My grandmother Rosa Green Foil--on her honeymoon in 1924
Rosa Green Foil wrote this as the introduction to a handwritten family history. She was avidly interested in geneology and heritage. She could not only tell you what ancestor married who, but could identify the personality traits and temperaments came into the family line with each union.
“US” Our Roots
by
Rosa Green Foil
1979
“You, my relatives who read this, I hope you will not read it with a critical eye turned on my English composition. I write as I speak, using long sentences and rambling on with a comma thrown in now and then. I may not indent paragraphs, just drop back a bit sometimes.
I think of “us” as being individuals and at the same time we make up a stalk or column that is our part of the world. I do not think of us as individual trees, each on his own and being separated from others. We are a part of a changing tree on a vibrant stalk closely associated with others around us, ever changing and being pushed by life’s struggles. Our friends and associates color our column so they strengthen or weaken our fibers, or do they mar and scar us and make us to be less useful? And what about our mark on others? I hope in the final outcome I will not have blighted or weakened the people I touch.
As we mature and raise a family we pass on to our children and grandchildren traits; a strong fiber or a porous shell of weakness, greed hatred and indifference. The column that is “us” is merging into a stalk that is our children and grandchildren on and on; each molded by many in the past and the daily surge of life. Our choices make a lot of difference and our responsibility great.”
