Only the cover is new. These pages represent my father's "retirement" project: family history, local history, personal prose and poetry, and transcribing books of his grandfather, M.I. McCreight. Dad died in a car accident on February 28, 2009, along with my sister Amy. Years ago he had asked me to carry on as the family historian when he was gone, so here goes. I have endeavored to replicate his web pages faithfully in content, and closely in appearance.

Thanks to a blogger named Steve (for whom I can find no email address to formally ask permission to quote him), I've discovered who "Many Coups" actually was. When the Plains buffalo herds were being decimated (as recorded in Buffalo Bone Days), Many Coups was attempting to help his people, the Crow, survive the subtraction of all that they had known and relied upon in life. The real Many Coups went on to represent the Native Americans in Washington, DC, and promoted education and farming to those remaining tribal groups.  Not surprising that Dad borrowed the name for his own internet communications.

A true conservationist of the land, Dad's career involved helping farmers with land usage for crops and ponds.  Surely there is a connection to his grandfather's beliefs in conservation of natural resources, as shown in a speech given by McCreight, transcribed in these stories, and by M.I.'s role in creating Cook Forest State Park.

Dad is sorely missed.  Thankfully he left us many of his thoughts and experiences to remember him by - and even an autobiographical web page, last updated the same month he died (A Kworum of One). The Stumpf forebears populate a section on Stumpf family history (below).  Luckily for us, Mom's family history, too, is chronicled -- in Fursterbild.  A more extensive family tree can be found on the Ancestry site (.com) under member yatiri2.

To the right are links to a selection of Dad's writings and the writings of various family members, and of his veteran friends who also fought in WWII.  Photos and other illustrations can be found throughout. Several of the titles are books by M.I. McCreight, who was my dad's grandfather.