“Your Everything to Me”
In the front is the famous totem pole in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.
Turn it over.
My father wrote:
“Your everything to me.”
These few words tell me something that military records, census documents, newspaper articles and official family records never could.
They allow me to hear my father’s voice.
Before my parents became husband and wife, before they created a home together, and long before they became my parents, they were Roger and Mary. Two young people trying to maintain a relationship while war kept them apart.
Read More From Nancy
“Darling, I Love You”
One of the little photographs shows Mount Rainier rising above the landscape, its snow-covered peak dominating the view. Turn it over. In my father’s handwriting are the words: “Darling, I love you.” There is something particularly moving about finding those words more than eighty years later. My father wasn’t writing for anyone else to read. […]
Induction Paper
What this document records is a clearly defined sequence in my father’s entry into military service during World War II, set within the structured and highly organized process of Army induction in 1942. On August 4, 1942, my father, Roger E. Watson, was among a group of men processed through the induction center in Clarksburg, West Virginia. […]
Birth Certificate of Roger Edward Watson
Every birth certificate marks the beginning of a life, but this one also tells the story of two families whose histories had already begun to intertwine. My father, Roger Edward Watson, was born on December 16, 1920, in Martinsburg, West Virginia. His father, Roger Edward Watson, was a West Virginian and an attorney. His mother, […]
