This is my Cherokee grandfather. He was like a father to me. I could listen for hours as he told stories of his early life, his time in the army during World War I, as well as ghost stories.
It didn’t matter how many times he told them; he had a way of making them so interesting that you looked forward to hearing them again.
My mother, Willie, was both Cherokee and German. She always had a positive look on life no matter what came at her. She, like her father, was a storyteller. She died at the age of 43 from cancer. My grandfather died three weeks later.
This is my father when he was in his twenties. He too was both Cherokee and German. He and my mom were married after he came back from World War II. He was twenty and my mom was sixteen. My dad never talked about himself. Almost everything I know about him came from other people.
I found out after he died, when I received all of his military records, that he was highly decorated during the war. He did many heroic things. I found out about most of them from others who served during the war with him.
Picture of me in my early twenties.
My mother and I shortly before she died.
