Doris Redfield Chadwick turns 100 years old

 
The Pammetts were not fortunate enough to be able to get to the extended family party… but recently Jack sent me the picture shown below of Auntie Dot's 100^th birthday so I've decided to post it and write this story on Groundhog Day, 2009. Every year I celebrate this day as the first significant milestone long enough into the Winter season that finally the days are starting to get significantly longer. Yeah!!
Just imagine what the world was like on Nov. 8^th, 1908, when Doris Chadwick (née Redfield) was born in East Bridgewater, Mass. Wow!! And now, 100 years later, she's still happy and healthy enough to celebrate her centenial birthday with 75 of her closest friends at the Stuart Congregational Church in Stuart, FL.

The Bassetts, Chadwicks, and Redfields are my wife's side of the family, so I didn't get to meet the Chadwicks until the 1970s when they lived in Connecticut. But for most of my time knowing them, "Buster and Dot" enjoyed their golden years in Florida. In the 90s, when my kids were little, we visited them often because we lived in Alabama. On a return trip to Florida in 2002 I featured my kids' "favorite great Aunt & Uncle" in pictures on this magic cube.

Great Auntie '.' (she loved to write it like that) was always joyous and welcoming of my family whenever we came to visit. I remember well the visit when she had just finished having "The Last Twig" published, and I told her about "the web" and how "in the future everyone will be able to publish things themselves on the web". She was somewhat skeptical about that and we did talk about the possibly of making her book available… but alas I never did get in touch with her publisher. Nevertheless, I just Google'd her book title, just to see, and I was thrilled to see that this article says "Chadwick wrote several books, including The Last Twig — a story of her life and times, published in 1998." Another book (printed in 1984), "Hold High The Torch", is an amazingly detailed documentary of a most impressive family genealogy — 13 generations of Redfields that date back to the arrival of her ancestors from England in 1630.   Wow!!    My father-in-law's family — when Ian Alexander married Millicent Redfield Bassett — comes into the picture in generation XI. It is certainly my honor to be part of such a family.

So, Auntie '.'  — Happy Birthday !! and may you live to enjoy many more happy years !!