MAYBE I SHOULD CALL THIS A POST A WEEK

Where to start? Although I have started a genealogy blog where do I actually start. I guess the beginning is the most likely place.

The couple on the left are my parents, Thomas Dowd and Gerda Schridde. They were married on 4 February 1943 at Seymour Johnson Field in Goldsboro NC. My dad had been drafted and was going to be shipped to Europe, so he called my mom and asked if she wanted to come down and get married. She hopped a train and went. I guess that tale is typical of the time surrounding World War II. They spent a week together and he came home in January of 1946 and I was born In October.

They had met on a "blind date." My mother was five years younger than my dad and on their first date he decided she was too young. They met a few years later at a wedding of her best friend and his best friend. I have a picture of the wedding party, guess I should scan and post it. I think the wedding was the start of their relationship. Guess she wasn't too young then. They married when mom was 20 and dad was 25. It is sort of funny, but physically they looked like they could have been relatives. My dads ethnic background is Irish and my mothers is German. She had emigrated with her parents from Hamburg Germany in 1926.........I will save that tale for another posting.