As I was rummaging around in the basement this weekend my eyes were drawn to one of the many bookcases. I zeroed in on two shelves that were holding items of significant sentimental value. Collected on those two shelves were diaries and journals that covered nearly 30 years of my dad’s life. The first diary on the shelf was for 1945. The last diary was for 1981. My dad had made a number of attempts to write a daily diary prior to 1945 but each time the entries ended after a few weeks. In 1945 while overseas with the Army Air Corp he finally was able to hit his stride and make nearly daily entries albeit many no more than a sentence or two.

After he returned home the responsibilities of supporting and raising a family seemed to prevent him from staying with his diary until 1959 when he restarted his daily chronicles. This time he made entries nearly every day until he lost his battle with cancer in 1981.

My Dad wrote of everyday living and current events and strayed away from much of the personal information many put in their “dear diaries”. As I read through a few of these diaries I realize that my Dad would have been one of the first too have jumped into the blogging world. He had the 60’s analog of a blog in the mid-60s when he wrote two weekly newspaper columns for the Franklin, IN newspaper–one on flying and one on camping.

I count myself very fortunate that my dad took the time to chronicle so many years of his and my life in his personal journals and diaries. We can only hope that our own ramblings will pass the test of time like my Dad’s paper blogs.

Fred