Byrnesville, Barnesboro, Northern Cambria, Cambria County, Pennsylvania

Barb Kochmit has created what is now a treasured family keepsake. In paraphrasing Barb's words, the book is a virtual reunion and visual family tree capturing the family for the future.

The photo book covers the family in pictures, names, dates, celebrations, occupations, events, poems, and mystery photographs. Each of the 40 pages of this family treasure is a visual delight with careful layout and well-chosen backgrounds for the text and images.

The book is an artful and smart way to preserve family memories and as Barb says, "much better than strangers in a box." Strangers in a Box is a poem by Pam Harazim. It appears in the photo book and it is reproduced below.

Barb is a 3rd cousin, her great-grandfather Robert Joseph Byrne (1861-1914) is the brother of my great-grandfather Thomas J. Byrnes (1852-1934). In the picture to the left is Gus and Pauline Byrnes (upper left) and Pauline Hayes Byrnes (lower right). Five pages of the book are presented here. Thank you Barbara Bohm Kochmit.

My two daughters were just kids, under age eight, and we were visiting in my (and my wife's) hometown of Beaverdale, Pennsylvania. We took a walk and leaned over the handrail on a bridge to see kids playing barefoot in the creek below. There was a baseball game going on in the field next to the creek and the sounds of young kids playing filled the summer air.

I found my thoughts returning to those years growing up in a coal-mining town. And then my older daughter asked in a tone meant to wake me up, "WHERE are their parents?" The kids playing in the creek and on the baseball field unsupervised opened her eyes like a crab pinching a toe. But to me, the scene slipped by as normal. Wow! I thought. How the times have changed. My kids have never seen other kids playing in such places as a creek, a baseball park, or anywhere else for that matter, without some parents around. NO parents! What a sight for my daughters to behold! Even in their youth, they recognized the oddity in the fact. How could those parents leave those kids unattended?