A sportswriter whose work I admire often writes that “memories make us rich.” This web site is my latest effort to preserve and share memories for the four main family branches from which my children are descended – the Gilderson, Duwe, Pidduck, and Christensen families. My aim is to collect, preserve, and share memories to enrich the many people who are connected to the family trees of John and Rose Gilderson; Don and Itola Duwe; Ned and Floie Pidduck; and Kip and Audrey Christensen.

When I was only in my teens, my grandmother and her sisters – Audrey Christensen, Wilma Shanklin, and Adeline Ayres – identified me as the person in the next generation who was most likely to be interested in the family history. My Aunt Vicki sealed the deal almost ten years ago when she shipped me two big boxes filled with the family memories of my Grandmother Audrey and her mother Ethel (Davies) Radloff. The boxes contained photo albums, letters, autograph books, calendars, and more. Those boxes sat high and dry on a basement shelf for a couple of years before I realized that the memories contained there needed to be shared. Efforts to identify people in the photos released my inner researcher and led me to the absorbing hobby of genealogy.

I hope that this web site, combined with my gilderson-duwe roots and branches blog , will give close family relations as well as more distant cousins a stable storehouse of family memories to which they may return from time to time. I also hope that family far and near will consider contributing their own photos and stories and allowing me to share them here in order to enrich us all.

Our main branches are made up of four couples — eight families. Each of the eight main branch families have both a public memory album, documenting loved ones that have passed away, and a private memory album, where the privacy of those of us who are still here may be protected.

The private memory albums will be password protected. Please see the “Contact” page of this web site for details on communicating with me for password requests or to share your photos or stories.

Jeff Gilderson-Duwe, September 12, 2021