A new year. . .
Well, it has taken more than a year, during which, I have been in contact with Michael Sivitz, Rona Kalin Moss, Steve Houck, Rick Houck (who lives in Panama of all places), Ellen Bet Shiller, Joy Isenberg, and of course, Ruth Siegel who, with her father, Stanley Siegel, has provided many of the documents we have collected for the website so far. I am sure Ruth gave up hope this site would ever go live as I have obsessed over the details and struggled with the Jewishgen requirements and my inexperience with site development. Yet here we are.
In addition to uploading the Golden Anniversary Booklet, I have scanned the 1952 Ohev Sholom Community Center Dedication Booklet and will be putting it online for everyone in the near future. Unfortunately, the original printer used a printing process that led to moire patterns in my scans. I tried scanning the book on three different scanners and all of them produced output that is far from perfect. This is unfortunate but it appears that I will be unable to correct the patterns which have not ruined the text but have affected the quality of the photographs.
I have a few other items to share, including some material supplied by my cousin, Joy Isenberg. I will add these to the site as well. I am working on getting the blog ready so that others may add to it; part of the problem lies with my struggle to learn to use the program that helps me build and extend this site. But when I am able to enable others to add to the blog, please do add to the site.
—Iris
First Post
It has been a dream of mine to recreate the Lewistown Jewish community online. To offer those of us who grew up in Lewistown a way to share the stories of our youth and to tell others about our parents and grandparents lives before these stories are lost forever. So many small town Jewish communities have passed from existence in the United States as the children who were born there have migrated to larger towns and cities. This is my effort with the help of my friends to keep the town alive for our children and for their children and grandchildren to come -- so that they can learn about our part in the lives of small towns across this country. I would like my children to know how our grandparents and great grandparents came to America from Eastern Europe and elsewhere and made it their own.
Iris B. Sitkin