Contagious Genealogy: A Pandemic

  NOVEMBER 09, 2021 Kira D. Foltz, horse racing photo, 10 May 2015, Santa Anita Racetrack, California. Week 42: Sports In my family, I never really heard much about sporting events or games growing up. Football, basketball, soccer, hockey, or any of those other traditional team activities were not celebrated by any of my close relatives aside from the occasional football game on TV leading up to Thanksgiving dinner. Even then, no one was really paying much attention. It was mostly just background noise. We also never made it a point to watch the Super Bowl or March Madness. Although, my grandmother, Edna, was a HUGE fan of baseball, specifically the Dodgers! Perhaps she was the only one to inherit the sports gene. Her grandfather, John Alexander Dean, Jr., cared for and raced horses back in West Virginia in the early 1900s! Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Wheeling, West Virginia, 19 September 1900, p. 2. Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Wheeling, West Virginia, 19 September 1900, p. 8. ...

  OCTOBER 03, 2021 Now, don’t get it twisted! Grandpa Ray was a hard, manual worker all his life and even went abroad during WWII, fighting off the Germans and Italians for the U.S. Army. But, there was also a softer side to Mr. Millhouse, and it was showcased in the form of sketches, drawings, and even poetry. Raymond Lee Millhouse, drawing, ca. 1997. Week 34: Character When I think of character, I immediately think of classic cartoon characters, like Snoopy, Woodstock, Charlie Brown, and the Peanuts Gang. These were spunky faces my grandpa would always draw in his sketchbooks. Raymond Lee Millhouse, drawing, ca. 1997. He appeared to be a huge fan of Charles M. Schulz’s comic strips, because he’d clip them out of the newspaper and bind them together in a notebook, which I still have to this day. Kira Foltz and maternal grandfather Ray Miillhouse, Feb. 1995, Hawthorne, California. But he was also always inventing his own little, amusing illustrations and writing original rhymes. I’...