WANDERINGS FROM YOUR PRESIDENT
BY GAYLE STUART
FAMILY GATHERINGS
In the past, we all have had the pleasure of our parents setting aside a Sunday when all family members, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers and cousins would gather to visit. For years, when my grandfather Larsen was alive, we went to Pine Grove Park in Little Falls, Minnesota for his birthday on June 1st. He had the park shelter reserved for the Larsen clan for a potluck. There could be 150 people; all of the above would gather. At that time, most of the above mentioned lived within 40-50 miles. Grandpa lived to be 90, and in later years, we had the gathering at my Mom and Dad’s, since he lived with us. Not nearly as many people attended.
I’m sure these brothers and sisters talked about all coming together on the ship from Denmark. As young kids, we missed a lot of that story while we explored the woods, etc. around the park. My grandpa did write some of this down in later years. He, being the youngest of 10 children at 10 years old, did not remember all that could have been written down.
Now, we have family all over the U.S. And when we started trying to plan for the 1st week-end in August, a date set about a year ago, half of our list of people already had plans for that time. Food is a hard thing to plan; it is potluck. We met to plan to have some of it made by the local grocery store as we have very few locals to do much.
We are now the older generation with our memories. Will they be as interesting as the previous generations?
gbs