Doing genealogy takes being in touch with a lot of people. That human contact is easier (and certainly cheaper) now with email and social media. But even before computers, some people were good at communicating. Vic Struber, who has turned over his genealogy files to me, was one of them. Sometimes he made contact with people he’d tracked down. And sometimes, as with his second cousin, Raymond “Ray” Strauber, the connection came from a happy coincidence.
Ray’s letter to Vic is undated, but I’m guessing it is from the early 2000s. The first thing to notice is how the connection came about at all. Vic’s older son Frank works in customer service at an airline at McCarran Field, the Las Vegas airport. And Ray’s son Alan, about whom I posted last month, happened to be passing through there. It’s not all that odd that they would have bumped into each other. But it’s extremely odd that they recognized in each other’s names a potential relative, managed to exchange information about it, and then got the information to their fathers who could then act on it.
I believe Ray and Vic ultimately got together. Ray died in 2007. However, we’re still mining the fruits of their collaboration.