Grandchildren Are Great!

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[Day 3 Lion's Head Location Clue/Hint: The place where this lion's head exists has several buildings, with the newest building housing some very sensitive items that the building must maintain a constant temperature of about 70-72 degrees year around... the lion's head is on/in an older building See TSGS Cruiser Blog ~ http://tsgsblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/guess-where-this-lions-head-is-located.html]

Here is a very proud grandmother with a new sweat shirt with the names of her grandchildren!

Becky West is showing off the gift from Halle & Evan she got late, last year. I thought this was good timing since my son & family are coming into Evansville to visit... they live near King's Island northeast of Cincinnati. With Memorial Day weekend coming up, I am sure many will have family reunions or other types of get togethers. This coming Sunday, my Selvin High School Freshman Class will have a class reunion (our small high school was closed due to statewide "consolidation" in 1962 making our class the last Selvin Freshman Class). Selvin is in northeastern Warrick Co., IN. Yellow Banks Park & Recreation Center is just north of Selvin... agreat place to enjoy Memorial Day weekend. Friday, Becky & I will be decorating graves of family members, a serious tradition (duty, actually) that Mom faithfully did each year to remember family that had passed on. I drove her around for years, so after she died I ended up doing this each year. Over the years, I have found new information about my family as I went from cemetery to cemetery.

I hope that everyone has a great Memorial Day and may you learn something new about your family history! - JGWest

Tombstone Thursday - Bruce (Ambrose)

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I was born in Evansville, Indiana...
and attended first & second grade at Highland Grade School. We moved to the country after Servel had moved out of town to St. Louis. There, I attended the school in Selvin, IN from the third grade to my Freshman year of high school in 1962. Indiana had a massive school consolidation that year, closing many of the smaller, rural high schools with Selvin being one. We would become part of the Class of 1965, but graduating from at least 4 or 5 different high schools. There were only 15 of us "Baby Boomers" in that Selvin Freshman Class in 1962. In 2000, this class decided to start having a class reunion for that freshman Selvin High School Class on Sunday during Memorial Day weekend. This past Sunday we held our 11th. reunion. Of the 15, two had died before we started meeting. With 13 remaining only one has not been able to make any of the reunions. For today's "Tombstone Thursday" I wanted to honor the two of our Freshman Class that died before the reunions began.

Above is the grave of Mike Ambrose who discovered that his birth father was a "Bruce" and he changed his name to his father's name. We knew him as Mike Ambrose in school. I placed a single blue flower at the base of his marker for our class. He was buried in the Selvin Cemetery next to his younger brother Gregory Ambrose.

Arnold Bruce came to Selvin School when we were in the 5th. grade; and, from the first day of school that year, we became best of friends... which lasted until Selvin High School was closed. Arnold is buried in a cemetery in Degonia Springs, Indiana (about halfway between Tennyson & Boonville). I left two blue flowers at his grave... one for our class and the other for being an important friend as we were growing up.

Two others did not live to our Freshman year: Bobby King & Johnnie McNeely. The Selvin High School Freshman Class of 1962 miss all four very much. Rest in peace classmates!

- Photos taken & submitted by JGWest (30 May 2010).

[Tombstone Thursday is dedicated in memory of Donald G. West 1952-2000]

"Brief Look at the Former Selvin High School"

Selvin High School Class of 1959

Celebrate Their 50th. Anniversary Reunion

Larry Oxley acts as class representative to welcome all Selvin School students to the reunion and remembers those Selvin students who passed away in the last year. Selvin School began in the 1880's and closed completely in 1963. The high school was closed as part of a large statewide consolidation of schools in 1962. I was a freshman at Selvin that year in 1962... they sent me to Dale High School in Spencer County for my Sophomore year. Then in 1963 the state closed Selvin Grade School and my sister Bettina (Tina) West was a member of the last Eighth Grade to graduate from Selvin Grade School. That year they closed Tennyson High School south of Selvin on Indiana Highway 161, sending those students to Boonville High School (Warrick County) and they decided to reduce out of county tuition payments to Spencer County by transporting me with the Tennyson kids to Boonville to attend my Junior year of school. I lived in one house and attended 3 high schools in 3 years. I graduated at Boonville High School in 1965, while the 15 freshmen students from Selvin in 1962 when they closed our school ended up, without moving from their homes, graduating from 5 different schools: Lynnville, Boonville, Dale, Holland & Jasper high schools. My younger brother, Donald West, entered Selvin Grade School as a first grader in 1959... so, for one year all four of us were in school at Selvin: Glen, me, Tina & Don.

Above is the Class of 1959 from Selvin High School in Selvin, Indiana (located in northeastern Warrick County). L-R: Roger King, Joyce Moesner, Larry Oxley, Ronald Dowdell, Jim Osborne, Gaither Glennis West(II), Larry Powell. [NOTE: Lanny Ingram was unable to attend. Only one of the graduates of this class has died - Carmen Surkamp (about 1990).]

-Photos taken & submitted by JGWest

Marker/Plaque/Monument Monday

Not what most would call a plaque, but it is a testament to rural America.

This license plate was sold by my class in the very early 1960's for the Selvin (Indiana) High School Wildcats basketball team. Our school was basically too small to have a football or baseball team, but we had enough to just barely field a varsity and reserve basketball teams. The grade school had teams, too. I started in the fifth grade and was on the reserve team as a Freshman. I was not a good player and I was not very tall and I was chubby, too. but, I could get off the bench and serve as the fifth man on the floor when we had no one else to play! My class was the last Freshman class at Selvin when the High School was closed in the spring of 1962. We would have been Selvin's Class of 1965. The school was closed due to "consolidation" of the smaller rural schools for efficiency and economics. There were 15 in that freshman class, we have lost 2 classmates. We have a class reunion each year on Memorial Day weekend that began in 2000. We have had 12 of the 13 to attend one year or another, usually with about 10 showing up each year.

My older brother, Glen, graduated in 1959 from Selvin and proudly drives around with his Selvin Wildcats License plate in Charleston, South Carolina.

-Submitted by JGWest