While We’re Waiting

If you can recall the state the Geneablogging world was in during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving last year, perhaps you’ll remember the craze over who was going to be awarded the coveted opportunity to receive a free Flip Pal Mobile Scanner. There were actually seven bloggers selected for participation in what was dubbed Simple Gifts—A Blog Hop. The idea was that each blogger would find creative ways to use the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner, then post about the project they had designed while evaluating the prowess of the Mobile Scanner.

The seven selected bloggers each brought their own strengths to the table—as well as vastly different readerships and focuses. Caroline Pointer of For Your Family Story used both blog and video to explain her projects. Drusilla Pair of Find Your Folks used video to document the simplicity of the device (demonstrated by her young relatives). Heather Wilkinson Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy offered several project ideas, including my favorite on preparation for photo book projects. Julie Cahill Tarr of GenBlog offered how-tos on negotiating those difficult stuck-together family photo albums, among other projects. In addition to describing her projects, Marian Pierre-Louis of Marian’s Roots and Rambles offered her analysis of the Flip Pal’s strengths and weaknesses. Nancy Shively of Gathering Stories used a simple demo of the Flip Pal’s “stitching” capability that helped her tackle digitizing her parents’ old scrapbooks.

“But that makes six,” you say. “Where is the seventh?”

Well, it’s the seventh blogger that brings me to the point of this post. The seventh recipient of the Simple Gifts project happens to be my favorite local genealogist, Sheri Fenley, of The Educated Genealogist. Once Sheri had discovered that we have a home town in common, she simply insisted that we must—absolutely must, dahling—get together for coffee.

And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.

At our last coffee connection, Sheri unexpectedly handed me a package and said, “Here.” It was something she wanted me to try.

It was her Flip Pal Mobile Scanner.

Simultaneously maintaining my poker face and gasping for air, I took the package from her and examined all the contents. It was so tiny—not clunky like my desk scanners. (At last count, our family sports three, none of which qualify as sleek or svelte.)

She generously offered me the Flip Pal for a test drive. I say generous because I warned her of our unexpected trip to Kansas which, as I suspected, would keep me far from any notions of genealogical research, despite the lure of this shiny new toy. I gingerly took the little bundle from her and, despite my doubts that I’d have time to use it on my trip, carefully wrapped it in my carry-on luggage. The Flip Pal and I took the grand tour of Kansas and Colorado with a few family visits along the way. Everywhere it went, it inspired interest, to say the least. Everyone instantly thought of projects they wanted to use it to do.

Which brings me to the project I had in mind, once I returned home: scanning a photocopy of one of those huge plat maps I once retrieved during a research trip to Perry County, Ohio. I figured the Flip Pal’s stitching technique would be just the thing for this unwieldy document.

Of course, I had to dig my file out of storage. Face it, the map was copied onto two eleven-by-seventeen sheets to try and fit in all the data. It wasn’t like I could just stash it in my local file cabinet. I had it stowed in a special box that I seldom access.

As is my habit, by taking the opportunity to fetch this rarely-opened container, I stumbled upon something else which became the perfect candidate to put the Flip Pal through its paces: a photograph of the 1942 boot camp company of which my husband’s father, Frank Stevens, had been a part.

Measuring eight by thirty-two inches, the photograph was a monstrosity, yet too valuable to toss. So, we had taken the rolled-up keepsake and stowed it in that Box-of-Impossible-Oddities. As far as translating it into a retrievable form, some day we would get around to it.

Using the Flip Pal was the perfect assignment. It took two of us to hold the picture down flat, since it had been restricted in its rolled-up form for so long. The cover to the scanner is easily removable, so that was step one. The operation itself is quite intuitive. The only drawback was the easy green-for-go scan button, which we kept brushing accidentally, yielding all sorts of crazy shots of our hands and nearby tabletop. And, with trial and error, we learned to give a generous margin to the material we were scanning, so the Flip Pal would have plenty to work with in doing its stitching magic.

So there, in all its digital glory, is the U.S. Naval Training Station Company 162-“42” of Great Lakes, Illinois, on April 6, 1942. An added bonus is the handwritten legend we found on the back, in which twelve of Frank Stevens’ comrades signed their names and listed their home towns.

That listing, however, will have to wait for another day.

Can Hardly Wait

It’s been barely two days since we submitted a request to the National Personnel Records Center for Frank Stevens’ military records from his pre-1950 service in the Navy. Although we were warned up front about the length of time a response will take, I’ve already noted how trigger-happy their auto-responder seems to be.

And we’ve just received another auto-generated message, once again warning us that things could be a while:

The average response time on the majority of these types of requests is three to four weeks, however, on occasion a greater response time may be experienced. We service approximately 20,000 requests each week and are working earnestly and successfully at reducing our response time.  Our goal is to reduce our response time on these types of requests to ten days or less.

Polite, too, I might add:

Thank you for submitting a request to the National Personnel Records Center.

Whether the National Personnel Records Center manages to compress their response time to that mere ten days or not, I’m beginning to take a shine to that auto-responder. If nothing else, he seems to be a rather nice bot.

