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This is a message from Rootsweb -- Tim
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Hello Board and List Administrators,
Because of the catastrophe that happened in the United States Tuesday,
11 Sept., 2001, MyFamily.com (RootsWeb.com and Ancestry.com) has
created a special Message Board for those who wish to express or share
condolences, sorrow, prayers, and thoughts for the victims, their
families and friends.
However, this is not a board for discussion on how the U.S. should
resolve this issue or about how the search for those responsible is
going.
The URL for the board is
<http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec?htx=board&r=rw&p=usa-tragedy.mourning>
Please join us in sharing this message board with your posters. Let
the healing continue ...
--
Vicki Lindsay Thauvin
RootsWeb Content Team Manager
vicki(a)rootsweb.com
From: Jan, unicorn(a)sun-spot.com
A Nation of Heroes (from the Sunday Afternoon Rocking series)
Tuesday "someone" thought to weaken us. Instead, our strength, the
strength "they" do not possess, is shining across a nation.
We have seen heroes this week. Heroes that will forever go nameless,
heroes that will never grace the pages of history books or a newspaper,
heroes that we will never be able to personally shake the hand of or
thank. Heroes that were not trained at West Point, or any other prominent
institution. Heroes that left home one morning with no intention of ever
being one. Heroes that dropped in a moment purses and briefcases, bags of
groceries and the threads of their lives and rushed to help in whatever way
they could. Some quite literally dropped the threads of their lives and
never emerged from the moment they reached out. Some survived their time
of reaching out, and returned home, but will never proclaim themselves
heroes. Heroes emerged on the scene and in short order, heroes emerged all
over the country. Heroes began to line up to give blood, to send money and
help in any form needed. If they could not be on the streets of the
tragedy, they would be heroes just the same, unsung, unlauded. For a hero
has no thought of glory, but only of the compassion and caring that
instigates the act. And the amazing thing?
Those heroes were from all walks of life. They were of all ages, all
races, all creeds, all cultures, all socioeconomic levels, all
religions. They had to be, for we are a melting pot of all of them, and
yet representatives of all of them responded. No one stopped to ask
another what their personal beliefs were before they went scrambling
through the rubble to find a living body, any living body. No one stopped
to ask those victims who their God was or what political party they
belonged to, before they pulled them from the rubble and began to bind
their wounds. It did not matter. All that mattered was the response to
pain around, the need for help. And that is amazing. Or perhaps not.
For over two hundred years we have proven that a blending of cultures and
beliefs is possible, that whatever our internal bickerings over
differences, the bottom line is that we all believe in what was built in
this country. America took in us all. She opened her arms wide and
promised a nation big enough to hold all of the cultures, the creeds, the
religions, the races. All she asked in return was commitment to that
concept, and willingness to preserve it. And so it has been, and so it is.
We have been underestimated.
It seems this terrorist attack may have been from sources that can't get
past the idea of "differences" being able to cohabitate in the same
country, under the same stars, within the same boundaries of land and sea,
and caring about one another. It seems those folks, who ever they are,
don't understand that idea any more than they understand the folks of their
own religion who do not espouse their violent ideas. They may never
understand it, but if they sought to divide us, they found out this week
that we don't just pay lip service to our beliefs. And they found out that
the symbolism of the buildings they sought to bring down are just that:
symbols. In reality the heroes of our country are across this nation, in
folks they never suspected, in beliefs so deeply entrenched and a part of
who we are, that they cannot ever root it out. We are a culture who seems
to outsiders to "have no heroes", for we are very open about the leaders we
choose. We are open with their flaws, their faults, our criticism. We
seem to worship no man and we don't hang great wall size posters of any
man. We still choose them, and chips down, we will be right behind them.
If "someone" thought that we had no heroes, were not capable of deeply
entrenched beliefs, "someone" was wrong.
You see, our heroes are of quite a different caliber. We may belong to
different walks of life, we may worship differently, some may choose not to
worship at all. We may be of different colors, we may celebrate different
holidays, we may back different political parties. But bottom line, when
America is attacked, the man and woman on the street is going to drop
everything and come running. Yes, we have been underestimated, all
right. We have countless heroes, millions of them. Those terrorists,
whoever "they are", forgot to study our history books. We have always had
countless heroes, men and women on the streets, and when the chips are down
they remember they are Americans, and that means all of us, differences go
by the wayside.
