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Showing posts from June, 2025
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FY NHAID A FY NAIN: MY GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER     Olive Thomas and William Ramsey Fleming.  I think a marriage photo?     This chapter and those going forward are going to be even more on  short on facts and long on stories half heard and hardly remembered.  Strangely enough, the most turbulent period of William's life, the war years, are the best documented.  In fact, an entire book was written about Bill's part in the "Great War".      It wasn't great.      I never met my grandfather; he passed in 1951 at the not-so-ripe age of 61.  He died of transitional cell carcinoma (bladder cancer, TCC). It's a pretty common cancer, characterized by blood in the urine, and, due to the nature of the beast, it frequently is a terminal diagnosis.  That is a sad little fact is best remembered by all descendants of Bill...especially when we remember that his own son, my father, Kelvin Orr Fleming was diagnosed with T...