This book is a memoir with articles and stories from nearly a century of living, written by one 99-year-old woman, a first-time book author. She began writing in her late forties after reading two or three "Write Your Own Columns" in The Charleston Gazette newspaper in West Virginia. She thought, "I can do this as well", went to her computer and wrote one about her feelings on having her first baby. It was printed a short time later and that was her start. She had forty or so articles published in either The Charleston Gazette or The Gazette-Mail over the years and she recently had several published in The State Journal. These articles are about happenings in her life, and over the years the writings have provided her family, friends and readers of the local newspapers with life lines of faith and love. The hope is that this book will offer you, too, a lifeline or perhaps just a moment to enjoy the simplicity of life found in simpler times.
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Schu_L Joined: Jan-01-2018 |
Jean Bertke Schumacher is lucky to be here. Her mother, a miracle baby born at home over two months early, weighed less than two pounds in 1901. Jean, born at home on Thanksgiving morning, 1923, to Edward and Eleanor Bertke, was a month early and weighed five pounds but was healthy. During her life, Jean had some serious illnesses, including an infection after a tonsillectomy on the kitchen table that developed into spinal meningitis and a pronouncement by the family doctor that she would die or become a cripple for life (neither occurred). Jean grew up in the Great Depression, married a WWII veteran, Bob, in 1950, raised eight children with him, and began writing in her late forties after reading articles in the local West Virginia newspapers and knowing that she could write for the newspapers as well. She went on to publish 40+ articles in the local newspapers and a state journal and always dreamed of writing her own book. That dream has come true now, just shy of her 99th birthday.