Halfway Around the World Another Time

After spending time at the Air Force base in South Carolina from the end of 1952 through at least mid-1956, Frank Stevens must have been transferred to a base in Japan. I have only one bit of evidence to lead me to that conclusion: a post card featuring a view of Mount Fuji, from Frank to his mom, Agnes Tully Stevens (who now sports another new address in Chicago).

Seeing how Frank and his wife, Norma, hadn’t seemed to travel together in previous moves, I can’t guarantee that Frank’s current transfer happened anywhere near the time of this post card. The only thing I can tell, once again, is that Norma Stevens is making the trip with an infant—as well as her now-nearly-six-year-old son John Kelly and his younger sister. I have no idea how much baggage this trip will entail.

                                                         30 Nov 1956

 Dear Mom + All –

            Norma got in this morning at 0600. She and the kids look swell but pretty tired, had a pretty good trip once they left Travis A.F.B. California. Don’t tell me women are the weaker sex – Our love to all. Norm will write in a few days.

                                                         Frank

Kin and Korea in the 1950s

Without Frank Stevens’ regular letters home to his mother in Chicago, I have precious little to go by in determining his whereabouts and life circumstances past the date of his marriage. Oh, I do have that option of sending for his military records, which I am in the process of doing. In the meantime, I’m succumbing to the temptation to speculate.

After all, Frank spent his first years after enlistment in the Air Force in England, from 1950 to 1952. Knowing the major military activities of those early years of the decade, the question comes up: “What about Korea?”

The Burtonwood, England, base where Frank was stationed during the years of the Korean conflict was known for its participation in air lifts. Oddly enough, Frank’s next destination, during his Air Force years, was to a base in South Carolina which was also involved in air lifts. Keeping in mind Frank’s medical training and background from his Navy years, and his one-time request for further training in Aviation Medicine School, a spot in the midst of air transportation of wounded soldiers would be right in the very arena in which he’d already demonstrated skill.

But I have yet to find any link to that conflict.

Meanwhile, remember “The Kid”? “Chip,” as Frank often referred to his younger brother Gerald, ended up following in his six-years-older brother’s footsteps, enlisting in the Air Force, too. Since Gerry had children of his own, they would be the next-of-kin qualified to request his military records, rather than our family, until the time at which they become part of the public domain. It was only recently, by stumbling upon Gerry’s memorial listed at Find-A-Grave which bears the legend “U. S. Air Force—Korea,” that I knew about his military history.

Though I have yet to find this out for certain, I’m thinking that will become part of the direction Frank takes next, too. I do remember some family mention of the possibility that Frank was involved in the Korean War in addition to his service in the Navy during World War II.

It’s here that I can’t help remember those words, though: “If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.” Well, I haven’t documented it yet, but I know someone has.

And I can’t wait until I find out what that someone knows.

Photograph, above right, courtesy Find-A-Grave volunteer Tory. Used with permission.

A Taste of Southern Living

When Frank Stevens decided to stay in the military because that was the only way he could afford to travel and seek adventure, perhaps the idea of the Southern Gentleman’s lifestyle was not exactly what he had in mind. Yet, when his two year stint in England with the Air Force was over, his next step evidently was to transfer to a base in South Carolina.

It is at this chapter in Frank and Norma Flowers Stevens’ life that I am relying on family recollection. I have no documentation at this point—while I’ve already sent for Frank’s Navy records, obtaining the Air Force papers will require a second request. For one thing, the dates of service fall on the more complicated side of the National Archives’ timeline of accessibility. For another thing, as solid as the buildings housing Archives material may appear, they are not impervious to risk. Witness the 1973 fire at the Saint Louis facility.

Of course, it would be the Air Force records that were most heavily impacted in that disaster—over sixteen million records that were damaged or destroyed. Reconstructive efforts have pieced together some of the missing information on some veterans’ files, but there is still a long way to go before all missing records are made whole or replicated.

I’ll know more about the fate of our Air Force request in the near future. Meanwhile, I’m basing my hunch as to upcoming assignment on my knowledge of where Frank and Norma’s next child is born. After all, the virtue of doing near-history family research is that there are still witnesses remaining who can tell the tale, if need be.

The clues lead to an Air Force base in Greenville, South Carolina. I am guessing that Frank’s next assignment is at Donaldson Air Force Base, a now-closed facility once known as The Airlift Capital of the World. Since each assignment seems to be for about two years, that would be just the right span of time to lead up to the next destination, for which I do have one shred of evidence already.

But that story is for another day.

Photograph, top right: The Donaldson Center in Greenville, South Carolina, in 2006. Photograph courtesy of the US Geological Survey via Wikipedia. Photograph in the public domain.

What’s Next?

Yesterday, I mentioned that Norma Flowers Stevens and her two young children arrived from Southampton, England, in the New York City port on Christmas Eve, 1952. I still have no idea where Frank is at this point, nor where Norma is headed, but I have some guesses, based on family stories.

Being in this predicament of flying by the seat of my, er, undocumented self, I thought this might be the perfect time to recall some promises I made to myself not so long ago. You may remember my reticence at making New Year’s Resolutions; you may also remember that I did mention hoping—some time—to track down the military records for Norma’s husband, Frank Stevens.

