Genealogical Research

Yesterday, my son and I travelled with my brother and a family friend to Rome, Georgia to cheer our local varsity girl’s basketball team on in their first appearance at a state tournament since my sister began coaching the team three years ago. Our girls won, 55 - 54, against Armuchee High School. It was an awesome game; this appearance at state caps a tremendously exciting season wherein the girls went 22 and 2. My sister was named All-Region Coach of the Year, and two of her girls were elected to the All-Region team.

Yes, I do have a genealogical point here (also, I’m so proud of my sister and her girls that I had to share). Armuchee High School, who hosted the game last night, printed a brochure just for the game that included the date, time and venue, as well as the names of the people playing on the two teams. They had special tickets made as well, which I am saving along with all the other mementos of this season. What most people would consider junk will, in a hundred years, be a valuable treasure to my sister’s descendants.

Newspaper articles and brochures might reconstruct her life, but they won’t tell someone who wasn’t there how happy she was to win, how exuberant the girls were, how hard they played, or how Rabunites held their collective breaths when RCHS No. 3 missed a foul shot with 4.3 seconds left on the clock and Armuchee rebounded the ball. They can’t recreate the noise of the crowd as Armuchee passed across the court, shot the ball, and missed, the roar of our team’s fans when we won, the smile on my sister’s face…or the disappointment of Armuchee’s team as they slapped hands with our players (good game, good game), and walked off the court with their heads hanging in defeat, their fans silent in the face of a season so abruptly ended.

There are limitations to what we can preserve, but we must do the best we can. It is so important to capture today’s memories as they are being made, through journals, pictures, videos, and whatever new technologies the future brings. One hundred years from now, your children’s children’s children will pick up the scrapbooks you made and glimpse the sliver of your life with which you have presented them. But without those artifacts, without those impressions, they have little hope of understanding or knowing you as you are now, even though you will have played such an important role in those unknown children’s lives through the role you played in your children and grandchildren’s lives. Preserve your life as you can, and leave more than stories for your children to pass on to future generations.