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My mother, Hazel Miller Coyan, ca. age 22 My father, Norman Coyan, ca. age 22
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This picture was my Dad's "claim to fame". Pic was taken ca. 1951-52 at Fort Benning, GA. While Dad was in the Army, he was a member of and the leading hitter on the championship softball team that represented the 550th Tank Company. He's on the far left with the big smile :). One of the guys that my Dad was stationed with and who was also a member of that softball team is Whitey Ford, who within a year or so after this picture was taken, resumed what became a Hall of Fame pitching career with the New York Yankees. Whitey still holds numerous Yankee and World Series pitching records. Whitey is on the far right, next to the "big guy".
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Me (age 4) and my sister Deb (age 3) early Christmas morning in 1958 - how pathetic....I must have still been in a daze from staying up all night waiting for Santa to deliver my Roy Rogers six-shooters. Deb was obviously happy with that Linda Tripp-like monster doll :)
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L to R: My son Brandon, son Justin, ME in the center getting a "high-five" (look a little pale, don't I:), Cindy, daughter of an ex-girlfriend, and I'm not sure who the doofus is on the right. Taken ca. 1994 in Cincinnati.
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The day after I attended the estate auction of Chester Coyan in Mapleton, KS in July, 1999, His niece Rosalie (Coyan) Rager invited me to her home in Ft. Scott. She, her husband Darrell, along with Rosalie's brother Conley Coyan and his wife JoAnn, shared many wonderful stories with me - it was a weekend that stands out as one of the most memorable in my life. As I talked about our Coyan ancestors and the "path" they had taken from Maryland to Pennsylvania to Ohio to Iowa and on to Kansas, Rosalie said "Wait, I have a salt dish in my china cabinet that I believe has a note in it that my grandfather Fernando wrote many years ago". I'll post that note soon, but here is the picture of me holding the crystal salt dish that the note "verifies" was owned by my 4th great-grandmother Elizabeth Coyan (Hugh's wife). Obviously, this dish had made it's way from Pennsylvania (and possibly Maryland prior to that) all the way to Bourbon county, Kansas. What a thrill it was to hold such a precious family heirloom !
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