This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.
Information on the Topic
For this, I think it depends on what kind of story are you looking for?
A war torn story like in Schindler's List? This would be either my maternal 3x great grandparents (Stanley and Valerie Ostrzycki) or my paternal grandmother (Genowefa Wojtkowska Schmitz) and great grandparents (Adam Wojtkowski and Maja Slepowronska Wojtkowska/ski) movie.
This is because my 3x great grandparents and 2x great grandmother had both left Russia Poland.
My maternal 3x great grandparents - Stanley and Valerie Ostrzycki (and 2x great grandmother Bernice)
My 3x great grandparents met and married young - in fact on their wedding entry my 3x great grandmother's mother (my 4x great grandmother) had to give her permission, verbally, because my 3x great grandmother wasn't even of age yet. Verbally because they didn't know how to read or write. They married, started to have children, and ended up leaving in 1903 when there was heavy civil unrest and the military was executing powers by killing or raiding households. They left early in the unrest, so I guess they could see this happening. Especially after the government basically starving them to death by not having enough food on hand for the entire community as you can see by the newspaper articles below.
Then they finally had enough and brought the entire family to the US at the beginning of spring (April) in 1903. Even then they didn't have much and headed to Pennsylvania.
By 1905, they had applied to become US Citizens. Then they have a few more kids and buy property. They had a few children pass away due to illnesses, but their other children were adjusting. Although their oldest had moved to the midwest telling everyone his family had died when they hadn't. But overall things had calmed down while Stanley worked in this glass factory and his wife was a midwife. However, I can only imagine the household when he starts to participate in republican things while his daughter was highly visual and spoke at democratic campaigns. There would be no buffer because his wife had died. Even Stanley's death was sudden - he went into work and had a heart attack and died outright.
The plot would have a bit of everything in it as you can see.
My paternal great grandparents - Adam and Maja Wotkowski (and grandmother Geowefa)
It would start the same way as my maternal side (above), but this would be even more war torn due to location of where they lived - right on the border between what was once Poland and Russia. The Vistula River was what people were using as a border and they lived right on it. Further, the railway which was slightly to the north was under constant overtaking as well as you can see by the various newspaper articles below.
Whereas my maternal side got out of Russia Poland in 1905, my paternal side lasted longer. My grandmother was born in 1910. Adam left in 1912 for the US. Then World War 1 happened and they were right along the Eastern Front of the battles. The war might have ended due to the Treaty of Versailles, but not in what was now known as Poland. This was due to how the boundaries were set in the treaty - they weren't. They had to fight it out to keep or lose land so all this did was encourage lives to be lost. They in 1920, when they left, Russia was making a play for overtaking Warsaw. They even had to endure time while the Port of Danzig was closed and then reopened.
I can see a film going into this fighting (the Red pins above) and then having them on the ship to the US and meeting up with her father for a happy ending.
However, you could take the rest of her very full life and make a second movie about her life in the US because it was that jam packed for a person. From being a cigarette girl in what I suspect was the speakeasy's (including the many raids which she hid from and then came back out to continue to work), to the car she was riding in getting hit by a train and thrown out the front windshield and almost dying, to owning a deli in NJ where everyone loved her and the family, to a bar where everyone thought they could just run right over her until she brought out the gun and asked them to leave or she can make them leave. She was known for her spunk but also her truthfulness right up until the end.
If A naval story like in the Tom Hanks's movie Greyhound but with submarines? This would be my father, Matthew Schmitz.
My father is a Navy Submariner Vet. When you walk into his house, you will never forget he's a vet of the Navy and of the submarines. It's on the front door and sprinkled throughout the entire house. And it's one of the subjects he loves to talk about. Most times, I think he loves this part of the military than he does his kids. I know I've always and still do feel this way. I don't think I've ever really had a father at all which is just sad.
You could use some of the stories in the newspaper to portray some of the possible military battles and missing boats, like the USS Scorpion, from around the Korean war and Bay of Pigs. My father can neither confirm nor deny anything... its sorta like if I tell you, I will have to kill you type of thing. But boy, my imagination can go wild!
For some reason, I'm thinking of the old Elvis movies at this point.Here's a grouping of them....
These are just a few examples of what types of movies I'd make about the different people in my family. I have to admit most would probably be dramas or mysteries rather than murders. Based up this assessment, I guess that's can only be said is compared to some families, mine isn't some murderer so I guess we're good.
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