This morning, on NBC Today Show, Al Roker recognized men and women celebrating their one-hundred birthday. Because I have “Brubaker” in my family tree, I felt compelled to search for Donald Brubaker, born Aug 1919. Quite possibly I could identify our “cousin” relationship. Well, “an exercise in futility”  because more questions than answers.

Why do I do it? Why spend hours gathering information on an individual–or a family? (1) The challenge; (2) the sense of satisfaction when details are documented that another person didn’t find or didn’t document; (3) a direct relative (of the individual) might be grateful for the information. Speaking of “challenge”: Capturing these pictures was labor-intensive. I hoped for a distinct image of the old gentleman.