Recently I signed up for a 7 day free trial at Newspaper Archive just to see what I could find. Boy did I find a treasure trove of information on my paternal grandfather!
My Pap has had an amazing life, born in Pennsylvania in 1927 and descended from German immigrants. He was raised on my great grandparents small farm on Flading Lane. He played high school baseball and was set to join the Red Sox when war broke out in 1941 he joined the war effort in the 82nd Airborne division. He met my grandmother in Germany and they were married when they returned to the states. He's been a Washington D.C. Police Detective and for all of my life he was a baseball coach and umpire.
I was so excited to find several articles about my Pap, mostly about his baseball coaching career. Here was an article about him being given the head coaching position at Mount St. Mary's College, another article talking about his position as Assistant Coach at the Naval Academy, even an interview where he talks of learning the game from his uncle "Red" Ruffing who played for the Yankees (as a side note I've yet been able to prove our relationship the famed pitcher with any kind of substantial evidence) and also an article where he talks about catching fly balls for the Homestead Grays. These articles have helped me flesh out the story of my Pap and add a bit of interesting history outside of his basic statistics.
I strongly recommend getting yourself a subscription and checking it out! If you do and find something useful to you I'd love to hear about it, just leave a comment below.
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