“Brad Quillen, Swamp Cottonwood, Washington County, North Carolina” © 2021 Stu Jenks, 60 inches tall.
Price: $125, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at stujenks@gmail.com or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu.
In spite of some profound health issues, Brad keeps his wicked sense of humor and his cockeyed view of the world. It's part of his charm. He and Glenn have been together for years. They make a very cute couple. I love them both very much.
Brad has done something amazing too, for me personally. He has taken a deep dive into my ancestral history and found out many things about the Jenks and the Saums that I didn't know: the specifics of the murder of my great aunt Bertie and the tragedy of what happened to her children; the locations of the graves of the Saums in the Valley of Virginia; the history of some of the Jenks that goes back to the mountains of Virginia; and through a DNA test, found out I'm much more Scottish that I thought (a third) which doesn't really surprise me since I've cried hearing the bagpipes since I was a kid. He has spent hours and hours scouring internet records to find such things. He does enjoy it, he says, but still, it's a lot of work, and I'm eternally grateful.
Last Christmas, I visited Aunt Gracie's grave in Wilmington, North Carolina for the first time. I apologized to her for my grandfather and his siblings abandoning her and her brother to an orphanage. I told her I was sorry that I never met her or talked with her about her mother's family who she never knew. I told her I was angry that I didn’t have the chance to hug her and apologize in person, since I could have. (She died in 1994.) It was a very touching moment for me, and I plan to visit Aunt Gracie again soon.
If it wasn't for Brad and his yeoman's work, I would have never known of Gracie, much less been able to kiss her headstone. Thank you, brother.
#bradquillen, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries
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