Found in My Memory Box

I was organizing my closet and decided to upgrade my 'memory box' into a larger box. The new box had been a silverware box that had seen better days. I tore out the inside and lined it with a silky fabric and painted it with a Japanese design.

It was a trip down memory lane!

There was the real leather change purse in the shape of a turtle which dates to about 1963, and a leather purse hand-stitched by my brother in a scout project. The RMS Queen Elizabeth pen was a memento that Grandmother Ramer and her mother my Great-grandmother Greenwood brought me from their 1958 trip to England. The ship would float in a sea of oil.

A plastic collie dog that was chewed on by some family pet I remember it as Red Scott Collie, the hero of all my childhood play with my plastic model dogs, horses, cowboys, knights on horses, and farm animals. I had a large collection!

My Fifth Grade Teacher at Philip Sheridan Elementary School in Tonawanda, NY was Jewish and educated students about her faith. She gave all the class a dreidel was given for Hanukkah in 1962. The penguin is hard plasti and weighted so it wobbles; it was a toy belonging to my Grandmother Gochernour's pet parakeet in the late 1950s.

Dad brought home pencils from work at Chrysler and he made the bracelet at work. And the two irridescent swordfish pins were gifts Dad brought me from a fishing trip to Canada in 1968.

My first pair of contact lens, bought when I was sixteen in 1968, were green. They cost $250 and I earned and saved up most of the money. My high school choir pins and Journalism award pins and the charm bracelet reflect my interests as a teenager and young adult. The Chile pin was a gift from an exchange student, Mirna, who was from Chile.

Charms include a bicycle, a piano, Niagara Falls, and Kimball High; Adrian College; Our Wedding, an agate and miner from our honeymoon in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan; METHESCO where my husband attended seminary; a Disselfink from Lancaster, PA, Washington DC, and a Thunderbird; a fish with a large mouth and a race car from the Indianpolis 500. 

The artist's palatte pin was Mom's, one of a set of two. I borrowed it from Mom in 1966 and somehow never returned it. The silver horse dates to my girlhood infatuation with horses. My Grandmother Ramer bought it for me in 1964. The green turtle pin dates to about 1963, the Petosky stone pin to my honeymoon in 1972, and the blue and green stone pin is my latest turtle addition. The blue Delft pin is handpainted on porcelain, picked up on our honeymoon.


The jewelry in the photo below are from Finland. In 1969-70 my family hosted an exchange student, Elina Salmi. Her mother made her Marimekko dresses and sent us beautiful jewlery and glassware.

There is a necklace made from woven bark. The pin and the bracelet in copper color were made to look like tree bark.The red enamaled copper mediallion was a good luck symbol. Mom wore the knotted design medallion and the delicate filigree silver bracelet.

I won the copper book mark by attending church all summer long, about 1967. Over my life many people have given me crosses; they include a Lutheran and several Catholic crosses, one given me by a nun I met in a church study group.

My box includes 1970 "Hippie" love beads! My brother gave me the eagle beaded and the handpainted wood floral necklaces. My husband made the macrame and shell necklace for me as a gift. Very 1970s!

And the fabric bead necklace was made by my son when he was little. Precious.