First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Marvin Kusmierz
Michigan, USA
One of my favorite quotes is, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life... make the most of it!". I don't know who the author is or was, but it kind of says it all for me. While I use this quote for my signature block, I am sorry to say, it remains a goal for me to live up to each day.
I began my genealogy search, "seriously", in March 2000. It all happened quite by chance and not according to my plans. Within a few weeks after retiring, I received a couple of e-mails wanting to know something about the Kusmierz family background as they were looking for information on that surname. My thought was, "how embarrassing, I don't know?". Not wanting to divulge my ignorance on the subject of my ancestry, I quickly made a few calls to family contacts to find out who would I could turn these two inquiries over to?
I was fortunate, there was someone who had taken on this responsibility, a distant niece whom I had never met was collecting and organizing information on genealogy of the Kusmierz surname and others. I was quick to direct the two inquiries that I had received to her, but a nagging question stayed with me, "who in the heck is my family?". It wasn't long before I found myself at the key board typing "Kusmierz" into every search engine I could find. Low and behold, there were hundreds of Kusmierz out there! I could hardly contain my excitement with this simple fact, and yet, I also felt some remorse in realizing I didn't know any of them!
With these two opposing feelings pushing at me, I set out to correct this "wrong". I began recording every Kusmierz's contact information in a spread sheet program which became to difficult to manage for doing research. I finally got smart and downloaded free software from the Latter Day Saints which made my research management problem more tolerable. I began contacting those living individuals who would surely make this task easy for me only to learn how little they also knew. If only mom had lived longer, she would know. Or, if only I would have started earlier, she would know.
I got lucky though! What I call "divine intervention" happened. About a month into this series of long days and late hours on the internet browsing through databases and sending e-mails to strangers, I came in contact with a couple of individuals who turn on the light to information on some of my Kusmierz as a result of work they were doing on their own genealogy. We began a rapid exchange of information for nearly two months. Each e-mail would bring new information and pump up my adrenaline a little more. Then another e-mail contact, and another and another. The jubilation was astounding to the point I left my computer on continuously so that I could check the "in box" every now in then when the other things in life would interrupt my mission.
The deluge of e-mail information from what became a group of six individual's, was becoming a problem. While we copied each other for the most part, it seemed like there had to be a better way of sharing and collecting resources. Then I stumbled onto the web forum community. Yes, this would be a good spot for what we are doing with our e-emails. Setting up a forum would give us a central spot in cyber-space where we and others could connect and share our findings. So I did it! The Kusmierz Connection was created on Delphi.com. It wasn't long before I realizeed that my vision was to small. If I limited myself to the Kusmierz family, it would not include my new e-mail friends or reach out to the non-Kusmierz who probably would be the source of most new information (as in the case with my new e-mail connections). I renamed the forum name to, Ancestry - The Polish Connection.
With the name change, most of effort was spent setting the forum and it's web page, very little was available for genealogy. Once this was done, there was the problem of having a spot in cyber-space, but who knew about it? Oh, for sure my family and friends did, but they had already given me what they knew about my surnames. We needed a larger audience! So, I began the process all over again, revamping everything try and make it interesting enough that strangers would want to visit. New subjects were added, family photos, links resources, some history and whatever else I could think of that would be associated with genealogy and family. Our single web page allowance from Delphi.com wasn't suitable for this much content. I needed an alternative of which I was to learn, are many.
With the vast possibilities presented by the internet, I was able download some free HTML software for writing copy and some graphics from those free sources who have pop-windows that seemingly never end (avoid them at all costs). I began the learning process of putting it all together. I knew a little HTML mark up language from some years back when the internet was a DOS environment, but it was outdated knowledge at this point. So, the challenge of learning HTML and creating a web site that was of sufficient structure and composition to work. First, not to crash while someone was browsing it and second, to have an appearance that wasn't offensive to the viewer. Genealogy was completely set aside for the next two months while I struggled with endless corrections, changing and beginning over to try and get it as right as I could. The end result is now public and is beginning to find an audience.
Like my favorite saying, each of day since I have retired has been like "the first day of my life", and I have been trying to "make the most of it". Now it's time to get back to my genealogy work while I wait for that special viewer of Ancestry - The Polish Connection to make a connection with my surnames and provide me with the knowledge about my family that only they could do.
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