Grandparents Day

Today is Grandparent's Day. Here is a picture of my grandparents. I love this picture because all of them are together in one picture. That is Frank and Mary, Pearl and Steve. Frank is my step-grandfather. My real grandfather, Wasil, died in the 1919 flu epidemic. My grandmother, Pearl, died when my mother was expecting me. Mom said they weren't sure exactly why she died, but she thought it was a result of a fall down stairs. Grandpa Steve was in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He spoke several languages so he was an interpreter. I heard that he decided to marry my grandmother when he saw her in the next door back yard, drying her hair after washing it. I think it is so amazing that when you look on the map my grandfathers lived about 100 miles apart, with mountains between them. Grandpa Steve came from Uscie Gorlickie in an area called Lemko in southern Poland, and Grandpa Vassil came from Packanovo in western Ukraine. The mountains are the Carpathian Mts. We are Carpatho-Russyn. Not Polish, not Ukrainian, not Russian. There are similarities, of course, but the mountains made them different and separate. Grandpa Steve became a citizen of the U.S. in 1928.