Book excerpt: These memoirs are written with the hope that they may prove not only interesting to read, but also give you, my family, a better understanding of where you came from. I have attempted to truthfully describe life as it was over the past eighty-plus years. I have tried to make our ancestors come to life as real people, experiencing the good and bad in life, as we all do. The Greeks say, “The dead die when those who loved them stop talking about them. As long as they are talked about and loved—they live.”