TREASURING FAMILY HISTORY

On Tuesday, as I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama on TV with a group of fellow Obama supporters, I wore a silver medal with the profile of Abraham Lincoln on the front. Around the edges of the medallion are the words: "WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE, WITH CHARITY FOR ALL" and the date Feb. 12, 1809. On the other side of the medal are the words "Awarded by the Public Ledger to Sam Wendkos for Merit in Essay on Abraham Lincoln -- 1909." (These days I need a magnifying glass to read the writing.) Exactly 100 years ago, at the age of 10, my father won this medal from a Philadelphia newspaper for an essay that he wrote for a contest held 100 years after Lincoln's birth.

It's especially meaningful to be wearing it now, 200 years after Lincoln's birth, to the inauguration of our 44th president, a man who could never have been elected to this position without Lincoln's role in our country's history -- and who speaks often of his debt to and connection with this 15th president of our United States.

My heart bursts with pride. And it bursts with gratitude, too, to the two women who guarded this small treasure: my grandmother, Dora Wendkos, who saved this medal and eventually passed it on to my children's grandmother, my mother, Leah Wendkos, who saved it for so many years and then passed it on to me. I treasure it and plan to pass it on to my daughters and to their children. I'm sure one of those will value it as much as I do. And so I see an important role for us grandmothers -- to protect and preserve important family memories and heirlooms.

Your Maiden Name and Other Vital Facts about You

One in four adult Canadians have no idea what their grandmother's maiden name was (according to a recent survey by www.ancestry.ca, an online resource for family history), and I imagine that the results for people in the U.S. would be about the same. It's a shame to lose precious parts of our family history, so it's important for us to tell our grandchildren who we are, who we were, and what we have done in our lives before they or their parents were even dreamed of. One in five Canadians don't know what their grandfathers did for a living, and I would guess that even fewer would know what their grandmothers did, even though throughout history many women have indeed worked for pay or done valuable volunteer work.

This maiden-name business is an issue that I feel strongly about. If I were getting married today, I would keep the name I had for 22 years before my marriage. As it is, I inserted my maiden name, Wendkos, into my byline sometime after I began being published when I got that a-ha! moment and realized that no one who had known me before my marriage would ever connect Sally Olds with Sally Wendkos.

With the holidays coming up, many grandmas will be lucky enough to spend time with your grandchildren. This will be a perfect time for you to tell them about your past -- what your name once was (if you have changed it) and what some of the important aspects of your life have been. One helpful tool for this is "For My Grandchild: A Grandmother's Gift of Memory," published by Sterling Publishing Co. in affiliation with AARP. It's a beautiful hardcover workbook and sells for only $9.95 in the U.S. and $12.95 in Canada. (Disclosure: the book I am currently writing, about activities grandmothers can do with their grandchildren, will also be published by Sterling.)

Have fun with your stories!