Children's Message

This week's installment of "To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come"

Chapter: High School
Question: Do you remember any long papers you wrote, or special projects?

I just remember trying to work the Lindbergh Kidnapping into any and every assignment I could. I believe in our junior year we had the "Big Research Paper" and it had to be on a controversial topic--something you could choose a side and then argue it with facts and things you wrote on index cards (sidenote: years later I taught 11th graders how to write the "Big Research Paper" and we still used the index card method. Wonder if they do now? Doubt it). If memory serves me, I used the Lindbergh Kidnapping for this paper. I remember going to the Hud.son Library (a Carnegie library, fyi) and using the card catalog to look up books on Lindbergh and Bruno (Richard) Hauptmenn and having to inter-library loan them from other places. I remember that the librarian was nice and enjoyed helping me and was probably just thankful it wasn't another paper on legalizing drugs or other favorite topics for the "Big Research Paper". I believe it was researching this paper that I learned our high school library had a booked called "The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder". It was a scary-yet-can't turn away kind of book. Ah, yes, I did love that Lindbergh Kidnapping. And little did I know that later in life, my folks would live in the town in NJ where the trial of the century took place. That I would sit in the witness chair in the very courthouse where Lindbergh and Hauptmenn and all the cast of characters were so many years before.