The Family Search: Margaret & Michael

I have had some success this past week. I found Margaret first of all, and a newspaper article announcing her and Dad's marriage on November 20, 1941. Since then, I have found Michael and William online, and it has been quite stunning and somewhat shocking to say the least.

In this search I have found out some information that I have been wondering about my whole life; or at least since my awareness of their existence. I actually found an audio recording of Michael's voice where he is telling his life story. This was very emotional for me, as it was him explaining what happened in the early years of his life, and when Dad left. He was about 67 years old, only a few years ago.

This is the terrible reality of how violence can go on from generation to generation. The violence that Dad experienced as a child, the lack of love from his father, the sight of his own father walking away and never coming back - this was the horror that his children experienced and the awful reality that Dad had to face knowing what he had done. I don't know how he could live with himself all those years. But I do believe that to cope with what he had done, and to go on in his life, he eventually must have decided that he would never let that happen again, and he didn't by the time I came along. He loved me, and I new it. He was always there for me. And he never harmed me.