The highlight of Memorial Day was taking the family to the American Fork Cemetery to teach them how to transcribe and preserve headstones. I have always found this exciting, but for the vast population and the majority of my family, they were not too excited about this. However, I am strong willed and I encouraged everyone (with a bribe to go swimming after), whatever works; right? So with the iPad as my main instruction tool, I taught my 2 oldest kids how to navigate through Find A Grave to search and add more names to this database that already contained over 80 million online memorials. As I was on teaching duty, my husband tried to keep the 3 younger ones under control as they ran rampant through the Cemetery trying to steal the "free balloons" and flowers everywhere. In just a few minutes my oldest son had figured out how to use Find A Grave to search the database for the name
ANDREA CINDY KETTLE
from the headstone he picked out. The search results came back stating;
"
Sorry, there are no records in the Find A Grave database matching your query",
which meant the name was not on find a grave and he could log the name and preserve it right there. Within 5 minutes he had logged the name and dates along with a photograph and he was done.
My oldest daughter found a headstone, but found that it was already logged into find a grave, so she found another headstone with the name ELSIE NICOLE SIMPSON (who was a full term stillborn of our friends). As she searched the database for Elsie, she found she was not there, so she logged her in, photographed her headstone and she was done within 5 minutes. I happened to notice Elsie's Great Grandparents; Gerald B. Sewell & Wilma F. Sewell, to the left of her so I hurried and logged and photographed them as well.
From start to finish all of this only took 15 minutes, which was a perfect amount of time; I thought. It left them excited and wanting to do more. As I have gotten older, I have learned to simplify things while working smarter and faster. I felt this small amount of time set the stage for something big with my children in the future.
Keep in short. Keep in simple. Keep it going!!
-Sarah
American Fork Cemetery Located in American Fork, Utah, Utah, USA
Memorial Day - 5-28-2012