This is from Michael York, one of the recipients of our Fortenberry Scholarship. These stories and photos are priceless. If we could all come up with 3 stories and photos, our family history would be incredible! Michael has given all of us an example to follow
Hi, this is Michael York son of Lee and Nealies York. My mom is the daughter of Neal and Shirley Fortenberry. first of all I would like to thank you for the scholarship. These 3 pictures are pictures of my child hood. The 1st is actually my brother Samuel in the crib, but there is a funny story behind it. It was the day after Christmas and mom and dad has put Samuel to bed after throwing a temper tantrum. I had ask my parents why Samuel had to take a nap and I didn’t, they said Samuel was upset and needed to rest and for whatever reason I decided that the reason Samuel was upset was he couldn’t play with his Christmas toys. So I took all his toys and dumped them in his crib with him so he could play with them. Samuel, who was very tired, didn’t like this and began to cry. my parents however thought this was both sweet and hilarious, so they took a couple of pictures. I was trying to find a picture that had both me and Samuel in it (me laughing because my parents are and Samuel obviously wailing in indignity) but I couldn’t find it so this will have to do.
Samuel and the Toys
The 2nd picture is of me with one of my huge night shirts with a pillow stuffed inside it. when I was young, my night shirts were big enough to be almost like dresses. they were big and warm and covered most my body. one day I had a ingenious idea. first i wondered how much stuff I could fit into my shirt with me. I managed to get anywhere from 3 to 6 pillows to fit inside my shirt with me. Samuel, not to be outdone, stuffed as many pillows into his huge shirts as well. after this I got the idea that we should stuff blankets into the sleeves and start running into each other to see who could knock the other down first. it was a lot of fun.
Michael and the Pillows
The last picture was taken at my Grandparent’s house. Grandpa Neal (I just call him Granddad) is a hunter and brings home his kills and cooks the meat then has someone take the skin and form those fake head things you see in the picture. I was very young and granddad had just put in a new deer head in his living room when we came to visit that time. I this will sound crazy but until I was around 7 to 8 I thought that immobile things such as trees, pots and pans, toys and other thins like these were alive and intelligent (I got these ideas from watching movies like toy story, beauty and the beast and snow white. I was young o.k. I liked to believe anything was possible, give me a little credit.) and that these things just pretended otherwise while we were around. I had not seen granddad put up that deer head so when I saw it for the first time I thought that it had moved in on it’s own accord. all the deer heads in granddads house gave me the impression that there eyes were following me until I was older but, with the older deer head this didn’t bug me. they were just part of the family. this new head was not. so I climbed onto the couch (the new deer head was directly above it) and somehow managed to hoist myself up on top of it. as you can tell from the picture once I was up there I was afraid of falling off so I held on tightly. I don’t remember this but suppository when granddad ask me what I was doing up there I said “I got new guy, I got ‘im” this was quite amusing to everyone so a picture was taken.
Michael and the Deer
A side story about me and Samuel is how we got our names. My family is a very strong Christian family so all of me and Samuel’s names (except our last) came straight from the bible. My first name Michael originally came from the archangel Michael. My middle name Caleb came from a man in the bible who wrestled with a being from heaven for the entire night until dawn and won (who this was in the bible it does not specify, some say it was Jesus, others say it was the Archangel Michael but who knows). My brother’s First name Samuel came from the profit in the old testament Samuel. His middle name Aaron, came from the brother of Moses, the first ever High priest. I do not know where all of my sister’s names came from, but her first is Abigail, wife of David. Her 2 middle names are Elizabeth and Alea if your interested in finding out about those. Once again thank you for the scholarship and good luck on both your website and your research.
