Introduction

The idea for this website goes back at least several decades. I’ve been keeping notes in a file labeled “Williams Family History” going back to the 1990s. It was also about that time I created an excel spreadsheet that has become, in effect, my monthly diary. It attempts to summarize all the key moments and activities of each month in a single line. I continue to update that spreadsheet every year. We are now on month #872 and counting.

I’ve been taking photographs ever since going to Belgium in 1970 (my mom took all the photos of me prior to that time). Before the digital era, I used analog prints and created photo albums and scrapbooks, all of which are still in my office. Starting in 2007 I began to create digital albums, first on Facebook and then, beginning in 2014, on Google Photos.

I was never that interested in the technical side of photography. Kodak instamatic and simple 35 mm cameras were more than good enough for me. But I was very interested in its storytelling aspects. I was an early adopter to Facebook (my first post was 4/22/06) and that gave me the platform to start sharing my photos and stories. Nineteen years later, I am still posting photos and sharing stories on Facebook.

I was never all that enthusiastic about writing a conventional autobiography. For the most part, they are boring to read and challenging to write. But as my photo collection grew, combined with 19 years of Facebook posts, it finally dawned on me that what I needed to do was create a website where I could tell my story, post my photos, write creatively, and make it all accessible to a wider audience.

So that’s what I am going to try to do. I have partnered with a professional website designer who is handling all the technical aspects of this website. My job is to first share all the photos and Facebook posts. That will be quite a task as there are more than 250 albums and 10,000 photographs. Once we’ve finished that step, I plan to start writing creatively and tell the stories behind the photos. And believe me, I’ve got lots of stories to tell. Hopefully you’ll enjoy reading about them as much as I will in remembering and writing about them.