Family Treasure

Has anyone ever wondered about the history about their family? Has anyone questioned what treasures hid within their family tree? I sure have from time to time. This letter collection assignment has given me the chance to do just that even more. Now, I have heard stories about my grandparents in the past, but that was only in bits and pieces. That may be good for a short time, but soon I wanted to know more about them when they were in the military. It was as if they were leaving a trail of silver coins for me to follow to the real treasure waiting for me. Over the course of this project I have learned some more interesting details about my grandparents. I always knew that my grandmother was a social butterfly. With her connections, she built history with her friends all over the world. Evidence of that is the letter that she wrote to all of her friends. As I have learned in class, letters are the best way to reserve history. My grandmother’s history during her days as an Air Force is exposed in each and every single word on paper. Her letters show that she really cared about her friends and treasured them dearly.

First, there is a little bit of history to Katherine Wright before she became an Air Force wife. My grandmother grew up in Louisville, Kentucky on February ninth in 1945. Back then, her name was Katherine Palin. She was a little country girl with her mom, Tamer Boney, dad, and two brothers, Chris and Simon Palin. She had a nice childhood growing up from what I have heard. I barely hear any stories about her childhood, so I cannot really be sure about all that happened before she met my grandfather. In 1964, Katherine met my grandfather, Allen Bennett “Ricky” Wright. They got married the next year. In 1960, my grandfather joined the Air Force.

Allen Wright trained in San Antonio, Texas. From there, he went to Little Rock, Arkansas and Winnipeg, Canada. He started out as an automotive technician. Years later, he moved up to vehicle maintenance superintendent. He was even in the Vietnam War. (He lived, but his younger brother died.) Five years later after Allen started his career in the military, he married Katherine and she became an Air Force wife. They stayed close to each other during the Vietnam war. They have even sent each other tapes and letters while he was in Vietnam and Thailand.

My grandparents have been many places around the world during their Air Force years. Their chapter of their military story began in Great Falls, Montana. From there, they have lived in Tokyo and Okinawa, Japan, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, Vietnam, Thailand, Michigan, and Montgomery, Alabama before retiring and moving to North Carolina. During that time, my grandmother made many friends. They all came from many backgrounds of the world. She was a social butterfly even back then. She seemed to just make friends rather easily. I have even met some of her friends when my grandparents and I went out on road trip out west after my high school graduation in 2006.

Katherine and her friends would try their best to keep in touch with each other. She has even written over a hundred Christmas cards a year. One example of how she kept in touch with all of her friends even to this day is a letter from a Japanese woman named Yoshiko. My grandmother received this letter December fifteenth in 1979. Yoshiko lived in Okinawa, Japan at the time. In this letter, Yoshiko asks about grandma’s family, thanks her for sending a picture along with the letter, and tells about how she is excited for winter break. However, she has been very busy lately. She was having two tests in English reading and grammar coming up at the time. Yoshiko also says that she would have written sooner, but she had a school festival in Okinawa and she had caught a cold in November. The letter is typical of two good friends writing to each other. What amazes me the most is even with the envelopes and letter ran through a scanner back at home, they all stayed in beautiful condition. My grandmother really did treasure her letters as much as her friends, just enough to keep them looking great for me and my later generations to read.

A couple of years before I was born my grandfather retired in Montgomery, Alabama. After, he and his moved to Frankfort, Kentucky. They still live there to this day. Just recently, they went to a reunion in Memphis, Tennessee to receive an award for Allen’s deceased younger brother, Michael, this year. His younger brother can be found on Vietnam Wall in Washington DC. Allen and Katherine had two daughters, Emily and Sammie, and a one granddaughter, me. My grandmother makes new friends almost every day. Despite all of that, Rachel and her many friends are still close and they visit each other when they can. She still sends them Christmas cards to this day. She is close to her friends in Goldsboro and all around the world.

Everyone can learn about the history of their grandparents or accentors if they took the time to dig in and look for themselves. I am learning more and more about my grandparents every day. It seems that every time I look, there is always a new story about my grandparents waiting to be told. These letters that my grandmother has kept for years and years have opened a new door for me to have more of a look into their past. It makes me want to look more about them. I hope to keep finding more and more stories about them to put together a whole picture in my head. Their past always seems like an amazing story to me.

Works Cited

My Grandparents