The Old Family Bible

A few years ago, my sister Sue passed on to me the old family Bible that our mother, Marie Ellison Head, had bought on January 10th, 1944, the year her husband ( and my daddy), Ralston Cecil Head, was fighting the Germans in Italy.

After the Japanese bombed America at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7th, 1941, the country was plunged into World War II.  Ralston went overseas as an Army Medic in the North Africa campaign, fighting Mussolini of Italy and Hitler of Germany. Ralston was with the Yanks in June, 1944, when American forces captured Rome, Italy.

 After the war, Ralston and Marie became the proud parents of three children....Dorothy Marie Head (ME), Sue Ellen Head, and Charles Lee Head. Our family grew over the years, as grandchildren dearly beloved by Ralston and Marie were born.

After Daddy died in 1989 and Mama died in 1994, Sue and I kept many things that had belonged to them. It was in this old Bible that Mama had recorded Daddy's service in World War II and-- until her death-- all the family information----the births, the marriages, and the deaths....literally life itself. Then the recording of our family ancestral history fell to me.

I had kept the huge old Bible---first copyrighted in 1923, actually a School and Library Reference Edition, bound with black leather and gold lettering, and weighing almost twenty pounds--stored away.

Yesterday I decided to put the Bible on a tall square table--somewhat like a podium-- in the living room. As I placed the Bible on the little table, it fell open --quite fittingly--to the 94th Psalm.