A Portrait With A Legend

Crista Cowan 0:00

Have you ever looked at an old family portrait hanging on the wall in your parents' or grandparents' house and wondered about the person staring back at you? Growing up, my guest Rhonda Budge spent hours sitting beside her beloved grandmother Olga looking at a large framed portrait of her great-great-grandfather. Her grandmother always said that if the house ever caught fire, that portrait was the one single thing she would grab. Behind the striking eyes in that picture was a story of survival and courage and Danish pride. It was a story that moved from a raging Baltic Sea to a quaint mountain inn in Southern California. But as the years passed, Rhonda wondered if the tale had been stretched over generations into something of a tall tale. What she discovered when she finally looked into the records is that sometimes the stories passed down to us really are grounded in truth. And sometimes the whole story is even more unbelievable than what was shared. Rhonda first shared the story with my Pajamas and Pedigrees membership community, and the second I heard it, I just knew she had to share it with all of you. She even drove all the way from South Texas to Utah to sit in the podcast studio with me so we could tell it face to face. