Using Books I have Read, Family Photos and Ancestry Research for a Few Ideas...

I was looking through old family photos. This one comes from a folder on my computer titled "unknown." I have never been one to make photos at the cemetery but I have done it for my family if that's what they wanted. Seems it was pretty common for my Wiley side to do this and there a number of graveside photos.  

I don't know these people in the photo. I don't know whose grave they stand by. It's undated but I guess before World War I due to the style of the clothes and the man's hat. It could be later because sometimes rural people and this is probably Arkansas or Tennessee, are a decade behind the styles. Also of note is the man's right hand. It's bandaged. 

I know for a fact that my mom had two siblings pass away before she was born. It was common in those days. My wife lost family members to the Influenza Epidemic of those years. One of my mother's siblings that I found the death certificate for was Martha J. Wiley born April 14,1921 and died March 23, 1923. Cause of death, best I can make out from the Doc's handwriting is typhus with a complicating factor of measles.    

Seems I have noticed some that make a controversy these days when the cause of death is listed as covid with complications. From my examination of this record they have been doing things this way for quite a while. 

 A book I recently read, 1942 The Year That Tried Men's Souls by Forrest Gump author Winston Groom. It's a very readable war history but the one part that I have returned to think about is that after Pearl Harbor when patriotic Americans flocked to enlist in the military many were not healthy enough to be of use by the armed forces. Groom does not examine this but I can imagine that with the the country suffering through the Depression and the Dust Bowl of those years public health might not have been at it's best. A couple of years down the line say in 1943 when my dad was drafted things might have been a bit better as New Deal relief programs contributed to healthier citizens. 

It's a fact that when an event like WW2 comes along you need healthy people. You also need smart people and when we have politicized distractions affecting our schools like there has been during the pandemic some students are going to fall through the cracks.  

What if we have a big critical event in the next few years?  Public health seems to be suffering and education is not in good shape either. If you put things together like I have here look for a lot of cemetery photos.