On line genealogy services these days

July 22, 2024

Tinkering with Ancestry dot com and Myheritage dot com these last few days.  My friend Larry Felton got me interested. Said he traced his forebears back to his 19th century roots.

I paid the subscription price to each of these searching services. Used money from my personal Venmo account I got from selling my book, How I Improved the United States Marine Corps, to my children and one or two close friends.

I’m not ready to declare which service, Ancestry or Myheritage, is better.

I discovered that our 7th grade shop teacher, Mr. WIlliam D. (he said W.D. stood for ‘war department’) Newlon had been an army air corps captain during WWII and flew more than 70 missions in the Pacific against the Japanese.  He was a dynamic figure, inspiring many of us to try carpentry and to draw scale plans for projects.  He taught in the Washington School annex in Missoula in 1961, when I took shop.  In those days boys took shop and girls learned home economics.  Mr. Newlon, as we called him, had a big booming voice.  I think he had a mustache. Also a personable, gentle manner.  He laughed at times.  He was super strict about grading the pencil and paper mechanical drawings.  He taught by demonstrating.

The first day he held up an old dirty piece of wood, suggesting that any of us might have thrown it away.  Then he clamped it in a vise and planed the two faces and two edges, transforming it into a new and lovely wooden thing.  He chamfered the corners of the ends and planed them.  He showed us the plane, how to sharpen the blade, how to adjust it.  He showed us block planes, jack planes and a jointer plane, perhaps sixteen inches long.

We learned how to operate a drill press, a jigsaw, a metal vise, soft jaws for the vise for using with wood.  How to join wooden things together, how to paint a project and care for a paintbrush.  We learned to treat tools with respect. He taught us how to hammer copper or aluminum to make an ashtray.

Near the end of each class time, Mr. Newlon bellowed:  “Let’s cleeeeeeean it up!”

For my part, drawing the plans interested me a lot.  I always understood drawing to scale, taping the drawing to a drawing board with masking tape, using a T-square and right triangle, and drawing three faces of the project.  I’d do these things perfectly, yet Mr. Newlon put little red checkmarks near the corners of my drawn figures, little checkmarks on some of my lettering, then give me a “B.”  I didn’t have the temerity to question his grading.

Years later, in 1979, at a makeshift campground on the northeast shore of Priest Lake, our family of five tried to keep dry in the June rainy season of Northern Idaho.  We had a canvas tent and two VW buses, along with a blue tarp to span the gap between the buses.  I woke once to find water dripping from the tarp on to our children who were sleeping in the doorway of a vehicle. I nearly wept.  That day we kept busy with cooking and hiking and looking for firewood to cook meals, finally going to bed at 8 or 9 pm.  Only we couldn’t sleep for long.

Another bunch of campers moved in, setting up a covered tent-like shelter with mosquito netting walls.  They played cards and laughed!  Pissed, I walked up to them.  One of the four card players was Mr. Newlon!

He died in Missoula, in 1985.

I found out about my late uncle Ralph Wickstrom, who died in Billings in 1941.  He was my grandma Ellen’s brother. Here is a somewhat garbled obituary.

Ralph Wickstrom Succumbs at 49. 

Liver Ailment Is Fatal to Painter Ralph G. Wickstrom, 49, local painter and decorator, died at 5 p. m. Monday of a liver ailment at his home, 436 Clark avenue. He had been in ill health since January.

Mr. Wickstrom was born Aug. 12, 1892, at Valley City, N. D., and came to Billings from there in 1915. He enlisted in the United States army in 1917 and served with a balloon detachment at Kelly Field, at San Antonio, Texas.

Following his discharge, he returned to Billings and was married here to Gertrude Donovan Oct. 12, 1920. Mr. Wickstrom was a member of Billings Elks lodge No. 394 and He was a charter of the served as exalted 1930-31. Exalted ruler, perhaps

He was a member of the Elks drum and bugle corps and was a lieutenant of the corps since its organization in 1921. He also was a member of St. Patrick’s parish. Besides the widow, he leaves a daughter, Ellen, and a son, Robert, both of Billings; a sister, Mrs. Carl Bonde of Kalispell, and a brother, Carl A. Wickstrom of Billings.

Requiem mass will be celebrated at St. Patrick’s church Wednesday at 9 a. m., with burial in the Soldiers’ plot at Mountview cemetery. A devotional service will be conducted Tuesday night at Smith’s chapel..

United States

Montana

Billings

The Billings Gazette

1941

Sep

02

Page 1