We Found His Wings Before we Moved

Who was Raymond Jewett Konen?  My grandfather who died of skin cancer when I was 13.  I have a strange memory of him showing me this bag of letters that he hid in the upper back shelf of a closet from grandma.  He said she wouldnt understand.  he was proud of his letters.  He wanted his story to be told if it could be.  You see he had to kind of talk her into marrying him.  he courted her.  They dated over the course of the war and grandma had another bo once at least.  she had shown me his picture and didnt mind it being in the mix.  But she loved my grandfather dearly.  She was a homeaker after earning a living as a bank teller downtown.  She eventually became a painter.  She showed me how to paint and draw at a very early age.  always drawing and painting with grandma.  always learning about things with grandpa.  he loved to teach little bits of wisdom in my early years.  He never went to college.  He was in the airforce during WWII and I have not seen his records yet.  He had lots of training but I don't really understand if he went on missions.  Later he took up carpentry and made boats, cabinets and sold vinyl records door to door for a company called Allegro Royale.  I have a set of his records packed away and am now working on sharing both his love letters to grandma, and the travel journals she kept on their several 1960's 1970's trips to Europe. 

I work on this because I use their photography (he mostly was the camera man). in some of my artwork for sale in these marketplaces.

As I write this my father who is also a veteran of the Vietnam era, lies in hospice for stomach cancer.  He doesn't like to read his parents love letters.  It makes him uncomfortable, but he enjoys the travel photos and journals because he went with them and once on his own.  He kept his own journal that I may have lost in the move we just made out of a house filled with treasures from 30 years of us living in it and 20 years of my grandfather living in the same house.  The storage is all that got saved.  So I was overjoyed when my niece found the wings in the back room where i had once found the letters.   Its like he knew I could finally work on the project of sharing them.  Im on disability, I do hobby level work for print on demand art.  I have the freetime to make the original documents interesting and shareable for at the very least my family, if no other interested parties happen upon them.  They were a great couple.  They were important to my dad.  My family is not lost.  Although I have been from time to time.  My schizoaffective disorder is letting me focus right now really well for this kind of work.  I'm going to continue it.  It feels good to think and plan and write and edit.  I am not always able to do that with my disorder sometimes I am just a watcher and a freeflow drawer

His wings were lost over 20 years.  The time to share his story is now.  Thank you for reading, and please follow the video blogs here at Blue daisy emporium and my youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1h7u6i8EydhVXIiLzTiMdA

It is time to chronicle some exciting lives while mine rests a bit.