Twyla Baker, my mother, passed away on Jun 27th, 2019 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was 85 years old. Mom was born in December 1933, and was the second daughter of Melvin and Gail (Joachim) Patterson. Her parents and her siblings, Dolores, Layton and Lyndon, have already passed on. As her father was a Presbyterian minister and her mother was a church organist and choir director, she grew up in the church, and loved to attend services.

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I found out today that Dolores (Joachim) Cantrell, my Aunt Dee, passed away last month, on Feb 17th. Aunt Dee was my mother’s sister, and the oldest daughter of Melvin and Gail (Patterson) Joachim. She has been married to Donald Cantrell since 1954, and they have two children, my cousins, David and Diane. I remember visiting the Cantrells often as a child; sometimes we would visit them, and other times they would visit us in Michigan.

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My daughter married a Luczyk . Starting with information provided by her sister-in-law, I was able to find quite a bit of information about the family. While researching my own family and its many branches, I have become accustomed to seeing people from Germany or the United Kingdom, and, well, that’s about it. The Luczyk family, however, comes from a number of interesting places. This presented a few research challenges, such as reading records in Dutch, but was a nice change of pace.

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