Remembrances
Jul. 31st, 2007 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseI've got a terrible headache so I'll make this one brief - had my Great-Uncle's service today, which was actually pretty nice, all things considered. Some six hundred people showed up, and I was introduced to family I hadn't met (Dad tried to be helpful, but it was all "and she's the daughter of [person you've never met]! Isn't that amazing?") and wound up doing a lot of hugging with some folks that I'm fairly sure didn't have a clue who I was either. My Grandma was wonderful, saying goodbye to the last of her immediate family with all the composure of someone telling a long and amazing story.
As always, it was interesting to learn more about the man - he was the youngest bishop of the Moravian church (and kept that position for about forty years), was actually friends with Albert Einstein (and had the pictures to prove it) and Andy Griffith, was asked to run for Congress by the Republican party (since he abhorred everything the Republicans stood for, he used the sorry-I'm-Canadian excuse), was chaplain for the RCMP, and used his ham radio set to make contact with over one hundred countries. Wow.
In other news, it's the twentieth anniversary today of "Black Friday".
On July 31st, 1987, following timely warnings and textbook conditions, an F-4 tornado (the most devastating in Canadian history) ripped through a trailer park on the edge of the city and killed 27 people, injuring hundreds more. My Mom was actually pregnant with me at the time, walking around outside under the unnaturally dark skies, so I often cite that as my reason for going into meteorology! Really, though, I always keep it in mind, when I'm learning about thunderstorms and rolling cumulonimbus and brilliant lightning - it's beautiful, but it's deadly and that's why we study it. My Great-Uncle went to six funerals for victims of that storm.
Of course, in the midst of all the chaos, it just figures that they'd find a one-week-old baby in the middle of the wreckage, completely unharmed. Tornadoes always seem to do that.
As always, it was interesting to learn more about the man - he was the youngest bishop of the Moravian church (and kept that position for about forty years), was actually friends with Albert Einstein (and had the pictures to prove it) and Andy Griffith, was asked to run for Congress by the Republican party (since he abhorred everything the Republicans stood for, he used the sorry-I'm-Canadian excuse), was chaplain for the RCMP, and used his ham radio set to make contact with over one hundred countries. Wow.
In other news, it's the twentieth anniversary today of "Black Friday".
On July 31st, 1987, following timely warnings and textbook conditions, an F-4 tornado (the most devastating in Canadian history) ripped through a trailer park on the edge of the city and killed 27 people, injuring hundreds more. My Mom was actually pregnant with me at the time, walking around outside under the unnaturally dark skies, so I often cite that as my reason for going into meteorology! Really, though, I always keep it in mind, when I'm learning about thunderstorms and rolling cumulonimbus and brilliant lightning - it's beautiful, but it's deadly and that's why we study it. My Great-Uncle went to six funerals for victims of that storm.
Of course, in the midst of all the chaos, it just figures that they'd find a one-week-old baby in the middle of the wreckage, completely unharmed. Tornadoes always seem to do that.
