Welcome to Sunday All Day Brunch. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is going on with you. Today is Father’s Day and I am thinking about him a lot today. I lost him May 4, 1999. He had just turned 80. He was planting a bush and keeled over from a massive heart attack and was dead before he hit the ground. There are so many things I didn't get a chance to ask him about. He was very much into genealogy and I was thrilled today when I found a birth date and place for a relative from the 1600s. I kept wishing I could call him and give him the website to look at.
Dad did Mom’s family tree in addition to his own. Fortunately her older sister was enthusiastic because Mom sure wasn’t. The only really important things to Mom were the fact that her Dad was pure Irish and her Grandmother Hensley was pure Cherokee Indian.
One on the things that Dad did for the children is that he actually registered us as being part Cherokee. I know my siblings and I always proudly admit to our Cherokee heritage. When my brother Reid gets out here one of the things I want for us to do is to do is for us to investigate and learn more about our Cherokee heritage. I know some people who scorn and think that we are only ⅛ Cherokee so that isn’t a big deal. It is a big deal however to us. We are very proud of our Cherokee Great Grandmother. Her life could not have been easy. She was married to a Civil War veteran and had several children. I can only imagine the prejudice she had to put up with in her time.
So today I celebrate Father’s Day. I thank my Dad for being as impressed with Mom’s heritage as his own. I thank him for registering his children as part Native American. I sure miss him.
My Dad Jack L. Wilson and I at a wedding of one of my siblings.
My Cherokee Great Grandmother Hensley and some of her children.