My Family

About the Book

I began to write the story of my life many years ago to leave for the benefit of my children, and grandchildren. To leave a record of my family as far back as I knew it. I know little about my great-grandfather other than he was a successful banker, and had 10 children. I have both his family Bible as well as my grandfather´s. As was the custom that these books contain pages for entering family records, marriages, births and deaths. My father was an early camera buff and I had many of his photographs. I also had collected many pictures that I´d taken during my lifetime. To make the book more interesting I decided this past year to create a coffee table type picture book to complement and make the book pictorially help to tell my story. The oldest picture, the one of my grandfather´s family, I calculate was taken about 1890. As I have proceeded to put the book together new thoughts occur to me and I have added and made changes. I am sure once the book is printed there will be many new thoughts that I wish I would have included. So if I´ve left out important things concerning any of you that I should have included please forgive me. The farm in North Carolina had always been a very special place to me. All of my children growing up spent the summers there. It was the one denominator that brought them all together. My own feelings about it were that it was the one thing in my life I never would want to sell. In 1978 I created a Limited Partnership made up of all my children, and transferred the title to the partnership. I held a naming contest with a prize for the one whose name was selected for the partnership. I made suggestions for them to try and create a name that would be all encompassing. My son Chris won the contest in creating the name that uses the first two letters of each partner. Thus JE for Jerri, LI for Linda, BO for Bob (John´s middle name Robert, Bob for short) MI for Michael, CH for Chris, and ST for Steve, JELIBOMICHST. For many years we had annual Jelibomichst get-togethers at the farm. I wanted them all to develop and have the same feeling of always keeping the farm as I did since it was such a special place. I live with my wife Francine in Sarasota, Florida during the winter months and at the family farm at Lake Lure North Carolina during the summer.

About the Author