If you look at my mother’s portion of my ancestry tree, its pretty basic-born, married, kids, died. But there’s so much more to her story than that and I’m afraid that happens to many of our female ancestors. That’s why I think its important for us to go back and honor the stories that we know straight hand. This is what we should do with our trees anyway, start with ourselves and work our way back. I get impatient and just want to go through it all and see how far I can go. This has resulted in my tree being a complete mess filled with unsubstantiated information. Now I am taking the time to go back to fill in stories and family lore, as well as verifying sources and making connections between the generations.
But I digress, getting back to my mother. She was someone who was full of life and considered herself to be happy go lucky. And she was, pretty much. But there’s a lot more to the story. First of all, she was a military brat (her words). Her parents, Doris and Woodrow Pentecost met at Gunter Field, Montgomery, Alabama in 1941. Grandma grew up in that area and was an airplane mechanic. Grandpa was from Gadsden, Alabama. He enlisted in the Army Air Corp and that’s were he landed. When the AAC split from the Army and became the Air Force, he chose wisely, and stayed in there. He stayed there throughout the war and never went overseas during World War II.
Woodrow and Doris’ kids were all born in the 1940s; WRP Jr-1942, Brenda-1944, and Gerald-1948. The Pentecost family’s life is also the story of the military industrial complex created post-World War II, during the Cold War. I really can’t prove it with verifiable data, only anecdotal evidence, this was a huge influence on my family’s culture. Mom always told stories about how much fun it was living on bases, where the kids would play until dark while the adults gathered together, as well. There was the field trip in Nevada where they went to watch the mushroom cloud from the nuclear test site. During the next few posts, I will explore how my family benefited from the Cold War era military build up.
L-R, Mom, Uncle Gerald, 2 unk women & Grandma
in Germany, around 1958-ish
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