Every project I have undertaken teaches me something about making family history accessible. My father-in-law's book taught me the extent to which pictures with extensive captions can tell a story. Dennis Rivett died in 1995; about eight years later I began with the help of his widow and sons to assemble pictures of his life, and to draft the captions. Other members of the family wrote about their memories of Dad. His widow, my beloved mother-in-law Evelyn Rivett, provided the name for the book: "Kind, Loving, Faithful." These are the words she had had inscribed on his tombstone.
The book is simplicity itself - about seventy pictures enlarged to full page size, each preceded by the story of the picture. The first is Dennis at three, on the bank of the South Saskatchewan River in 1909; the last is his gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery in Saskatoon.
This was probably the easiest family project in the sense that it proceeded from planning to execution without any lengthy hiatus. My projects are not usually like that!
The learning from this project was applied to the previously described project, Derry's Book, which is still in process. Pictures CAN tell a story!
Status: Dennis Rivett's book was completed in September 2005, and copies were distributed to the immediate family.