My Diamond Jubilee Day - 7/14/2011

Ellouise Keasler Diggle Schoettler
Born in Charlotte, NC
7/14/1936


First child of Louie Keasler and Robert Diggle, Sr.

How do you get from there to HERE?

I know for sure it takes 75 years - 

and there are many stories.

I have been telling some of those stories to prepare myself for this birthday-

I revisited Charlotte and told stories at the Elizabeth School where I started the First Grade

during WWII.

I brought my grandfather Gus Keasler back to his family when I went to Anderson, SC, his birth area, met a larger segment of the Keasler family and discovered even more about Gus. Now I am telling his story as Finding Gus aka My Diamond Jubilee for my children and anyone else that wants to listen in the Capital Fringe in Washngton, DC. 

I am proud of him. He died young, only had one child, my mother, and was a mystery to his descendants. Gus was a football hero in the days when the game was rough and life-threatening. He played on college scholarships and graduated from NC A & M now NC State University in 1910. Descended from a Revolutionary War patriot he was the first to graduate from college and his degree made him the "hope" of his younger brothers and sisters.

For the next year I will be developing a story of a couple who immigrated to the East Coast - an idealistic young man from the West and a naive young woman from the South -who met, fell in love, married and have been together for 56 years - - living in times of major changes in the world.

Now who could that be??

I feel strongly that we owe it to ourselves to discover who we come from - to find out about our roots - and then we owe it to our children to tell our stories - to give them clues as to the people that they come from - -  "in our own words."