Jeff’s Ancestors – Page 8 – Colleen & Jeff's Roots

Our Family History Tie To The Civilian Conservation Corps, Established 79 Years Ago This Week

Roy Pace CCC Baseball1930s — CCC Company 819 baseball team, 1930s. Roy D. Pace is in the front row, second from left.

On April 5, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6101, establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal program that lasted until 1942.

My husband’s grandfather, Roy D. Pace, worked in the CCC as a young man — serving in, according to my husband’s family, the Grand Canyon. When looking through old photos recently, I came across this photo of Roy Pace and his CCC baseball team from the 1930s. Doing a search for the company name noted in the sign (Co. 819) revealed that Roy’s CCC company was the first of many CCC companies to indeed work in Grand Canyon National Park.

Grand Canyon’s first CCC company (Company 819) arrived on May 29, 1933 and continued on the South Rim until the end of the program in July, 1942.

The men of Company 819 built the stone wall along the rim between El Tovar Hotel and Bright Angel Lodge, improved the Bright Angel Trail, landscaped the Grand Canyon Village area and, constructed the Community Building. — Source: National Park Service

I also found this cool video produced by Grand Canyon National Park about the work done by the CCC. Projects — noted above on the NPS site — that Roy’s Company 819 worked on include the Rock Guard Wall (video spot 1:27), and the Community Building (video spot 2:05) built 1934-1935. My father says he remember hearing, growing up, that his grandfather worked on the telephone lines being strung across the canyon.

The video notes an official CCC history walking tour (.pdf download) in the park, which you can be sure Jeff and I will venture out to do soon now that I’ve confirmed his grandfather’s association with Company 819.

Searching for a bit more history about Company 819, I was thrilled to find Roy Pace listed in the camp yearbooks for the first and second year Company 819 was based in the Grand Canyon. Page 12 of both books states that Roy played first base on the company baseball team.

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Family Photos Friday: Roy D. Pace, 1930s

Roy Pace, 1930s.

This post is part of my new “Family Photos Friday”, which consists of quick easy posts that showcase snapshots from our family history. Since I’ve spent much of the last couple weeks chatting about my Grandpa Flanagan, I thought I’d share a bit about my husband’s grandfather, Roy D. Pace, in this week’s featured Family Photo.

I am just starting my research on the Pace line, so I don’t have many confirmed details about him, but secondary sources indicate that Roy D. Pace might have been born October 19, 1913 in Bartlett, Texas. He is deceased, although I don’t have a confirmed death date — it was during my husband’s youth. Roy eventually moved out to the Bakersfield, California area, and my husband says that his grandfather worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps as a young man.

I look forward to discovering more about Roy D. Pace and his ancestors!

Why this particular photo? Just because I think it’s really cool; I love the 1930s era.

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Lt. Col. William Wallace Greene, MD

Lt. Col. William Wallace Greene, MD, 1945.

I didn’t realize, until Friday, that January 27th (the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau) is designated by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. So, this is my belated genealogical contribution to that day of remembrance.

While I don’t believe that any of our own families were victims of the Holocaust, my husband’s family has a very real, and very touching connection to that tragic event. His grandfather, Lt. Col. William Wallace “Wally” Greene, MD (1908-2003 ), was an Army surgeon during World War II (part of the 59th Evac, attached to the VII Army Corps), and he was part of the medical corps left behind at the camps, after they were liberated, to treat the camp victims. Lt. Col. William Wallace Greene treated surviving prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp, in German, in 1945.

I never met my husband’s grandfather (Grandfather Greene), he died before we started dating. But, my husband has shared with me how the memories of the horrors seen in Dachau stayed with Grandfather Greene the rest of his life. Jeff tells me stories about how upset his grandfather would become at people who question whether the Holocaust actually happened, or if it was as bad as people make it out to be. Because Lt. Col. William Wallace Greene was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the brutality of the Holocaust. I think if Grandfather Greene was alive today, and I asked, he would tell me that the Holocaust was even worse than what historians, survivors and the media make it out to be.

These two pictures were taken by a U.S. Army photographer, who was attached to the 59th Evac, and knew my husband’s grandfather. The photographer provided my husband’s aunt with a bunch of photos chronicling the 59th Evac’s movements between 1942 and 1945, which my husband’s aunt made into a book for my husband. I selected a couple of the more tame photos; many of those from Dachau are too graphic for me to feel comfortable posting.

Dachau concentration camp, 1945. U.S. Army photo, family album.

Liberation feast, Dachau concentration camp, 1945. U.S. Army photo, family album.

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Christmas Traditions: Betty Greene’s Christmas Treats

Christmas, 1974, in South Bend, Indiana. Dad, mom, me (front left) and Gregg.
The 70’s were not a stylish time in Indiana. And how fortunate are we today to have instant digital cameras that immediately let you know the picture is off center and you need to re-take it?

Growing up, my mom, brother and I always made iced pretzels and decorated sugar cookies to give as gifts to our friends and neighbors. Iced pretzels were quite easy (see our recipe at our food blog The Taste Place), but the Christmas cookies were a major production. In fact, I think my mom started doing the iced pretzels to take up space on the gift plates so we wouldn’t have to make as many cookies!

Maybe some day we’ll post the recipe we used for the sugar cookies, but you had to set aside at least one full day, if not parts of two. We would make the dough, and then had to let it rest for at least an hour, to let it get solid and easier to handle. Then came rolling them out on the floured table, and pressing with the cookie cutters. We had Christmas trees, reindeer, Santa, stockings, bells, stars, and candy canes, and each batch of dough was like doing a jigsaw puzzle as we tried to make the various shapes fit in together as closely as possible to leave as little excess dough in between as we could. Once the dough cut-outs were lifted out and put on greased cookie sheets and put in the oven, you would re-roll the excess dough (at least the excess dough that Gregg and I didn’t pop into our mouths when mom wasn’t looking) and do it again. This part could take several hours, as we would do somewhere around a hundred altogether.

If we did this on a Saturday afternoon, then Saturday after dinner would be the decorating. Or if we did it Saturday night, we’d decorate Sunday after church. This was the most fun part. We would make a simple icing with powdered sugar, milk, and food coloring, and always had white, red, green, and yellow bowls to use. Then we also had red and green colored sugars, cinnamon red hots, and sometimes the multi-colored sprinkle balls to further decorate with.

We always started out working on every cookie like a piece of art, painstakingly icing each one, using multiple colors of icing on a single cookie, and drawing designs on them using toothpicks like a fine tipped paintbrush for accents on Santa’s clothing or the stockings, or the reindeer’s facial features. But after the first few dozen, things tended to get sloppy as the novelty wore off and the latter cookies tended to be mono-chromatic with a random shake or two of sprinkles on it.

Mom working on the cookie decorating.
Notice the elaborate cookies on the left, versus the slapped together versions on the right…

We’d then deliver our plates of cookies and pretzels door to door to some of our closer neighbors, and I know my mom took them to her Bible Study friends as well.

I did the decorated cookies with the kids for years, but more recently with Colleen we’ve done the less labor intensive, but still very pleasing other treats to give to friends–peppermint bark, Missouri cookies, bourbon pecans, peanut brittle, and, of course, my mom’s easy iced pretzels!

The picture of mom above decorating cookies may be the worst of her ever, and if she were alive today, she’d probably kill me for posting it, but it’s the only pic I have of her doing Christmas cookies. So I’m making it up to her here by posting this random picture of her looking hot. ;-D