Here it is ...finally !

This book has some of my poems, before I became a Christian and others after I asked God to take control of my life. It also has poems my maternal grandmother ( the one holding me in the cover picture) wrote in the 1940's and 50's before she passed in 1957. It includes several family pictures. It is a book that can be inspiring and also entertaining. It is for sale on Amazon. I would love for you to check it out.

Book two will be more in story form. I will endeavor to tell my story from 1943 until now, 78 years later.   I am about a third of the way into it. None of this would have been possible without the ongoing encouragement of two dear friends, Jonnie Whittington and Delores Walker who together birthed our writing group, Writer's Ink.  Both of them are published authors and their books can also be purchased on Amazon.

Early Years

Me and my maternal grandparents, Myrtle Blanch
and Fred Hartman. Taken in Niantic, Illinois when I was about seven. My mother and I stayed with them for a short time when I was younger. She left dad in Springfield. She found out he was not faithful. He came to Mt. Vernon, a place called Horsecreek, where they lived. Convienced mother to try it again. At that point in time they tried farming. We lived in a big old house on a hill. There was a barn and some fields. The owner had cows. My father tried it for awhile but he just was not a country guy.
That is the place where I got my finger caught in the wringer of an old wash machine. Mother was doing the wash and she let me wash my doll clothes but told me not to use the wringer, well once she got my hand free she could see the ring was mashed and my finger was swelling and turning blue. She ran me out to the field where my father was on the tracter, he had bolt cutters and was able to get it off.

This second picture was taken at the corner house. My grandmothers mother, Estella M. "Copple" Bruce lived there with them after her husband J.D. Bruce died untill she passed on Dec. 6, 1950.
  I did not spend much time with her, so I do not remember her.
One day I wandered off down the road and when my grandfather found me I was laying on my
stomach on a bridge throwing rocks into the water below.
 My grandfather switched my legs with a willow branch all the way back to the house.
 My little white hightop shoes were covered in mud.
 Not one time in the all the years that I knew my grandfather did I ever doubt how much he loved me.

My parents siblings

This picture of my parents and myself was taken in Springfield, Illinois. My father drove a taxi. mother stayed home with me. He was 41 and she was 20. They met in a nightclub in Chicago, where my mothers sister Helen, was playing a piano. I am quite certain I was not planned, at least not by them.
 The word of God says, "God knows us before we are ever in the womb."
 These two people were as different as night and day.
He loved to party, drinking and dancing the time away. Mother was straight off the farm, this was her first time away from home which was in the southern part of Illinois. She was born June 23, 1923 in Centrailia.

She was the youngest of four. Helen C. Hartman born May 15,1910~passed July 12, 2000.
 Fredrick David born March 22, 1915 ~Dec. 1, 1999.
 Merritt Dean born Feb. 19, 1920 ~Oct. 7, 1991.   Mother passed,April 21, 1985.
 They left this earth in reverse order from when they were born. The youngest first and the eldest last.
 I knew them all and was closest to Helen and Dean. Helen never had any children.
 Freddy had a son, Ted and a daughter, Tammy.
  Dean had three girls, Judy, Joyce, and Janet. I was an only child.

My father Earl LeRoy Berkey was the eldest of four. He was born Aug. 3, 1902 in Ankeny, Iowa.
 Retta born Dec.3, 1904 ~Oct. 12, 1914. Dorothy Mae born 1908 ~March 9, 1953. Donald born 1915~ Sept.3, 1930. As you can see from this record two of my fathers siblings did not make it to  adulthood
 Dorothy however had three daughters, Little Dorothy, Ramona, Betty, and a son she named after her brother, my dad. Earl . Dorothy was married to Newton Demeen Womack. I never got to know any of these people.

Where to brgin...

This is a picture of my grandmother Myrtle Blanch Hartman, my mother Hennrieta Estelle,
my great grandmother Estella Mae Copple, "Bayly", Bruce and myself Werna Gail Berkey,
"Schuyler", Massey .This must have been taken before Dec.6, 1950 becaues that is when Stella
 as we all called her, passed on.
This will be a starting point, I wish to record as much as I can from the information that I have
acquired over the past year from Ancestry.com.
I will start with myself as I know more about myself than I do anyone else.

I was born Aug. 9, 1943 in St. Johns Hospital in Springfield, Ill.  My mothers doctor was
Dr. Tolbert F. Hill. I was one of the 2,300 babies he delivered. He lived within a few days
of his 108 th birthday. I weighed in at 7# 13oz., born at 12 noon. My only defect was on my
right foot. The second and third toes were webbed. Mother was going to have them seperated,
however my father said, "leave them, mine are that way and it is not a problem". Maybe not for
him but for a litlle girl that wanted to wear sandles it was a "big deal". Now at the age on 73,
not so much.