Wall-o'-text time.
My mom's family is a bit odd to me, because I don't exactly know what everyone did even though I know more of the people. Anyways, most of them are from northwest Ohio, and many of them still live in the area. My maternal grandmother, Nancy, was the youngest of six girls (Hazel, Mary, Frieda, Ruth, Beatrice, and Nancy); my maternal grandfather, James, was the eldest (I think) of two or three sons. Said grandfather was married and had three daughters with his first wife, but then divorced her and married my grandmother (he was about 40, she about 28). She was a homemaker; he a worker for Ohio Bell, the telephone company. A year or so later, they had their first daughter, my aunt Nancy. My mother, Colette, came four years later, and then their third daughter, Amy, was four and a half years after that.
My dad's family comes from West Virginia, especially the southwestern coal-mining area. Both families were involved in coal mining, though the extent is a bit different. My paternal grandmother's father was one of the superintendents/directors of a mine; my grandmother, Dorothy, was their only child. My paternal grandfather's father was an actual, bonafide coal miner, and he and his wife had a son, Donald, and a daughter, Jesse-Faye. Donald and Dorothy met in college (I think?) and got married when he was 23 and she 21. He worked as a mortician in Huntington, which is on the Ohio river and right across from Ohio and about 11 kilometres or so from the Kentucky/WV border. My dad, Clyde, was born two years after their marriage; his younger brother, Curtis, was about a year and a half afterwards; his youngest brother, Melvin, was born about two and a half years later.
My paternal grandfather worked with some of the deadlier accidents in West Virginia around that time, notably the
Silver Bridge collapse and
Marshall University air disaster. Coincidentally, he died of a heart attack six months after the latter event. About a year and a half later, my grandmother married the man who I know as my grandfather who, at the time, was working as a science teacher in the Cabell County schools. About a year or so later, the family moved to Athens, Ohio, so he could take up a position at Ohio University.
My mom and dad met at a rifle match when he was seventeen and she about fifteen. They struck up a bit of a friendship, but it wasn't a case of "love at first sight". They went on their ways, with him graduating from high school and going to college in Missouri and Illinois (due to my grandfather being moved to universities there and him being able to enjoy free tuition stuff) while my mother graduated two years later and starting X-ray tech school.
Rather out of the blue, though, my father sent my mother a letter and began resuming correspondence with her: he had moved to Texas to work in the oilfields. She flew down to meet up with him, but then returned to Ohio; that December, however, the two of them got married in Illinois, where my grandmother and grandfather lived at the time. She was 19 and he was 21. After some moving around between Kentucky and Virginia, the two of them "settled" in Texas.
My dad was working the oilfields, and when it was a booming business, things were going well. However, around the late 1980's, the business in Texas went bust and he was out of a job. So he decided to join the Army. Eight months later, he received his first duty assignment: Honolulu, Hawaii. My mother flew out to join him and, two years later, my brother, James, and I were born.
(Notably, my mom and dad were married for about 10 years before having children. My brother and I are the only ones, fortunately.)
