At Teton Library in Jackson

Today, Max, and the  two girls who used to be neighbors, Jayda and Aubrey Bell, have come with Ellen and me up to Jackson. They are all swimming at the Rec Center, and I am at the Teton Library. They'll be picking me up pretty soon.

I'm working in a reading lounge area inside the front entrance where I can be easily found:

Teton Library Working/Reading lounge

I made an interesting discovery. They have a scanner here that is available to the public that has character recognition software like my scanner does at home. But their software is significantly superior to mine. Just to give you an idea, this is what a page of my dissertation looked like coming out of my scanner:

my scanner version

This is an editable file, but it is so messed up that it took me quite a bit of time to get it accurate, properly formatted, etc.

Now this is what another page of my dissertation looked like today coming out of the library scanner:

Library scanner version

This is not the same page as the one above, but I think you can see that the library scanner is a lot more accurate. It takes a lot less time for me to get this page looking right. I brought my entire dissertation with me on this trip, "just in case" ( I only brought a few pages to Jackson today) and this discovery suggests that I could save myself a lot of time if I brought the whole thing (360 pages!!)  here to Teton Library one of these days and scanned it in.

The other thing I did here today was to print out a packet of materials I have pulled out of the archive. Let's call it the "Kystosek/Lobacz Proxy Wedding Packet." I printed it out so that  I could mail it to Anna Krystosek. Do I know Anna Krystosek? No. I'm not even sure that I have her proper address. But I found her on the internet, and what I have is presumably her current address. So, I'm going to mail the packet to her and hope I hear back from her. Why?

Here's the story. As I have mentioned in this blog before, my father was an army chaplain in WW 2, and in 1943 he was stationed at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington. On July 11, 1943, he performed a proxy wedding between Josephine Lobacz, who appeared before him in a home in Tacoma, and her husband-to-be, Joseph Krystosek, who was an army doctor stationed in New Guinea. The State of Washington was at that time one of the few states that would recognize a proxy wedding. A similar ceremony was held a few days later in New Guinea at which the groom appeared before a chaplain there. The groom's sister happened to live in Tacoma, so Josephine flew out from her home in Chicago, and stayed with her future sister-in-law, and dad performed the ceremony. That couple, Josephine and Joseph, were Anna Krystosek's grandparents. That I was able to determine through on-line research. She is 29 years old and lives in Rochester, NY (I hope!). I have no idea how much she knows about her grandparents' wedding, but I figure that some of what I am able to send her will be new to her. Here is a list of what I am sending:

1. A cover letter from me.
2. A photo of the ceremony in Tacoma. From dad's files.
3. A different photo from the Tacoma newspaper with a description of the wedding. From dad's files.
4. A photo of the bride I found in an 0n-line photo archive.
5.  A photo of a V-mail letter from the groom to his sister in Tacoma asking her to host the ceremony and requesting that she buy a wedding present on his behalf for the bride (check for $50 was sent by separate, much slower, mail). From dad's files.
6. A transcription of that letter which I made.
7. A photo of an entry dad made in his Chaplain's Journal of this proxy wedding with all relevant information.  From the Journal, which I have.
8. A photo of a thank-you letter from Josephine to dad after the ceremony, asking if he could send her a copy of the ceremony. From dad's files.
9. A transcription I made of that letter.
10. A copy of the ceremony. From dad's files.

Here are some samples:

Photo from dad's files: l. to r.: Josephine, Paul Prescott, best man, Chaplain Crockett and Gus Hendricks, nephew of groom, 

Article from Tacoma paper

Portrait of the bride from on-line archive

Letter from Joseph Krystosek to his sister

Why am I going to the trouble to do this? Good question. I'm not sure I can give a good answer. I think what got me going on it was the realization that I had a remarkably full collection of information on this proxy wedding: photos, journal, letters, the ceremony itself, etc. I guess I felt that  if someone out there had this kind of information about my grandparents, and took the trouble to track me down and send it to me, I would be immensely grateful. That actually happened to me, in a way.  A few years ago, a family in France was cleaning out their aunt's home, and found a Bible with my father's name and address in the flyleaf. They took the trouble to track dad down through the internet, and found a cousin of mine, and eventually sent me the Bible. I was quite touched by that. So maybe I can pass the favor on. I realize that may not be the outcome here. We'll see.