It’s a good idea for all of us to know our family medical history for it is there that we often find important clues that can help us understand and deal with illnesses and diseases that tend to move successively through generations of our family tree.

But I can find no rational explanation for males born to the past four generations of Lehmers outliving women born in that period by a ratio of better than two to one.

Starting with Elias Lehmer, my great-great-grandfather, my direct Lehmer descendants produced 14 males and 10 females over the next four generations. Of the 14 males, only two didn’t make it to age 60. Of the 10 females, however, only four made it to their 25th birthday and only two lived past the age of 55.

Both males who died young did so at very young ages – a brother of my grandmother’s was stillborn and my brother, Johnnie, died at 5 months. Even factoring in these young deaths, the average age of the Lehmer men at death was 71.1 years. For the women, though, it was just 33.8 years.

My brothers and I can take solace in knowing that (in addition to being males) longevity seems to be a strong trait in my mother’s line (her mother lived to age 97) and that our paternal grandmother, Jessie, was the longest-lived of the 10 Lehmer women, reaching age 79.

Of course, few of us know our actual expiration date and, even if we did know, outside forces could change it in an instant. Still, your own family history can give you some general clues as to what you might expect as your biological clock winds down.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family history. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Jessie and Harry Lehmer in 1923 (Walter B. Lehmer collection)

As a veteran myself, I’m grateful for the public acknowledgment of the 49 months I gave to the service of my country, but I must admit to feeling like a bit of a pretender.

There are several veterans in my family. My father served as a Seabee with the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific during World War II and my brother Ron did a rough Navy tour of Vietnam, patrolling that country’s treacherous rivers on a relatively small ship. I, on the other hand, spent my service time with the Air Force in Texas, Illinois and California. While my brother was sporadically tossing grenades over the side of his ship to keep the enemy at bay, I was just as likely to be tracking down a missing piece of equipment in an effort to get one of our cargo planes in the air.

Veterans who have been in combat form tighter bonds with their comrades than those of us whose action was well to the rear. That’s only natural, given the brutal nature of war where your life literally depends on those around you. Nevertheless, I find myself from time to time wondering what’s happened to some of my old service buddies.

Whatever happened to my Aircraft Maintenance Officers Course classmates Boyd Lintecum, Jonathan Leach, Greg Frey, Doug Metcalf, Phil O’Brien or Jonathan Ryan? Or some of my colleagues at Travis Air Force Base: Roger Abbey, Chuck Killelea, Bill Seil, George Luedke, Ken Good, Bill Kanter or Arilee Hightower? I’d also like to know where some of my old neighbors from the Rosebank Apartments are: Chris Mangold, Billy Champoux, Terry Washington, Bob Heller or Alex Rodriguez.

If you know any of these folks, tell them I’m thinking of them on this Veterans’ Day.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Jack and Elsie Lehmer in 1944. (Walter B. Lehmer collection)

In case you haven’t heard the news, VHS is dead. The venerable videotape medium took its final breaths this week when the Victor Corporation of Japan announced that it is to immediately cease production of VHS videotape recorders.

Victor, better known as JVC, was the last company to produce the machines, bringing to an end the home videotape era after three decades and some 900 million video units worldwide. Victor will continue to produce hybrid VHS-DVD models for a while, but that will be it.

Now that VHS is joining reel-to-reel, Beta videotapes and eight-tracks on the trash heap, anyone with their personal histories recorded in the format would be well-advised to have them transferred to the current standard of digital DVD. This will ensure that interested parties will be able to watch them, at least for awhile.

One of the consequences of this fast-moving technical age is that formats arrive, get hot for awhile, then disappear, forcing people to adjust on the fly. My personal music collection still includes 78 rpm shellac records, 45 and LP records made of vinyl, audiocassettes, CDs, my compuer’s hard drive and an iPod. In the past, I’ve also used reels of acetate and mylar audiotape and eight-tracks. Who knows what is next?

As we writers often smugly point out, books have not been affected as much by technical advances. Publishing techniques change and the digital model for the written word is still evolving, but it’s a pretty good bet that a book produced today will be available in its original form for many generations to come.

I think the best way to preserve a family history these days is a hybrid – a book that gives the depth and accessibility to a family’s stories as only a book can, plus a professionally shot and edited video of people sharing those stories in their own voices. I’ve teamed up with That Video Guy (aka John Windschitl) to offer such a package in Central Iowa. By combining our research and interviewing, we’re able to cut the cost of doing the projects separately.

Whatever you do, don’t let your family history fall victim to these format changes.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of michael.newman..

Thanks to the diligence of my paternal grandmother, I’ve recently discovered that in my family, each of those cycles runs about 30 years.

Among the papers I recently acquired during my parents’ move from their residence of the past 60 years was a handful of letters she had saved regarding inquiries into the Lehmer family history.

Two of the letters were from great uncles of mine, from California and Chicago, in March 1948. Their letters were responses to letters sent out by my Aunt Agnes, who was in her mid-20s at the time. Agnes apparently had written to her uncles, seeking information about more distant relatives.

