Learning about the relatives...

As I said in a previous entry, I never really got to know my extended family - for our purposes here let's assume I'm talking exclusively about my dad's side. Mom's side is a whole other journal.

( A bit of family history... )

Uncle Cecil is the sole remaining Morris male. I knew him less than the other two brothers, but this last weekend I learned a lot, and some of it was really interesting.

To understand this story, you have to know a little geography. The town of Weeping Water, where the Morris family farm was, sits in a valley shaped - before the quarries flattened most of it - vaguely like a soup spoon with the handle pointing West and the ridges to the South flattened a bit. The Morris farm was about midway down the "handle" at the bottom of the valley, half a mile from the creek that created the valley. You would drive to the farm about a mile out of town with hills rising on either side of you: steeply to the North and very gently to the South.

To the East of town, there was a POW camp for German and Russian prisoners of war³.

Cecil flew airplanes during World War II. He was stationed stateside as a trainer and flew, among other aircraft, B17s⁴. He and his crew would "bomb" Omaha on training runs. When they finished the training run, he and his crew would detour thirty miles south to the Weeping Water valley. They would line up their approach with the camp, point the nose of aircraft Westward.

At treetop level - say, 50 or 60 feet - Cecil would fly the valley in that B17, and buzz the Morris house.

In a friggin' B17 Flying Fortress.

That's the kind of family I'd like to think I come from.



¹ You might recognize her as the former owner of Osage, where Michelle and I live.
² Mildred was the eccentric one of the family. She never truly settled, moving from place to place. Her only daughter, Alice Fawn, died a few years ago on a mission in Central America.
³ I thought my mom was pulling my leg when she told me stories of listening to the prisoners sing. I've since looked it up and there were several camps in the midwest. It helps to explain the almost exclusively German and Russian pedigree of the grave markers in the town's cemetery: after the war, many prisoners stayed in Weeping Water.
⁴ Think Memphis Belle.

Learning about the relatives...

As I said in a previous entry, I never really got to know my extended family - for our purposes here let's assume I'm talking exclusively about my dad's side. Mom's side is a whole other journal.

( A bit of family history... )

Uncle Cecil is the sole remaining Morris male. I knew him less than the other two brothers, but this last weekend I learned a lot, and some of it was really interesting.

To understand this story, you have to know a little geography. The town of Weeping Water, where the Morris family farm was, sits in a valley shaped - before the quarries flattened most of it - vaguely like a soup spoon with the handle pointing West and the ridges to the South flattened a bit. The Morris farm was about midway down the "handle" at the bottom of the valley, half a mile from the creek that created the valley. You would drive to the farm about a mile out of town with hills rising on either side of you: steeply to the North and very gently to the South.

To the East of town, there was a POW camp for German and Russian prisoners of war³.

Cecil flew airplanes during World War II. He was stationed stateside as a trainer and flew, among other aircraft, B17s⁴. He and his crew would "bomb" Omaha on training runs. When they finished the training run, he and his crew would detour thirty miles south to the Weeping Water valley. They would line up their approach with the camp, point the nose of aircraft Westward.

At treetop level - say, 50 or 60 feet - Cecil would fly the valley in that B17, and buzz the Morris house.

In a friggin' B17 Flying Fortress.

That's the kind of family I'd like to think I come from.



¹ You might recognize her as the former owner of Osage, where Michelle and I live.
² Mildred was the eccentric one of the family. She never truly settled, moving from place to place. Her only daughter, Alice Fawn, died a few years ago on a mission in Central America.
³ I thought my mom was pulling my leg when she told me stories of listening to the prisoners sing. I've since looked it up and there were several camps in the midwest. It helps to explain the almost exclusively German and Russian pedigree of the grave markers in the town's cemetery: after the war, many prisoners stayed in Weeping Water.
⁴ Think Memphis Belle.