My interest in genealogy began back in 1975 when my brother Mark and I created our first family tree so that we could understand how our 48 first cousins, almost 100 second cousins, 28 aunts & uncles and 54 great aunts & great uncles were all related to us. We developed a uniquely efficient schematic format that allowed us to show relationships of as many as 50 family members per 8.5" by 11" page with an easy continuation approach to other pages. In 1978, Mark created our first computer program in Fortran for use on a mainframe college computer to simplify future family tree updates. I later took over role of family tree updates and decided to convert to word processing software.
At the present time, our family tree is over 70 pages long and includes genealogical data and relationships for over 2000 family members. Since 1979, I have organized 16 major family reunions and get togethers. My wife and I have traveled to all of our ancestral villages and re-discovered family members in Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Switzerland, and Lithuania.
In 2016, I discovered FindAGrave.com. I enjoy its ease of use. Also I am impressed with its ability to not only show family relationships but also to allow me to store other ancestral information for future easy review by other family members now and later generations in the future.