29 years ago, my beautiful daughter and first born child, Amanda Marie, was born. She had the perfect head because Julie had a C-section. Not only that, but she also had a full head of dark hair. She was just perfect.
After about two weeks, Amanda started to have physical problems. We later found out that her heart's left ventricle was not developed. The "pinhole" between the ventricles was slowly closing and Amanda's blood supply was starting to backup and become acidic.
We had absolutely no idea that she was experiencing such a terrible condition. We took her to the hospital where she was born and a pediatrician met us at the Emergency Room. His initially diagnosis was that she had a cold... Yea, sure. After I told him that she had x-rays taken after her birth due to a small palate, he decided to have another x-ray of her chest taken. That is when we received the bad news.
We had her transported to Penn State's Children's Hospital Neonatal Unit in Hershey, Pa. where she past away the morning of July 6, 1982. She was fifteen days old and ill for only two days.
Our daughter would have been 29 years old yesterday on the first day of summer, June 21, 1982. It feels like this all happened yesterday.
My wife and youngest son, Zach, joined me yesterday evening for a trip to the cemetery to visit Amanda's grave. Afterwards, we traveled a short distance to view the grave site of our first Boyd settler in the United States. His name was Samuel and he was a Quaker. He is buried at the Wakefield (Pa) Friends Meeting Hall.
The Quakers initially did not place markers on their graves. They did keep accurate records of burial sites and in 1936, in honor of Samuel Boyd as a founding father of the Meeting Hall, past descendants placed a marker at his grave.
Unlike most Christian cemeteries, there is a rule in this cemetery that states no marker shall be higher than 22".
It is hard to believe that Samuel made the trek to America from Ireland when he was 53 years old. I can only imagine what this countryside looked like in 1736, forty years before the American Revolution.
Samuel and Agnes had nine children, eight sons and one daughter. A good healthy stock of boys to help farm the rolling river hills of Lancaster County. He had one son, Alexander, who drowned in Fishing Creek.
Yes, my family has been here since pre-Revolution era and we had relatives, such as, Captain John Boyd, who fought for our freedom. His wife has a DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) plague on her grave site near Chestnut Level, Pa.
Take Care and Be Safe!
Dad
