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01-26-2008, 03:31 PM
Posted By: <b>Dan Bretta</b><p>Spent the day helping my uncle go through his house which has just had a major fire this week to see what we could salvage and luckily all family photos and ephemera survived the fire without harm. Was hoping to find my dad's baseball cards, but still no such luck...many years ago he told me that I could have his cards if I just went over to Grandma and Grandpa's house to get them. My grandma said that she never saw any of my dad's cards, but my dad insisted they had to be in the house somewhere. No luck today though. OTOH while going through a box of family photos my brother pulled out two postcards from Exeter,NE which may include someone in my family...my great grandma signed the back of one of the postcards and dated it to 1910. I'm not sure if my grandpa or perhaps my grandma's brother is on one or both of these postcards.<br /><br /><a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/?action=view&current=exeter1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/exeter1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/?action=view&current=exeter2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/exeter2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br />On a nonbaseball related topic we also found a bunch of my grandpa's military items from WW2 - my grandpa never talked about the war so we never really knew much about what he did. We found a scrapbook filled with at least 150-200 letters he had written home to my grandma, his diary on Guam, misc military ID's and even an AP photo with an accompanying newsclipping of the same photo from a Boston newspaper.<br /><br /><a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/bretta%20family%20archives/?action=view&current=grandpa2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/bretta%20family%20archives/grandpa2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/bretta%20family%20archives/?action=view&current=grandpa3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/bretta%20family%20archives/grandpa3.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

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01-26-2008, 06:01 PM
Posted By: <b>barrysloate</b><p>Dan- the newspaper article about your grandfather is very interesting. Do you think he experienced something traumatic during the war, such as losing close friends, that was the reason he never spoke about it?

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01-26-2008, 06:35 PM
Posted By: <b>kjjavic</b><p>Sorry to hear about the fire Dan, hopefully nobody was hurt. <br /><br />My grandmother recently found and gave me this photo of my great-grandfathers Kensington area (a Philadelphia neighborhood) baseball team from 1908. My great-grandfather is id'd with the arrow in the photo. <br /><br /><img src="http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n193/kjjavic/KensingtonBaseball.jpg">

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01-26-2008, 07:10 PM
Posted By: <b>Dan Bretta</b><p>Barry, we found his purple heart today as well...not sure what he got it for though. I looked up his squadron on the internet and there are websites that say they took heavy losses. My grandpa's diary entries are only two-three word's per day and he stopped writing in it around April of 1945 even though he was on Guam all the way to Dec of 1945. I just spent the last two hours going through more boxes of my great grandmother's stuff and am learning all kinds of stuff that I never knew. I've got a real project ahead of me. Found a small photo of what appears to be a boy dressed in baseball uniform, but my scanner is acting up at the moment.<br /><br />Keith, great photo.

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01-26-2008, 07:35 PM
Posted By: <b>Joe K.</b><p>Interesting stuff Dan. Keep us posted on your research. You must be going through a bit of a whirl-wind of emotions...seems like a lot to take in RE your family history. Good Luck. (and good luck finding your Dad's cards too..what years would they be from?)<br /><br />Keith -that is a cool pic!!

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01-26-2008, 09:18 PM
Posted By: <b>Dan Bretta</b><p>My dad was born in 1945 so they would all be 1950s cards. I just read a stack of letters my grandma sent to my grandpa when he was in Ohio for some military training in 1955 and she talks about how excited she is that the Dodgers were winning the World Series. I never knew my grandma was a Dodgers fan. There was another letter I was reading earlier tonight from my Great Grandpa to my Great Grandma who was staying with my dad's family in Boston that mentions the Red Sox in 1947. It's really weird because it sort of brings it to life and when I think about 1947 in terms of collecting it just doesn't seem that long ago, but when I'm reading these letters from people who have been gone for decades it seems so long ago...<br /><br />Anyway I got my scanner working and not sure if this guy is dressed in baseball attire or not, but he's a related to me in some way...maybe my great uncle?<br /><br /><a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/?action=view&current=exeter-1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/exeter-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br />edited to add: I found a duplicate of the first baseball team postcard above so I'm pretty sure I've got relatives in that one.

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01-27-2008, 12:48 PM
Posted By: <b>Max Weder</b><p><br />Here's a photo of my father-in-law when he was pitching senior baseball in the late 1940s<br /><br /><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/108262617_b6a030e09c.jpg"><br /><br />No family photos pre-war