Goodbye Mutti- The Best of the Best….


A snapshot- Well, it has been a long journey- piecing my mother’s life together… Not easy- to say the least. She died December 7th in 2013- Pearl Harbor Day.  It took me until May to get to Indiana to take care of everything and her affairs.  That’s a long time to wait- to put things…

Mutti & Me (Growing Up)


  123 E Oak Street = John Travolta Baybeee! = 1975 Frank off to the Prom =   Dad & Mutti- Having a good time = More of same = Nonna, Dad, & Mutti = Little Frankie = Playing Football = Not looking Happy = Typical grade school pics =   More of same =…

A Letter from James Herndon to Frank Aprile


In April of 1980 I was 18, and living in a $55 a month room, next to another room in the a boarding house that was filled with 5-6 winos & street people, in Portland, Oregon. I had arrived two months earlier, hitchhiked from Indiana to stay with good friends Kathy Glade, and Susan Roudebush,…

James Herndon & Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt


  This was the period when my mother found and connected to my eventual father, James B. Herndon in Paris France 1955 James B Herndon James Herndon (1926–1990) was an American writer and educator. He is best known for two memoirs of teaching, The Way It Spozed To Be and How To Survive In Your…

The Home of Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt


 123 E Oak Street The Arrival 🙂 = Bedroom/Study Desk = Bedroom – Dining Room = A View to the Front Porch = Mutti’s Outdoor Garden Place = My Grandfather was an orchestra conductor- Picture is over the piano- = Mutti’s Garden @ Purdue Horticulture Center = My mom loved to hang out on the…

The Medals of My Grandfather & My Great Grandfather


1918 Napoleonic Wars: Prussian 1813Iron Cross 1st Class Iron Cross 1st Class.   The Eiserne Kreuz (Iron Cross – often abbreviated EK or IC) was instituted on 10 March 1813 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III.  It was awarded for bravery in the field – without regard to rank – during the Befreiungskrieg (War of Liberation also called…