The people who had to exist for you to exist.
Pick a face. Follow the proof. Get lost.
TAKE THE DARE ↓Before Chandler,
there was
His mother. The first living link in a story that keeps moving backward through Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and eventually across an ocean.
Walter Louis Nation was born February 28, 1930 to Henryetta and Walter “Kitty” Nation. He grew rice and cotton in Arkansas, then in 1992 made a late-life move west to Oregon.
And Walter had a soundtrack. His obituary says he loved bluegrass and went to festivals. When he died in 2013, his graveside service included military honors. The same obituary names daughter Debbie Dare and grandson Chandler.
Rice fields, farms, churches and tiny Arkansas communities weren't scenery. They were work, weather, livelihood, neighbours, family and daily life.
Clara grew up on the family farm in Carlisle. She was offered a Fulbright Scholarship to study French at the Sorbonne in Paris. She turned it down to marry Bill. They were married 68 years.
Walter Louis's sisters Charlotte and Doris were nearly at a childhood friend's surprise 80th birthday when a Salvation Army disaster manager asked if they could help with Arkansas tornado relief.
We do not have his face. We do have surviving documentary evidence attached to his life. When faces disappear, the documents become the portraits.
Faces. Obituaries. Wills. Land. Marriage records. Cemetery records. Family transcription. Every surviving object is another way back into a person.
You arrived after all of them.
This story doesn't end here, either.