Treasure Chest Thursday - Grandfather's Rocker

When my grandfather, Lee Alfred Wilcox, died in 1968, the same night that Dr. Martin Luther King was shot, we (my parents & I) were left to clean out his house. One of the items I (still in high school) insisted we keep was his rocking chair. For hours, as a small child, I would sit on the arm of that chair, half in "Deeda's" lap, rocking & listening to the stories of his childhood and my family legacy (much of which fueled my interest in genealogy). I wanted that chair! Though there was no convenient place to keep it in my family's home, my parents relented and squeezed it in until I moved out to my own apartment. That chair has moved across country, up & down the coast of California, and still sits in my home today. Every time I sit in it and run my hands along the arms, I am taken back to those days in Wilmette, Cook, Illinois, when I learned about my lineage.