A few days ago, I got an IM on Facebook from my cousin, Velda. But, unfortunately, there was no note, just a photo of a certificate that appears to have been yellowed by age. At first glance, I thought, “Why is she sending this to me?”
I examined the document more closely, letting my eyes slide down the page until they reached the name beneath the words: This is to certify that . . . .
My antennae went up. Wait a minute! I thought. Rewind. Reread the page. The name on the line above the signatures of four officials affiliated with the program offered by the DC Public Schools’ Department of Industrial and Adult Education was mine.
The certificate, dated January 20, 1966, was presented for completion of a 12-hour course in Individual and Family Survival. I stared at it for the longest time. I couldn’t recall ever seeing that document before, but my maiden name in my handwriting leaped at me from the signature line. But how? When? I drew a stupefied blank.
Granted that it was nearly a hundred years ago (You all stop calculating. Of course, I’m exaggerating, give or take a few decades. LOL), my mind is still relatively keen, and I like to think I would remember taking that course. After all, I still remember that Mr. Simmons, the Business Ed teacher, was, in my opinion, the most handsome and sexiest teacher in our high school, but that’s a post for another time.
Since the resurrected certificate was dated six months before I graduated from high school, I can only surmise that it may have been a class compulsory for meeting graduation requirements. But wow! Who would have thought? And what was the relevance of a course in Individual and Family Survival? Considering the decade, a civil defense Duck and Cover course might have been more appropriate. However, since the certificate shows that the study was presented by the Office of Civil Defense Adult Education, perhaps it was developed to show us how to prepare ourselves and our future families for emergencies or nuclear disasters. I doubt if I would have voluntarily taken what appears to be a mundane course unless I was under the duress of not graduating for lack of required credits.
I instant-messaged Velda and asked how she got the certificate. She said she discovered it while cleaning out one of her mom’s closets. Of course, then I wanted to know how her mom, my Aunt Imogene, got possession of it. Velda said it was inside an old photo album that had belonged to one of our deceased uncles, Uncle Henry. Velda’s mom is married to one of Uncle Henry and my dad’s brothers.
Of course, the next question was how Uncle Henry got it. Although he had lived in the same city as my family and me for years before he moved to North Carolina, I doubt if my mom and dad would have given it to him. As I discovered when my sister and I were clearing out my parents’ home following our mother’s death in 2014, mother kept nearly every report card, honor roll certificate, and other achievement documents that my siblings and I acquired while in school.
Since my parents are deceased and Uncle Henry died over 20 years ago, I will probably never learn how my certificate traveled from my parent’s home and wound up over 250 miles away inside the photo album where Velda discovered it. But I sure would like to know. And it may seem coincidental to those who believe in coincidences (I don’t) that Velda, the Parker family genealogist, would be the one to discover a piece of my personal history. Well, Shazam, Cuz!
There is an old aphorism that holds much truth: “Life is a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing.” I would include “with some disjointed pieces that don’t seem to fit.”
Thanks, Cuz, for adding another disjointed piece to the jigsaw puzzle of my life.
