What Heritage for the Heritage Hunters?

I noticed something as our family spent this past week at a certain "kingdom" of the NGO variety. The place where everyone—human included—is happy to don mouse ears for a day of frivolity happens to be the same place where our hotel remembered to include a token of its heritage.

It wasn't until the last day, while I was packing our suitcases to head home, when I looked up at the enormous picture hanging on the wall and realized: this wasn't just a photo of a man walking in a special place. This was a photo of a man who did something significant over sixty years ago.

And that photo—of a much younger Walt Disney walking through the castle entrance to a brand new world of his creation—was hanging on my hotel room wall all this week. In fact, an exact copy likely was hung in each room in the same hotel complex. Why? Because someone thought it important to remember where it all started.

When we think of history, we think of things that happened hundreds of years ago. Even family history doesn't seem to count until those relatives take on the title of "ancestors." We hunt for our heritage, but we want that heritage to be captured from a long, long time ago.

Perhaps we should take a hint from the people running the place I visited last week: even stuff that isn't really all that old—certainly not yet old enough to be considered antique—should be recalled to mind and preserved so we can share it in the future.

I think in particular about the very organizations we form to help us as genealogists—the societies we create to encourage genealogical research and continuing education. When were those groups formed? Some were likely not even thought of, sixty years back. And yet, each society has its own track record, moments to celebrate—as well as moments to learn from.

Self-awareness, whether as individuals or organizations, is a sign of coming of age, of realizing the part we play in our world means something. And yet, while we as society members bend over backwards to help a fellow researcher find the tiniest tidbit of his or her family history, how many times do our societies take time to say "this is who we are, and this is how far we've come since we started"?

If for nothing else, let's take the time to preserve that narrative of who we are as an organization so that someday, someone who wants to know can find that answer. After all, not only do families have a heritage. So do the genealogy societies which help locate those personal stories.