52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Genealogy Society Members

Week #48 – Genealogy Society Member

Week 48: Genealogy Society Member. Genealogy society members are a vital part of the family history community. We’ve made many acquaintances this way and we all benefit from their friendship, support and expertise. Share with us a genealogy society member that has left a memorable impression on you.

Well this one is pretty hard to pick out just one Eastern Washington Genealogical Society member that made a memorable impression on me. So lets start at the beginning, The first EWGS memorable member was Donna Potter Phillips, She was teaching the beginning class at the community college and got both me and my sister to join EWGS. The next person that had a memorable impression was Ray Fisher, he was passing out Prodigy floppy disks and told everyone to join the Prodigy Genealogy Bulletin Board. On Prodigy I was in awe of the people that knew so much about researching their ancestors and I knew so little, but I read and read and learned a lot. Next was Carolyn Weidner, she was the volunteer coordinator for the library volunteers and talked me and my sister into volunteering at the library in the genealogy section. Ray Fisher and Carolyn gave us the grand tour and then we were the volunteers on the second Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. We did that for 5 years, until Ray Fisher decided to retire from his job as EWGS researcher for others and I switched to that job which I continue to do today. There are a couple of more memorable EWGS members, Bette Topp and Doris Woodward. Bette is a cousin and has probably done more for EWGS and held more offices than any other living member of EWGS. Doris was the Bulletin editor when I joined EWGS and a wonderful editor. Doris helped me to write articles for the Bulletin, which was and is hard for me, I was never good at writing and spelling is always a challenge, glad we have spell checkers today, but she encouraged me to write and she corrected  my grammar and made me look like a good writer. Doris and I co-authored a reply to Family Search when they were looking for help with their Washington Resource Guide, and you can still see parts of what we wrote in the current Washington Resource Guide.