June 23rd - Day 11
Today was all about Grandma. We spent much of the day touring around Milbank, SD, which was the birthplace of my Grandmother and where she lived for the first 8 years of her life. For baseball fans, Milbank is also the birthplace of American Legion Baseball.
Grandma showed up with her list of places she wanted to see and we were destined to cross off as many of those things as possible. Much has changed since Grandma lived there (especially considering that she lived in Milbank during the Great Depression), but there are certainly some things that have not changed.
A few highlights of the day:
Walking down Main St, Grandma was very eager to speak with anyone who would give her the time of day. Some of the people that she spoke with were relatively new to the area and had no context for her stories, but others had lived there their entire life and happily chatted about the history of Milbank with her.
We ate lunch at a coffee shop/cafe that was in the former location of a ice cream parlor that my Grandmother’s grandparents owned. Maybe this is where I get my love of ice cream? Unfortunately, like many others, they lost this business during the great depression.
Prior to my Grandmother’s birth, an older sister had passed away at the age of 3 - Glee Starr. While my Grandmother never met Glee, she always held a special place for her. In fact, she named her only daughter, my mother, after her. With that, one of the things on Grandma’s list was to go to the cemetery where her sister was buried and to find the headstone (the headstone was replaced in the 1950’s and my Grandmother had never seen the “new” headstone). We found a picture of the headstone online, but we did not know where it was located in the cemetery. After an hour of splitting up and looking, walking down every row and getting close to giving up, we finally found it!
We had a little bit of time at the end of the day, back at the house on the lake. We took full advantage of it by getting Becca’s paddleboard out on the lake and building a fire to sit by. Other than the bugs, it was a great evening.
A few pictures from the day:
