Dedication of the
Family Then and Now
Website

We dedicate this website to all those members of our family tree whose combined life stories have made up the foundation and background of our own personal life story.

It has actually taken me a couple of years to fully realize the reason why I have undertaken this job of collecting and presenting all of the family ancestry information contained in this website. I knew that I wanted to capture the information about our ancestor's lives and their stories of what they went through to get us to the here and now of our personal lives. But, until now, the root purpose behind my desire to do this was an elusive thing.

Then, just yesterday, I happened to be reviewing a web page in the memorial site which I put together in the days following the loss of my father, Johnie E. Baxter, and the purpose of this work of love jumped off the page at me. There on that page I had written these words:

I was so glad to find this substantiating evidence in support of his memories of that day, even though at the time I found it and just a few days later was able to show these images of it to him on my computer screen his alzheimer's disease was fairly far advanced ... robbing him of most of his memories of his own life story.

And that is when I knew for sure exactly why it was important to capture all of these photographs and stories illustrating what made all of these members of our collective family tree individually important to know ... and remember ... and to pass along to those younger family members, and to the generations yet to come, who otherwise will never have the chance to get aquainted with these people who have gone before them.

It is their lives, their courage, their striving through hardships, their joys and their sorrows, and, yes, even their failures and sometimes horrible mistakes, that collectively brought us to where we are today. It is their personality traits and mannerisms and facial features and even voices that we can observe in ourselves and in our children. They made us ... and we carry them on to tomorrow with us.

When we understand their place in history, we will come to know our own role in history yet to be written. And when we come to know them better, we will better understand ourselves.

Thus we dedicate the Family Then And Now website to the remembrance of the life stories of those who have gone before us.