Let's Visit Ormand...or is it too late?

Donna and Cousin Joyce Movius

While visiting my 95 year old cousin, Joyce (Stucky) Movius this week, she wanted to drive over from her Lake Elsinore, California, home to call on her Eskew cousin, Ormand a few miles away in Minifee. He was living with his brother, Billy, or so we thought. This is an example of not checking in with your relatives who live nearby. Joyce began writing the directions to their house down for me and I thought to ask her to call ahead. When the number was answered by a woman of great suspicion, “It's the right number, but you have your wires crossed.” I went directly to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) ( http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ )to investigate - after all Ormand would be 97. Sure enough, unfortunately, I found both Ormand and his brother had died within three months of each other this year (2011). But it was noted that Ormand had moved to Prescott, AZ a couple years ago, so we wouldn't have been able to visit him nearby, anyway. Joyce wondered if his daughter might live in Prescott and that's why Ormand was there? Joyce had known that his daughter had accompanied him to Louisiana a couple years ago, Ormand driving all the way. Yes, driving across the country at age 95!

How to find out more information on the daughter? It just didn't feel right, not to have been in touch better. I began to go through the sources that Thomas McEntee discussed at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree “They're Alive – Searching for Living People” . At http://news.google.com/archivesearch  I only found an old newspaper clipping from a Redlands High School reunion; but from a regular http://www.google.com/ search I found,, in Prescott's Daily Courier news, a year-old engagement notice noting that the groom's great-grandfather was Ormand., and Ormand's daughter's name. At http://www.zabasearch.com/  I found that same first name and birthdate as found in http://www.whitepages.com/  in Prescott. ... So there was a new surname for the daughter, but also a phone number listed on white pages,

With characteristic great courage, I gave the phone to Joyce, and she made the “cold call.” What a pleasant surprise for us all when Joyce connected with Ormand's daughter. She said she didn't know much about his mother Gertie Akin's, side of the family, and was really interested in knowing more. Joyce was so pleased when they discussed the used basket bassinet that she had given Ormand for the birth of his children, and in turn, Ormand's daughter had used the same bassinet for her children, decorated in different colors for each birth. She was pleased to know the origins of that bassinet, once used with Joyce's family, now a family heirloom. Although Ormand's 75 year old daughter doesn't have a computer, I'll be able to send her some family history through the mail. ...A sad situation of learning of the passing of two cousins, made a bit easier by finding and talking to the next generation.