Ep. 38 - In Search of Dad's Missing War Stories and Genealogical Cruises

Fisher has some incredible stories in this episode. Imagine a stranger knocking at your door to tell you the grandfather who died before you were born had left a message… 101 years ago! It happened in Germany. Fisher shares the amazing details. Plus, a Red Cross worker sketched soldiers in Holland in 1945. Photos of roughly 100 of those sketches were recently found by family, and an effort is now on to locate descendants of these World War II heroes. We’ll tell you where to find out more. Could one be of your ancestor? The Vatican Library has begun digitizing. What’s in the collection that you could soon be viewing on line? We’ll fill you in. And free Civil War records are available on line through the end of April 2014. Who? Where? Remain calm! It’s right in the podcast. Guest John Mitzel from New Hampshire joins the show and explains how he never was able to get his late father to adequately share his stories from World War II. Hear how John would not be defeated, and went about making friends with his dad’s old friends, and hear some of the stories they told about the 781st Tank Battalion! Then, Chicago’s Thomas MacEntee introduces us to genealogical cruises. There are such things! What do you do on one? Where do you go? Who does them? Find out as Fisher visits with Thomas. And lastly, Tom Perry, the Preservation Authority from TMCPlace.com returns to tell you about why you want to use external hard drives to store your most important data, and how to take care of them.