Great uncles Warren and Frank seem to have taken Agnes’ query seriously, though their responses did little to satisfy her curiosity. Warren sent his response from California by air mail; Frank coughed up an extra 13 cents (normal postage was 3 cents) to send his response “special delivery.”

The next wave of interest peaked around 1977, when my Dad and brother Dave were bitten by the family history bug. They made research trips to Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Missouri; organized family reunions and persuaded Grandma Jessie to write down a few pages of her own story.

Around the same time, one of the North Bend, Nebraska, Lehmers passed on an inquiry for genealogical information from a shirt-tail relative in California. “One never thinks of such things when you’re younger and could get all the information you would need with no problems,” wrote cousin Donna Thomsen.

Here it is – 30 years later – and I’ve taken up the family quest. Fortunately for me, I have quite a bit of information from these pioneers of Lehmer family history who carried the torch through earlier peaks of the cycle. It’s worth the time to find out who might have carried the ball in your family during those peak times.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Family historian Agnes Grosvenor and her husband, Jack.  (Courtesy of Walter B. Lehmer)

Starting a family history project is a lot like gardening: you jump in enthusiastically, hit it hard for awhile and then summer arrives, with its heat, weeds and other distractions. If you stick with the plan, you reap the harvest. But if you don’t stay with it, things can get ugly in a hurry.

That’s the true test: your ability to see it through to the final reward. And the rewards of doing family history are great. It’s truly a win-win situation when done properly: you enjoy doing it as much as your readers enjoy what you’re doing. Family history helps connect generations in unique and powerful ways.

Here’s some proof:

• Why do it? Genealogical blogger extraordinaire Randy Seaver shares his reasons for preserving his family’s history in this post.
• Are you one of those people who thinks your life has been nothing special? Then you should read this essay about “we” and our accomplishments. You may change your mind.
• Dr. Lyman Beecher’s family stepped in to help him save his family stories back in the 1860s. Their methods are just as valid today. Try them.
• Is there a generational communications gap in your family? Maureen Taylor offers some tips on how to bridge that gap with family history.

Remember, stick to your family history project. You can get there from here. Work smarter, not harder. Don’t give up.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of billaday.

We all need help sometimes. Whether it’s to fix a leaky faucet, keep our vehicle’s engine purring along or clean those nasty-looking carpets, we sometimes have to swallow hard and dig deep into our wallets to right the ship. Isn’t your personal history project just as valuable?

Should you hire a professional personal historian or genealogist, you should be able to find one who will work within your budget to keep your project on track. Check the Association of Personal Historians web site to find one in your area. Most offer free consultations.

There’s plenty of free help available online, too. You can Google around to your heart’s content and uncover thousands of sites, each offering various levels of assistance in just about every area of family history. Or, you can just click on these three to get started:

• Shades of the Departed by footnoteMaven. This guest post by Kim O’Neill Screen is chock-full of great ideas for working with photos. If you have lots of cool photos and want to move beyond scrapbooking, this is the spot for you.
• Everything Guide to Online Genealogy by Kimberly Powell. I haven’t read this new book yet, but Kimberly, who blogs at the About.com genealogy site, certainly has the credentials to put together a book with such an audacious title.
• Alltop’s guide to genealogy blogs. I hesitate to reveal that I am not the only personal historian/genealogist operating in the blogosphere, but it’s true. This huge list bears that out. A nice feature is that headlines of the five most recent posts of each blog are listed, ripe for the clicking.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Aaron Lehmer helps his family on moving day (Courtesy of Larry Lehmer)

Another Family History Month is almost over. Before it slips away entirely, I’m offering up a few “back to the basics” posts this week.

Let’s face it, writing a family’s history is a daunting task by any measure. Whether writing your own memoir or working with the stories of others, the first obstacle is often simply where to begin. The mere thought of trying to collect and save decades (or centuries) of family lore can be paralytic.

Many of you may be stuck in this phase. For you we offer KISM – Keep It Simple Monday. By breaking your humongous task into more manageable pieces, you can break through that pesky Wall of Enormity.

The first thing to do is to figure out what exactly you want to accomplish. For instance, you may want to write about your own childhood or the life of a great grandfather. Narrow your goal to one thing, preferably something that’s within your current level of expertise. By concentrating on one achievable goal, you have a much better chance of getting there and doing it well in the process.

What do you need to do to reach your goal? Poke around cyberspace? Interview relatives? Dig through old photographs and documents? Make a list and tackle these things, one at a time. Stay on task; don’t get distracted. Stay with it until you have what you want. Then pick something else and work on that.

The key element here is to stay focused on one goal at a time before moving on to another. There’s no way you can wrestle a family history project to the ground all at once, so don’t even bother trying. By working on one goal at a time, you’ll be much more effective. You’ll learn more, keep your project moving forward and you won’t be overwhelmed or burned out by frustratingly impossible goals.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of @t..

As I was growing up, my answer would have been simple: not much. As I get older, though, I’m discovering that I’m more like them than I realized in my more formative years.

