A goosebump moment

 I've written previous blog posts about my cousin, Philip Young Justis, who survived Utah Beach during WWII but was killed in July of that year. He was the only child of his parents. Those stories always haunt me. And Phil's birthday was also my son's birthday, February 16th. There don't seem to be many photographs of him, I only have a fuzzy one and a bad photocopy one. 

This afternoon, I was going through the photographs I had on familysearch.org with my Mom to see if there were any more details to add to what I had. 

We were looking at this photograph.

 I knew the mother with the baby was my grandmother, Dorothy (Irving) Wenz, and the gentleman next to her was her father, Linus Dudley Irving. But even though I've had this photograph for many years, I never knew who the two men on either end of the bench were. 

At first, neither did my Mom, but she exclaimed "Oh! That's Uncle Reggie!" He was her favorite uncle, and his wife Mabel Irving was a sister of Linus. Then came the goosebump moment - we both realized at the same time that the young man on the right was the son of Uncle Reggie  - Philip Albert Justis. 

What a blessing to have a decent photograph of him. It really pays to get the stories out of the older generation!