Saturday, March 31, 2012

The Henderson Reunion website has moved

WEST POINT, Utah -- Priorities. We all have them, and this past year mine have hardly included the family website. It's been a year filled with tumult, and so the website and this blog have not been at the top of my to-do list.

Not only did I switch web hosting services -- a racket if ever there was one -- but I was so disassociated from the whole website thing that I allowed ownership of my domain name ("porterproject.com") to expire. Once I realized that had happened, it took a little while for me to get things sorted out, and I decided to buy a new domain instead.

Henceforth, you'll have to change your bookmarks for the Henderson Reunion website to "www.hendersonproject.net" from porterproject.com.

One other thing: I'm still cleaning up the inevitable broken and/or missing links to pages and photos, so please be patient. I believe most of the site is up and running, but I'll have to go through page by page to fix things in the coming weeks (not months, I hope, but I'm making no promises).

Frances Henderson's passing and funeral

I'm sure everyone knows by now, but in case you don't: Frances Henderson, my Uncle Mark's wife, passed away recently. I've started a Web page, but haven't yet posted any photos from the funeral (I'll need some help with names). I'll do that soon, and announce it here.

It was a terrific service, of course, and we felt so fortunate to be there to see so many family members that we rarely see (gotta get those reunions going again). Not only were Mark and Frances' children and (most of) their spouses there, but of course lots of their grandchildren and their spouses (spousi?), as well. I learned lots about my Aunt Frances that I hadn't known before. For example: I somehow had a vague knowledge that she'd grown up in Pennsylvania, but had no idea she volunteered to work in Hawaii during World War II -- tough stuff, that.

My subset of the Henderson clan has always felt a special kinship to Mark and Frances because when my father, Don, attended the FBI National Academy in 1970, he lived for three months with Mark and Frances in Alexandria, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. He has repeatedly spoken of their generosity and kindness. I was 11 years old when we flew back to see Dad graduate (we met J. Edgar Hoover at a reception, among other interesting experiences), and we stayed there, too.

Anyway, I just love my cousins, and so it was nice to be able to visit -- especially with my new pal Amy, Mark Jr.'s wife, who's been a great help to my family this past year.

Another treat was that a trio of our McIntosh cousins also attended the service. We agreed to get together in the coming months to seek out and document (here and on the website) the McIntosh homes in Rush Valley south and west of Tooele.

So, make sure you navigate to the "new" website: www.hendersonproject.net, and after a couple of weeks let me know which links are still broken or photos missing, and I'll try to fix things. Also, I hope to announce here that the photos from the funeral are up for viewing.

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