Well, this is that “some time.”

I pulled up those links I had referred to in a post at the end of December and got to work. In the process, I found out a few things and made a few observations. Think of it as my Guinea Pig Report, in case you’d like to follow suit in requesting military files from the National Archives at Saint Louis but don’t wish to be the “experimentee.”

The first think I noticed is that the links I mentioned in that December post seem to focus on military personnel who are requesting the barest minimum paperwork (the "DD 214") in order to qualify for those special perks reserved for the men and women who have served our country in the military. As you can imagine with a grandmother who saved every paper remotely attached to her beloved family, my husband has already been the recipient of his father’s DD 214 (the current form number, which applies to his Air Force years) and its predecessor, the NavPers 553 (for the Navy years, which incidentally, in Frank’s case, ended on the publicly-available side of the Archives dateline). So, the first step to accessing the request forms for Frank’s military papers meant asking for stuff I already have—that’s just how the online request system is formatted.

I chose to use the Archives website’s online request form, as we qualified to use it by virtue of my husband being the surviving next-of-kin. By choosing that route, I noticed a few things. First, the National Archives website for the Saint Louis center almost provides the viewer with information overload. There were so many links to helpful friendly descriptions, video reports, lists, FAQs and more that I sometimes felt like I was finding conflicting directions (like where to access Frank’s post-1940s Air Force records which do not fall within the public domain date range), or that I couldn’t backtrack to a point where I found something that I didn’t know I needed until later.

A second problem—no fault of the Archives—is my computer’s recent malevolent whim in permitting Firefox to take a dislike to the Google search engine. For whatever reason this nastiness has cropped up, it seems to also be connected to the fact that, once I clicked on “Launch the eVetRecs System,” it basically brought up the screen, but with no clickable buttons after the first page. The thing just sat there dumbly while I fumbled around, trying to figure out why it “wouldn’t go.”

A quick detour to a second browser, the clunky but salvageable Internet Explorer*, brought up the fully operable screen, and I was merrily on my way.

I had already been warned—thanks to some kind souls who answered queries I had posted on genealogy forums—to ask for the full personnel file, so when I found the comment section on the online request form, I was sure to make that note.

Although the website indicates the cost of photocopying the documents in the Official Military Personnel File (I’m figuring I’m in for $60—but that’s just the Navy side of the equation, as it only lets me request one branch per order), it never brought up a secure page where I could make an online payment. That mystery has yet to be resolved—though I’m sure the slow-but-steady government agency will not neglect its duty in informing me in due time of my pecuniary responsibility.

After submitting our electronic request, the final page in the process required the signature of the properly-qualified recipient of the personnel file. Although the page the Archives provides (coded for their use) may be printed, signed and then mailed to them, another option was to fax the completed form. We took the fast route.

Before we even managed to get that signed paper in the fax machine and dial the long distance number to Saint Louis, we had already received an email from the Archives, confirming their receipt of our request. Not bad for turn-around time.

Here’s hoping they work that same magic on their turn-around time for the completed package. As far as the saga of Frank Stevens goes, his son and daughter-in-law are looking forward to reading the rest of the story.

*Ever the source of off-beat trivia, my husband one day happened upon this picture coupled with the caption, "While Firefox and Google fight for world domination, Internet Explorer sits in the corner and eats paste." Of course, neither of us can relocate that ephemeral source of internet humor in its captioned form, but Chris was able to identify the originator of the sketch. For some strange reason, that kept coming to mind during today's online difficulties. Leave it to the poor lil guy with the glue jar to be the slow-and-steady one who got the job done for me today.

Hello Baby, Goodbye England

When Frank Stevens sailed for England in December, 1949, to report for his post-war duties at RAF station Burtonwood, I was able to find him on passenger lists, but not his wife, Norma, who evidently followed him in April. Two babies later, and with orders to report back to the States, Frank somehow returned without leaving any trace of a passenger record. At least I can’t find any passenger record listing Frank, but I do find evidence of his bride’s passage back to New York City.

Imagine: a young mother with a not-yet-two-year-old and an eight-month infant, making the trip from Southampton, England, without her husband. That’s intrepid.

Oh, and with nine footlockers and twenty-seven other pieces of baggage.

Norma and family sailed on the recently-renamed USNS General Alexander M. Patch, leaving Southampton on December 16, 1952, just eleven days shy of Kelly’s second birthday. They arrived in New York City just in time to be all by themselves in the big city on Christmas Eve.

I have no saved copy of any sweet telegram saying that anyone met Norma and her young children at the port. Having no record (yet) of where Frank was at this time, I don’t know if he was already stationed elsewhere, or stayed behind in England while his wife went ahead to make living arrangements at the next place this military family would be calling home.

I can only imagine what kind of Christmas it might have been for them that year.

Photograph, top left, of the USNS General Alexander M. Patch (formerly the USS Admiral R. E. Coontz), courtesy NavSource Online, via Wikipedia; photograph in the public domain.