Carol Kean
- Member for
- 4 years 7 months 3 days
- Find a Grave ID
Bio
"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." --Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy in her 1974 autobiography "Times To Remember"
Only two things are certain, they say: death and taxes.
From my earliest awareness, cemeteries and lost loved ones were a part of my world. Most of us won't make it into a history book or have towns or streets named after us, and some of us never leave our DNA behind in the legacy of children. Ancestors and descendants intrigue me. Morbid fascination? No, I'm an author, and everyone has a story, but few of us write ours down for posterity. As I grow older, I find fewer and fewer people are still alive to answer questions--to remember--to reminisce with me about those who lived before us.
ASK QUESTIONS. Go visit your spinster aunt, your grouchy old great-grandpa, your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, especially if they're in Assisted Living or nursing homes. Listen to their stories. Record them, audio or video. Preserve what you can.
I rejoice when archeologists uncover evidence (especially written records!) of people who lived thousands of years before us.
"All organisms that have ever lived—every animal and plant, all bacteria and all fungi, every creeping thing, and all readers of this book—can look back at their ancestors and make the following proud claim: Not a single one of our ancestors died in infancy ... we all, without a single exception, inherit all our genes from an unbroken line of successful ancestors." (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden)
My sister didn't live long enough to contribute to the gene pool. She was murdered at 18 in November 1975. This year marks half a century. Bio by Jody Ewing (she added photos as well):
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/22260837/julia_ann-benning
**Huge thanks to Jody Ewing, journalist, pioneer, founder of Iowa Cold Cases** https://iowacoldcases.org/ for her work in public awareness for all the loved ones to lost to homicide, whose killers still walk among us unknown, getting away with murder, but sometimes, usually thanks to DNA, occasionally because the essential "Someone Knows Something" decides to speak up.
It's sad enough to watch our grandparents die, and our parents growing old, but to lose a child! To steal the life of another human being is the worst kind of theft, yet after all of our thousands of years, humans continue to kill each other for the most selfish reasons.
My mom was a baby when her own mother died in 1938.
She was only 30 when her father died.
At 38, Mom buried her firstborn of five daughters.
She buried two more daughters in 2021 and 2022.
More on the legendary Jody Ewing:
https://www.findagrave.com/user/profile/47271115
Jody Ewing is an author and longtime journalist based in southwest Iowa. In 2005 she founded the Iowa Cold Cases website, the nation's first-of-its-kind statewide compendium to include case information for unsolved murders and persons who went missing under suspicious circumstances. Iowa Cold Cases incorporated as an Iowa nonprofit organization in 2010 and may be found at: https://iowacoldcases.org
Jody works closely with cold case victims' family members and friends, and also serves as a liaison between these individuals and local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.
Please contact Jody if you are a decedent's family member and would like your loved one's page transferred over to you.
As for my own bio:
Writer, editor, book reviewers, hermit; defender of native prairie, pollinator garden, and woodland ephemerals; always giving away seeds, fighting for Lost Causes, and connecting to people via the internet.
"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." --Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy in her 1974 autobiography "Times To Remember"
Only two things are certain, they say: death and taxes.
From my earliest awareness, cemeteries and lost loved ones were a part of my world. Most of us won't make it into a history book or have towns or streets named after us, and some of us never leave our DNA behind in the legacy of children. Ancestors and descendants intrigue me. Morbid fascination? No, I'm an author, and everyone has a story, but few of us write ours down for posterity. As I grow older, I find fewer and fewer people are still alive to answer questions--to remember--to reminisce with me about those who lived before us.
ASK QUESTIONS. Go visit your spinster aunt, your grouchy old great-grandpa, your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, especially if they're in Assisted Living or nursing homes. Listen to their stories. Record them, audio or video. Preserve what you can.
I rejoice when archeologists uncover evidence (especially written records!) of people who lived thousands of years before us.
"All organisms that have ever lived—every animal and plant, all bacteria and all fungi, every creeping thing, and all readers of this book—can look back at their ancestors and make the following proud claim: Not a single one of our ancestors died in infancy ... we all, without a single exception, inherit all our genes from an unbroken line of successful ancestors." (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden)
My sister didn't live long enough to contribute to the gene pool. She was murdered at 18 in November 1975. This year marks half a century. Bio by Jody Ewing (she added photos as well):
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/22260837/julia_ann-benning
**Huge thanks to Jody Ewing, journalist, pioneer, founder of Iowa Cold Cases** https://iowacoldcases.org/ for her work in public awareness for all the loved ones to lost to homicide, whose killers still walk among us unknown, getting away with murder, but sometimes, usually thanks to DNA, occasionally because the essential "Someone Knows Something" decides to speak up.
It's sad enough to watch our grandparents die, and our parents growing old, but to lose a child! To steal the life of another human being is the worst kind of theft, yet after all of our thousands of years, humans continue to kill each other for the most selfish reasons.
My mom was a baby when her own mother died in 1938.
She was only 30 when her father died.
At 38, Mom buried her firstborn of five daughters.
She buried two more daughters in 2021 and 2022.
More on the legendary Jody Ewing:
https://www.findagrave.com/user/profile/47271115
Jody Ewing is an author and longtime journalist based in southwest Iowa. In 2005 she founded the Iowa Cold Cases website, the nation's first-of-its-kind statewide compendium to include case information for unsolved murders and persons who went missing under suspicious circumstances. Iowa Cold Cases incorporated as an Iowa nonprofit organization in 2010 and may be found at: https://iowacoldcases.org
Jody works closely with cold case victims' family members and friends, and also serves as a liaison between these individuals and local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.
Please contact Jody if you are a decedent's family member and would like your loved one's page transferred over to you.
As for my own bio:
Writer, editor, book reviewers, hermit; defender of native prairie, pollinator garden, and woodland ephemerals; always giving away seeds, fighting for Lost Causes, and connecting to people via the internet.
