Faces from the Past

It hangs on the wall in my living room. It is a daily reminder of the power of intuition and of unsung love. It is a picture of a man I never met, but who knew I existed, and a woman I have missed for years. The picture resides in a collage frame where, in our home past generations meet present and our children come face to face with those that loved them before they were even thought of.

This picture, in particular, gives me chills, see the story goes like this:

Charles Raymond & Sarah Beatrice (Crosland) Keckler

Grandpop Charles Raymond Keckler was born to William Eline and Elizabeth Missouri (Noll) Keckler on 9 Sep 1908, in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Grandpop’s father passed away in 1916, leaving his mother to send him out to live with another family. In the 1920 Federal Census Charles Kackler (note the misspelling) is found living with a family in Maryland, and listed as an orphan.

At about the same time Sarah Beatrice Crosland (formerly Lillian May Crosland) is being raised by an aunt due to Sarah’s mother’s death when Sarah was young. Both young children, in a world foreign to them, were being raised to work, work, work for everything. From the stories I have heard, they didn’t have much time for kid stuff, toys, playing, or silly things of that sort that today we consider important for growth.

Now I’m going to take you on a jaunt, through several decades and forward to 1973. Here, on 22 April 1973, Grandpop takes his last breath. In the days prior to his death he told his daughter Elizabeth Jane (Keckler) Leary that she was pregnant.

“I am not,” she responded, though it wasn’t often she stood up to her father she was positive that she wasn’t and assumed she was headed to early menopause.  Yet, they didn’t discuss these things, how in the world could Dad know if I’m menstruating or not, she wondered.

“Don’t tell me,” her Dad said, “I know when one of my daughter’s is expecting!”

She had no way of knowing that he would be leaving everyone to go to Heaven, before she would learn that she was in fact expecting. On Easter Sunday of 1973 she said goodbye to her father and on 8 December 1973 she said hello to the bundle of nervous energy her father had warned her about.