52 Ancestors Week 16: Air

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 16's theme is "Air." This theme might be a bit tricky, as most of us don't have pilots or hot air balloonists in our family tree. Be creative. Think of place names, such as Mt. Airy or the "Big Sky" area of Montana. Or "toss it all up in the air" and pick someone at random!

Blue skies.....Smiling at me.....

I think Amy missed an opportunity to talk about an ancestor who was full of hot air. But, that wouldn't be polite and we do like to be polite here at All Roads Lead to Haverhill. Sometimes. Still, we probably all have a relative who is late that. That's beside the point. Let's talk about air! Well, it's partially nitrogen and oxygen. It's odorless, colorless and plants generate...Oh. Right. This isn't a scientific blog. In that case....

Private Marco Ferraiolo and dog.

I've already talked about how my grandfather, Marco Ferraiolo was a paratrooper in World War II. He saw combat in the European theater (Italy) and in North Africa. As a paratrooper, he flew in many missions with the 101st Airborne. He wrote my great-aunt (His sister) detailed letters about his exploits with the 101st. Sufficed it to say, they got pretty graphic.

In one letter, he talked about what it was like to jump from an airplane and how you have to count before you open your parachute.  He talked about how he lost a friend in a jump. It was pretty surreal reading the letter and actually looking at his handwriting--something I never saw before.

A few weeks ago, I found something else from my grandfather's stint in the army that I never saw before. Ancestry recently updated their World War II database with colored images of various draft cards. Naturally, my grandfathers' profiles both received new hints. I checked out my grandpa Robert first and saw nothing new or out of the ordinary. I then saw my grandpa Marco's profile and saw this. His US WWII Hospital Admission card.

When I found it, I checked with my parents to see if this was accurate. We knew he was injured in the war. We just wasn't sure how. The Admission card had a lot of great information in it which explained a lot about his time in the service to the United States army.

If you look closely, you can see a great deal of information. His rank. His age. When he was admitted. Apparently, he got shrapnel to the knee and needed to be operated on immediately. He was discharged in June of 1944 married my grandma Ollie in June of 1946.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Finding more about my paternal grandfather's past means a lot to me than anything else to be honest. He died when I was four and I guess that really effected me. Like I said before, I had people tell me about him all of my life. My entire family told me stories about him and it helped to fill that void. And that's a good thing since I lost him at such a young age.

Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered! See you next time!