From telemarketers to traffic jams to twenty-item shoppers in the ten-item line, our lives are full of interruptions. They're often aggravating, sometimes infuriating, and can make us want to tell people …

Boys vs. Girls

Boys vs. Girls "With about 1,048 male babies born for every 1,000 female babies born in 2008, boys are keeping the edge in a ratio that's stayed about the same over the past 60 years." (These numbers came from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, which are sometimes compiled and analyzed over …

Getting to Know My Cousin – 5 Generations Later

We are so blessed that our 13-year-old granddaughter is an avid reader and also enjoys writing her own stories.  So, when she came to me a couple of weeks ago to say she had a social studies project and wanted to focus on proactive women from our past I just jumped with joy.  It just …

How Well Does Your Family Know It’s History?

How well do you think you know your family's history? More importantly to me, I'd like to confirm that there is practical value in my documenting and sharing my family’s story.    I sure hope so, because this blog site, as my legacy to future generations of my family, is intended to provide accurate reflections …

20 Signs You Went to Catholic School

Honoring, laughing with and apologizing... I am honoring, laughing with, and apologizing to our three children who may relate all too well to my reblog of the 20 Signs You Grew Up in Catholic School, below.  I read this post on the heels of my daughter and I attended a Catholic funeral a couple of …

Our Kent Island Adventure

On Saturday, July 3rd, 1966, (nearly 48 years ago), the closest available weather station to Kent Narrows on Kent Island, MD, was at Stevensville, a distance of 2.2 miles, 3.5 kilometers, or, 1.9 nautical miles. The historic weather conditions reported (and concur all too well within my still vivid memory) that the thermostat hit a whopping …

An Inheritance of Deafness for the BollingS AND RANDOLPHS (1771-1816)

Almost ten years ago, Boling, Bolling, and Bowling family members discussed whether deafness and hearing loss were inherited. The answer is, in fact, that there have been Boling family members born deaf. Some of the lines that include deafness extend over to descendants of the John Randolphs (another branch in the Bolling ancestry). The short …

Sharing Two Months of Moments…

It’s been nearly two months since I have posted anything new on my blog site. No, I haven’t had writer’s block, genealogical brick walls that I couldn’t break down, or been outside experiencing the snow and extreme winter temps. To the contrary, I believe I just became overwhelmed by the volume of my every day …

Revisiting a 20-Year-Old Oral History from Frank and Norma Boling

Oral History Interview American Studies Class – 1993 the University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus By Student, Jennifer L. Dickinson About the Interviewees Frank Burton and Norma Florence (Ford) Boling [my maternal grandparents] are in their mid-60's.  Frank is a retired Federal Government Employee—a pressman by trade.  [Born in the mid-1920’s, and married in their teens], …