abouttheauthor.html</title</head> <body> <h1 align="center">Susan Gerbic</h1> <br> <br> <p align="center"><img src="susanwithbook.jpg" width="600" height="800"></p> <br> <br> <h1 align="center">Contact me at <a href="sgf8@yahoo.com">sgf8@yahoo.com</a> <br> also friend me on Facebook as Susan Gerbic-Forsyth <br></h1> <p align="center"> <br> Just hate having to write about me, but it seems like it is a necessary part of family research to have some kind of bio. Here is mine for what it's worth. <br> My home is decorated with clutter and books, which I both love. I guess my style of decorating as the "old professor look" but very organized. I keep buying books and have bookcases installed just about everywhere there is room (definitely got this from my dad who loved to read also) I also love to garden, I have my backyard all set up for it too. Every year it gets bigger and more organized, I love to wander around it seeing what is new. Salinas has wonderful weather, rarely very hot or cold, the climate is great for growing plants (guess that is why we are the "Salad Bowl of the World") <br> <br> I am very interested in history and science, and education in general. I have been taking college classes more than half my life. I have a AA in General Education (1993) and another AA in History (1998). My BA is from CSU Monterey Bay (2002) and have been working on my Masters in American History from San Jose State. At the moment I am only 4 classes away from finishing but have had to put school on hold for the moment. When I do finally finish, my plan is to teach part time at Hartnell Jr High which is right around the corner. <br> <br> Photography and pictures have always been a major interest of mine. I have always surrounded myself with them, taped on all wall space of my room during my teenage years. I love to look at them and just keep them around. I put together scrap books and have 20+ all completed all with names and dates, sometimes with stories and comments, I started this way before scrap booking got popular. I am very frugal when it comes to scrap booking, and most books are full of xmas cards and brochures and the like. I have scrapbooks for each of my boys full of their childhood pictures and memories for them when they start their own families. (they aren't taking mine) <br> <br> You will see throughout this website I have used as many pictures as I can find, this isn't by accident, I really think that pictures can tell the story better than any narrative can. I truly believe that we are more than just birth and death certificates, and pictures help tell the story of who we are and were. I am extremely organized, and love cleaning out junk drawers and closets. I spend my money not on shoes but on organizing supplies. I guess I should mention that I am a photographer by trade as well. I started working as a baby photographer in 1982 at J.C. Penney's. It was a big challenge, I knew nothing about children, having almost no relatives. I managed to last longer than any of the other employees and so they were forced to make me manager. One thing that I wanted to mention upon reflection that really influenced me about pictures was the lack of my baby pictures. I was the third child, and they already had a girl and a boy so I was just extra. There are very few baby pictures of me. The few I have alone were ones that my siblings jumped out of the picture at the last moment. <br> <br> I think that maybe I should end with the reasons for this web site, my motivation to do this insane thing. Lets see if I can explain it....being raised out here on the West coast I was far away from all relatives (some of my friends think this is a good thing). As far as I knew I didn't really have any relations (my mom's family was mostly all in Arkansas and we rarely saw anyone). My father left Ohio (read all about it on his site) settling in this area, he met and married my mom. My dad used to talk about what he knew of his family (very little, and a lot of it wrong) and asked that I look for them. But then I was a teenager and didn't pay a lot of attention to what he used to say, luckily he wrote down a bunch of stories on this really really old computer my brother gave him so I did have a starting point. I was married and had my first child, Caspian when my dad died in 1989. I guess I had been in my own little world, working, going to school, raising my son ect.... and didn't understand how important it was that my dad get back his past. Older and wiser I started putting it all together, I wrote letters to names I found on the Internet, I had no idea what I was doing. So I took a class on genealogy research at the local Jr. College and my instructor set me straight. You need to start with what you know, interview your family, write everything down, look at all the family documents ect. So that is where I started. I did a lot of this and have a long way to go. I got a few answers to my letters and from other things I learned I was able to really piece together a lot of history. I traveled to Ohio in 1997 and met with several first cousins that were my parents age (I was their grandchildren's age in a lot of cases) I copied every picture I could and spent a lot of time at government buildings getting certificates. On this first trip to Cleveland, I rented a car and pasted my dads picture on the dashboard and we had long conversations, (he mainly listened). <br> <br> I went to places he grew up at and did a lot of driving around, getting lost and then getting more lost. Cleveland is a long way from Salinas (in a lot of ways other than distance). I went back in 2000 to locate my grandmothers grave (I found it), I didn't have a great plan that trip and got really homesick (ended up coming home a day earlier). I started up www.Gerbic.com a couple of years ago hoping to put all the Gerbics in order. I understand that most of us (including myself) are not "real" Gerbics probably many different spellings and I don't expect that we are all related (at least not in the last few hundred years). I just want to figure out who belongs with who and get some order to this mess. All my fellow genealogists are following one family tree branching off as little as possible. Many of them are looking back to the Civil War and the Revolution War having many generations living in the U.S. and Canada. I am still looking for my grandparents history, other researchers are on the great great great great parents. Oh well, that is what makes us different, when I have to do the European history part that will be something else. I am hoping to use the skills of Tommy Gerbic (T2) for this is his main area of interest. He has already found the origins of the name Gerbic, plus tons of info about where many of the Gerbics came from. Then the Internet became a very big thing and that has opened doors that were long shut. It remains for me to get this site back up to its full speed and everything fully documented. Then I will be contacting and researching like a crazy person. For right now I just want to get this organized, and if I can acquire a few new pictures on the way I'll be a lot happier. <br> <br> </p> <br> <br> <br> <b align="center">Last Update Nov 30, 2009</b> <br> <br> <b align="center"><a href="index.html"> Return to Main Page</a></b> <br> <br> <b align="center"><a href="lostgerbics.html">Return to Lost Gerbics</a></b> </body></html>