Son David suggested that I write a memoir and gifted Joan and me with a subscription to write and organize, and receive a hard-bound version.
This book is organized into the following sections:
Part One: Family, Friends and Influencers
Part Two: Holmes Jr/Sr High School
Part Three: College Years
Part Four: East Washington School Corporation
Part Five: Huntington: BNC, VP, PIC, QDP, HU, HCS, HNHS
Part Six: Retirement and other Conclusions
I credit David with most of the inspiration behind this project. At my request, David read a draft. I had the idea of his taking his English professor’s red pen and marking it up with corrections. Instead, he had a handful of overall recommendations. The best was to, “Read it again….don’t just skim over it, but read every word.” That really did help with edits.
I went back through the book, attempting to eliminate duplicates, combine chapters and shorten stories. Thank you, David for the masterful edit suggestions.
David’s forte is taking academic writing and making it readable. After reading his 240 page doctoral dissertation, I commented to him that it made sense, unlike other academic writings that seemed like a foreign language. His response was, “Isn’t it supposed to be?”
Son, John is a prolific writer critiquing books or explaining music. Both sons and Joan read much more than I do and have higher level vocabularies to show for it.
In my decades of writing hundreds of business and marketing newsletters and software documentation, my style is more storytelling than academic, but in telling these stories, I keep in mind the excellent, yet differing writing styles of the rest of my family.
Also, the Ancestry work that Joan has been doing enabled me to go back through siblings and grandparents to ensure the correctness of important dates.
My original goal was to write a record for family, but as others have heard what I’m doing, some have requested “copies”. Because the hardback books were quite expensive, I have updated and printed 8.5 x 11 bound versions with mostly color photos and have delivered several of those.
Here is a list of the table of contents:
(Click to enlarge)
Still not cheap, but here is a breakdown of the cost if you are interested:
