Letters : Doug Smith’s Genealogy Column

I’ve been meaning for some time to express my admiration for the work of your reporter and Wednesday columnist Doug Smith but kept putting it off until this morning (Feb. 6), when I finished reading his report on a meeting of genealogical apprentices.

His communication of the joys of research struck home. Although I’ve never done any work in the field of genealogy, I’ve spent much of my life in libraries and, like Jean Nepsund, the main speaker of the meeting Smith attended, I can attest to the exciting discoveries that lie buried in microfilm files and courthouse records.

I wish the enthusiasm Smith found among the genealogists could be siphoned into classrooms, where the study of history has lost favor because so many of its teachers have somehow managed to make it dull. If the past were better understood, perhaps the present might be less precarious.

JOHN D. WEAVER

Encino