The reunion was less than a week away. With photo contributions from many family members, and with the help of five grandchildren, nearly a thousand photographs had been scanned. It was overkill, but I didn't want to hurt feelings by leaving out someone's favorites. Still, love the family or not, no one was going to sit through an epic that spanned five generations and lasted for hours! Panic set in as I realized that I had to select a precious few to fit into a good slideshow. But how?

The answer came as I left my daughter's house that day. Next to her front door is a framed quote: “One hundred years from now it will not matter what your bank account was, the sort of house you lived in or the clothes you wore, but the world will be a different place because you were important in the life of a child.”

I can't find the origins of the quote, but the words gave me much needed inspiration. Hundreds of photos were cut from the production once I realized that most of the posed photos didn't say anything about the people in them. In one way or another, ancestors, parents, uncles and aunts, older siblings, cousins, and even older friends have influenced us and made differences in our lives. The story never changes. It's that way in every family. Only the photos that reflected that message were chosen for the slideshow.

The slideshow story opened on a sunny June afternoon a hundred years ago when a large group gathered to celebrate my mother's fifth birthday. Boys came to the party dressed in jackets and ties, little sailor suits, and buttoned boots. The sepia photos show girls wearing lace, ruffles, and big bows in their neatly curled or braided hair. My smiling great-grandmother posed for a backyard photo with a huge American flag hung on the fence behind her and a white cloth-covered table in front of her that was laden with flowers, cookies, what appears to be potato chips in a big glass bowl, and a birthday cake on a pedestal plate. A posed group shows my grandfather holding his baby son next to my grandmother, who has an arm around a young girl I believe is her niece. In the same photo, older cousins dote on younger ones nearby and my then five-year-old mother is the center of attention.

A hundred years later at our family reunion, even the youngest children watching the finished production enjoyed seeing pictures of the long-ago birthday celebration. And following the older photos of the family, they saw pictures of each other doing the same types of activities. It seemed to give them a sense of continuity.

The slideshow themes were varied. They showed decades of people playing in the park, playing chess and other table games, enjoying pets, reading and writing, vacationing on the beach, and standing by cars and houses. It was interesting for all of us to see family resemblances and to see people doing the same kinds of things we enjoy doing today.

Through the generations, birthdays have always provided the best photo ops. Dozens of celebrations captured on film reflect the changes and phases of life, especially in the way we dress. In contrast to the lovely clothes children wore to a party a hundred years ago, we have photos of the recent generation showing up in jeans, t-shirts, and baseball caps worn backward.

Even though this collection of photos is about my family, it is typical of most others. While the images clearly document the visible changes in style, more subtly, and more importantly, the photos show that some things never change. Mothers and fathers still clutch their children. Aunts, uncles, dear friends, and older siblings and cousins still hug and encourage the little ones. In every generation the old teach the young with the hope of making the world a better place. A hundred years later the circle of life continues. We all have the power to make the world a different place because we are “important in the life of a child.”

Return to September/October 2004 issue of Ancestry Magazine.