Tuesday "someone" thought to weaken us. Instead, our strength, the
strength "they" do not possess, is shining across a nation.
Just a thought,
jan
From: Jan, unicorn(a)sun-spot.com
Uncle Feller's Gift (from the Sunday Afternoon Rocking series)
I remember but two things about the man, and all the other memories were
given to me by someone else who lived them. I remember how he looked, and I
remember what he did once for me. I remember him as tall and lanky, a
sun-browned figure in a felt hat walking towards me across a field. I
remember the startled feeling that caught in my throat when the "magic man"
drew even with my small self and bent to examine my upturned face. My own
eyes, "black as muscadines" my aunts always said, met the strangest color
eyes I have seen before or since. For his eyes were the color of faded
stonewashed blue jeans, the color of a mountain wildflower, a soft gentle
blue all the more startling in the creased brown face that surrounded
them. He was Henry, better known as "Uncle Feller", my own Mama's aged
uncle, and I had been brought to ask a favor of him.
I held out a timid finger for him to inspect, and he rubbed his own work
worn fingers over it. He gazed out across the field as if at something I
could not see, cut off a "chaw" of tobacco, and we stood there in silence,
we two, youth and elder, for a bit of time. Then he grasped my finger in
between two of his rough ones, and he spat upon it! When I began to draw
back, the brown skin about his blue eyes crinkled, and he
smiled. Reassured, I let him rub his fingers over my own, and he began to
mumble words I did not understand. When he was finished, I gazed down at
my finger, but the wart was still there and I looked again up at the faded
blue eyes. Again the browned skin around them crinkled, drawing my eyes to
the smile beneath. "Tomorrow," he said. And that is all I remember.
But sure enough, "tomorrow", the wart was gone. And it was as my Mama had
told me. Uncle Fellar could remove the unsightly blemish without
pain. That is the second, and the last, of my personal memories. For the
rest, I must borrow the memories of others.
Uncle Feller had been blessed with "the gift" and no one was quite sure
why, as he was not the seventh son of the seventh son. But he is who it
was who could lay hands upon a person and somehow draw sickness right
out. A young cousin was a hemophiliac, and when the boy was hurt, and his
blood flowed, when all others around were terrified, only Uncle Feller
could stop it. By laying hands upon him, and reciting a verse from the
Bible, the blood would stop. Uncle Feller could do many things, even
remove a wart from a frantic child's hand.
Uncle Feller Warfield never married, but he was loved just the same. He
was never seen in much but his patched faded overalls, and he never had
much to call his own, but he held the love of a lot of children, and they
held a corner of their heart just for his occupancy. I know because my
Mama has told me so, and I have heard the gentle tone in voices of others
who recall. It was Uncle Feller who took the children of the family out
in the fields for "camp outs", who built them big bonfires, and told them
"haint tales". It was Uncle Feller who took them fishing down to the
creek, and Uncle Feller whose faded blue eyes twinkled in his sun-browned
face, who could be counted on for a good joke and most any fun that came
their way.
Uncle Feller lived a long life, but he did not meet a peaceful end. His
death is something of a mystery, and seemed to be an accident. He left no
wife, he left no children, he left no property. He probably never had much
more than two thin dimes to rub together, but perhaps he was richer than
most. He was laid to rest near others of his family. He had no children
to mourn his passing, but the generation they would have been of was there,
all of them with the means to make the trip. Neices and nephews they came,
and it was his neices and nephews, remembering, who placed the tombstone to
mark his grave, and with gratitude for having known him made sure it was
marked not just with a given name, but with the fond name they had given
him, "Uncle Feller". He lives on in their stories, and I have yet to see
anything but a soft nostalgic smile from anyone who owns the blessing of a
memory.
I knew but two things about him of my own memory: his appearance with that
deep sun-browned skin and the startling faded blue eyes, and the "magic" he
worked one summer day for me. But I have always heard he had "the
Gift". More than once I have paused at his grave, in the years since, and
reading the inscription "Uncle Feller" placed there by the adult children
of a family, more than once seeing a bundle of wildflowers left upon the
grave, thought perhaps the "Gift" was never quite what people thought it
was.
He was "Uncle Feller", Henry Warfield 1902-1977, buried in Ham Cemetery,
Stewart Co. TN
jan
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(Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be
shared...simply share as written without alterations...and in entirety.
Thanks, jan)
Sunday Afternoon Rocking columns are distributed weekly on the list Sunday
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