I always knew that my family was an industrious lot. One of my great-grandfathers was a blacksmith who even made his own tools. His sons and grandsons grew up to be independent, skilled handymen. No household task was beyond them. They replaced water heaters, installed plumbing, wired walls and turned trees into boards. My own father even built a complete house from scratch.

A big night for my paternal grandfather and grandmother consisted of sanding down some baseboards or painting a ceiling before heading off to a friend’s house where they would laugh and sing, maybe even cut a record. On weekends, they’d take a drive in the country, spend a couple of hours picking gooseberries then come home where Grandma Jessie would stem them, bake a pie and make jelly before bedtime.

I know this because I’ve been reading the nearly 30 years of journals that my grandmother kept. In all honesty, I see little of myself in the above. I’m a capable handyman and know my way around a kitchen, but am nowhere near as ambitious or accomplished as my ancestors.

Nevertheless, I was astonished to find some striking similarities when I recently was given access to some of my Dad’s personal records.

For instance, my Dad was a reporter for his high school paper. I don’t recall his ever mentioning that, even as I launched my own journalistic career as a reporter. Then there are the lists. I guess I sort of knew that we were both list-makers, but I didn’t know about the records.

Phonograph records, that is. In the years before he married and before he joined the armed forces, Dad spent a good chunk of every paycheck on phonograph records and added them to a list. Guess who did the exact same thing 25 years later? I don’t recall him ever mentioning that, either.

Bottom line: The influences of our ancestors are sometimes more subtle than we realize.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Jessie Lehmer with her hard-working kids - Calvin, Phyllis, Agnes and Jack, (Courtesy of Walter B. Lehmer)

My, my. You people that are interested in family history are a diverse lot. And, judging by the turnout at our Family History Open House in Urbandale, Iowa, on Sunday, there are plenty of you out there, eager to dig into those family roots.

Frankly, we didn’t know what to expect when the handful of us that make up the central Iowa contingent of the Association of Personal Historians put together the event to commemorate Family History Month. What we got was a steady stream of amateur genealogists and family historians, most of who appeared to be very intent on saving their family stories for future generations.

Here’s a sampling of what I heard from folks in my 2 hours of non-stop chatting:

• Lots of people who are designated the family historian by their relatives find themselves awash in family mementos, often more than they can comfortably handle. Their concerns centered on how to sort through piles of “inherited” stuff and what to do with it once it’s sorted.

• How do you go about interviewing relatives? Is there a set list of questions you should use? How do you get them to open up (or, in some cases, shut up?)

• I had one good discussion on the plight of local historical societies. It seems funding is becoming harder to get and there aren’t enough young people queued up to take the place of groups’ senior members.

• More than one person asked me about writing classes. There appear to be plenty of people in town who would love to write their own histories, but need a little guidance. (I’m actually working on setting something up now in the Des Moines area. More later.)

All in all, it was a lively, enthusiastic and inquisitive group. I hope they took away something positive from our little get-together. I know I did.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people write their own family histories. To learn more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of G.Hotz Photography.

Our family trees have stub tracks, too. These are the never-married, non-propagating relatives whose branches end with them. Over a couple of generations, their stories usually wither away.

In my dad’s family, his Uncle Ray occupied one of those stub tracks. Born in North Bend, Neb., in 1900, Ray was what was euphemistically called “slow.” His father, Cal, was quite protective of Ray, who spent his life doing simple tasks, such as sweeping out boxcars for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.

But, as Cal got on in years, he worried about what was to become of Ray. On Dec. 26, 1945, he wrote a note to his four sons and stuck it in a small envelope that read “to be opened after my death.”

In his note, Cal wrote how he had tried to put away some money for Ray’s future since “we all know his condition.” According to the note, that amounted to a sizeable-for-that-time $7,000, a sum large enough that Cal considered (and rejected) setting up a trust fund.

“Whatever you do, look after him and guard his money so he won’t be abused and be a tramp when I am gone,” Cal wrote. “You know he don’t know how to handle money and so it will be up to you boys to see that he is protected.”

After Cal died in 1948, my grandfather, Harry, took Ray under his wing, setting him up in a small trailer at the rear of his property. After Harry died in 1959, his widow, Jessie, continued to look after Ray. Jessie died in 1982 and my dad took care of Ray, by then in a nursing home, until his death in 1985.

As a youngster visiting my grandparents’ house, it was always a treat to see Ray. Within minutes of our arrival, we were at his trailer, sitting at his small dining table where he graciously shared a banana or apple. Conversation was understandably light, but Ray always had a smile on his face and was genuinely glad to have the company. We absolutely loved him.

But the ranks of us who knew Ray are dwindling. With no sons or daughters to carry his legacy, it is left to the side branches of the family tree to honor his memory. It’s a task often overlooked in some families. What are you doing to preserve the stories of those from the “stub tracks” of your own family tree?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Ray Lehmer celebrates his 67th birthday. (Courtesy of Walter B. Lehmer),