Opinion : All roads lead to...family

The story that brought us to Melbourne,

Great Great Grandparents Gunther and Wilhelmine Osterhagen Pischel's gravesite, why we visited.

Gus Osterhagen was a businessman in the 1930's. While a step great great uncle, he was fun to find!

This is the old building where the furniture store used to be

This was the old house where Gus and Anna lived

For a long time, we've joked about our "Holiday Curse." Now for those that don't remember, it seems that in our family if it's a birthday or holiday, something bad happens. Now we don't think of ourselves as superstitious at all, but we tend to stay home as much as possible on these days, keep the kids inside, lock the door and hide the scissors.

For example, we spent a couple Christmases at or in the hospital with family, the tires will blow out on birthdays, on Father's day kids burn their fingers requiring a trip to the ER, and then the van breaks down on the way to the hospital, or a kid drops a lawn chair on his toe removing the nail on our anniversary.

The "Holiday Curse" existed before we knew that the dates of bad events would later become a holiday.

For Dean, he fell off his bike, cutting his hand, requiring surgery, twice, on what would later become our anniversary.

For me a date popped out in my genealogy research. June 10.

This was the day my Great-Great Grandparents were hit by a train in their new Ford sedan. Needless to say, they didn't stop, look and listen.

It was also the day that their great-great granddaughter would be born many years later.

Now my grandma passed away right away, my grandpa the next day.

The details in the clipping that I found about the event were detailed and pretty gruesome, but also appreciated for this gal doing her research.

See, if there's one way to make my day, it's in finding any little detail about a branch of my family tree.

As we drove to Des Moines to cover our bowlers, I noticed a sign for a small town near Des Moines. Now we've gone down that road so many times, and nothing ever jumped out at me, until we were passing a sign for a town called, Melbourne.

Something clicked.

I had JUST been doing genealogy research a few weeks ago, and in the fuzzy recesses of my memory I thought that name rang a bell, but, I never trust my memory, so we drove on past it.

Thanks to the beauty of the internet, I found out that I had remembered it right.

The next day, we went back to Melbourne, driving in on Hart Ave.

Melbourne's has a population of 822, and in our short visit there I talked to 4 of those wonderful people.

Being with the "Newspaper" Guy, his instinct told him to pull up to City Hall. I had my doubts, and was thinking we should have stopped at the gas station a block or so away.

We went in, and met Mary and Deb. The poor ladies had no idea who I was.

I simply said, "Now I'm not from here, but I wanted to stop by and see if you know anything about my great-great grandparents, Gunther and Wilhimenia Pischel.They were killed by the Chicago Great Western No. 6 at a railroad crossing in Melbourne, on June 10, 1918. "

At this point there was kind of a blank look. So I kept babbling on about how my grandmother used to be married to an Osterhagen, but he died, then she married my grandpa Pischel...

One of the ladies mentioned that they had a history book that had been compiled by a college student, and maybe they could look in there.

In the meantime, Dean was looking at the pictures on the wall and spotted an Osterhagen in one of the pictures, it was August Osterhagen a son of my grandmother. I really began to get excited then. We had at least found a picture of someone in our family!

As we flipped through the history book, another picture of August and his wife Anna popped up! In the history book it told how he used to run the furniture store...right next to the tiny gas station I had seen on Main Street as a matter of fact, it looks like it was attached to the furniture store.

Then the discussion started about where my grandparent could have been hit, because there used to be two sets of train tracks running through the town.

One was near the down town, but the other, was on Hart Avenue, the road we came in on.

From the article, stating which train hit them, we were able, through another man that "just happened to" walk into the office, decide which crossing they were at when they were hit.It happened to be on Hart Ave, the road we brought into town.

Okay, call me morbid, but I wanted to know where exactly they had their accident.

We were able to go to the site of the accident, looked around and imagined what had happened.

Next, also thanks to the gentleman that "happened by", he told us exactly where to look in the cemetery for my grandparents.

I had a picture of the grave stone, and so I was looking for a tall, gray, slender marker. Obviously a family member is looking out for them because they had a newer stone, in a lovely brown instead of the previous gray color.

There they were. My great-great grandpa and grandma and an aunt.

As I looked at my grandparents stone, I was thankful for the kind person that had taken care of them, and for the flowers at the base of the stone. I was thankful that even though they died right around the age that I am now, I knew that they had raised their children right.

How do I know? I remember my great grandpa with a smile on his face. He ALWAYS had a smile. I don't remember him ever being grumpy. I remember him teasing me, and playing checkers with me, and I remember his teasing my great grandmother and her yelling back, "Carl!" and then he would chuckle.

They raised my grandmother, who was a lot like her mother. Both were wound pretty tightly, but were always flitting around the kitchen preparing food for the family, and making sure all the "kids" from the 50 year old "kids" down to the babies were fed.

My grandmother raised my daddy. And I've already told you how wonderful he was.

And he raised me, and well, I turned out, pretty good.

In turn, I have my kids, and I don't mind telling you they they are awesome too.

They are now raising my grandbabies.

So in all this loop to the past, and looking forward into our family's future, I was sad, but it also made me realize how important it is to live your life right, every day so that when your great great granddaughter looks you up, in your 100 year old grave, she will be proud to say, "THERE you are! I wondered where you were! Thanks for being my grandpa and grandma!"