Drawing of the Kenai bluff by James Evenson

Welcome to the Kenai Community Library

163 Main Street Loop, Kenai AK 99611
Telephone 907-283-4378 Fax 907-283-2266

The next meeting will be Wednesday March 12, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. at the Kenai Community Library in the Conference room. .

Totem Tracers Genealogical Society - totemtracers@hotmail.com - 2nd Wednesday of the month 6:00 -8:00 p.m. at the Kenai Community Library

Ancestor Research Saturdays - 2nd Saturday of the month 1:00-3:00 p.m. .at the Kenai Community Library

Kenai Community Library, 163 Main Street Loop, Kenai
M-TH 10 :00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. , Fri & Sat 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Sunday noon - 5:00 p.m.
Membership dues . . . $18 per year plus $1 per meeting for the book fund

Totem Tracers Officers                                                                                 
Loretta Mattson, President
Tracy Miller, Vice President
Betty Idleman, Secretary
Gladys Nichols, Treasurer
Virginia Walters, Library Liaison
Elaine Howell, Member-at-Large
Send items for the newsletter to Elaine at cmgirl@acsalaska.net

A Note From our president:
Fellow Researchers,
Belated Happy Valentines Day to all. I was thinking about genealogy and romance and decided it was not a hobby that was conducive to meeting your soulmate. After all; everyone you have contact with is, of course, your “relative”. Spring is just around the corner and with the warm weather comes thoughts of the family reunions happening this summer. Now is the time to start preparing. There are lots of ideas on the internet. And if we can be of any help please let us know.
Thinking spring
Loretta

Upcoming Schedule
At the March meeting, Scott Bryner will be discussing “Witch Trials”.  Scott became interested in genealogy research at the age of 16 when he discovered his 12th great grandmother had been on trial as a witch!  Should be very interesting!
April’s meeting will be another “work session” so be sure to bring any problems you are having and we will try to help!
May has not been planned yet so if you have a suggestion or would like to share your research project with the group please let Tracy know and she can put you on the schedule.
June, July and August will be work sessions as well. 

            KILROY WAS HERE!              Who the heck was KILROY??
In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America,"
sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.  Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.
 Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet.  Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.  Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.  One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then that he realized what had been going on.
 The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint.  With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before the war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and Tokyo.

To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.) And as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt! , Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.  The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?”...
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave it to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.  So now You Know!

National Archives, Pacific Alaska Region, Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.archives.gov/pacific-alaska/anchorage/
This facility maintains records retired from Federal agencies and courts in Alaska.
Address:  654 West Third Avenue, Anchorage, Alaska 99501-2145
Contact Information:
Telephone: 907-261-7820
Fax: 907-261-7813
Email: alaska.archives@nara.gov
Be sure to include your name and mailing address in your e-mail.
Directions:
The facility is on West Third Avenue between F and G Streets. Use the main entrance on West Third Avenue.
Hours:
Monday through Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Some Saturday hours. Call for schedule.
Closed Sundays and Federal holidays.
                                                2008 Federal Holidays
National Archives research facilities are closed on the Federal holidays listed below.
Date                                            Holiday
Tuesday, January 1                   New Year's Day
Monday, January 21                  Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 18*               Washington's Birthday
Monday, May 26                        Memorial Day
Friday, July 4                              Independence Day
Monday, September 1                Labor Day
Monday, October 13                  Columbus Day
Tuesday, November 11             Veterans Day
Thursday, November 27            Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, December 25            Christmas Day
* This holiday is designated as "Washington's Birthday." Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is Federal policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.

Getting Current Information "Corrected"
Several years ago I was in contact with an elderly family member genealogist. I was amazed on her up-to-date information. I asked her how she got so much information as I was having trouble getting information back from my relatives. She laughed and said that when she sent out a family sheet she added ten years to the woman's age. They usually sent a correction right away. I have to admit, I've tried it, and it works rather well.
Joyce Frey

Websites of Interest
Abbreviations used in genealogy
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rigenweb/abbrev.html
Keyboard shortcuts: (Not for FTM)
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilcchs/RaysHomepage/keyboard.htm?sssdmh=dm13.159129

In the Rootsweb newsletter they mention that the “Search Thingy” has been massively improved.
http://www.rootsweb.com/
Click—“index of all search engines and databases” Second one listed under “Most popular search indexes”

Odds & Ends
If you leave a book or anything else at the Library that is meant for Totem Tracers, please put Virginia Walters’ name on the item so it will be brought to our room and filed correctly.  Thanks.
Did you notice our new logo?  Loretta drew the totem on page one.  Thank you Loretta!

Bumper Sticker of the Month
IT’S 2008 – DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR GREAT-GREAT GRANDPARENTS ARE?