Department of Joy and Praise

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2008 2008 2008

My dad started a set of diaries in 1931. His last diary was 1981; his last entry on January 31, only 27 years ago. He passed away three days later.

There came a time when the diaries got lost. My brother thought I had them. I thought he had them. Where were they? Dunno. Our nieces thought we were hoarding them...

Today, January 1, 2008, he and I got together and tore into his basement. It only took an hour, but we found Dad’s diaries in the middle of a stack of old boxes. The diaries were hidden under old newspapers and notebooks. It was a moment of relief and rejoicing!

We peeked into several of them, which were stiff with time. His familiar handwriting, people and places we knew, daily accounts of the weather—we were almost back home. Yellowed newspaper clippings, special notes and old post cards were sprinkled into some of the books—it was if Dad had come back to show us something nifty.

“This is a praise, Neal,” I told my brother. “This is a relief,” he replied. We had found a special family treasure that we thought had mysteriously disappeared. This is a special day.

It has fallen to me to transcribe 50 years of handwritten diaries into Word documents. Then we’ll copy those onto CDs for everyone who wants them. I hope it doesn’t take 50 years.

“…suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and say, ‘Rejoice with me! I have found my lost coin!’…”—A parable of Jesus in Luke 15:8 & 9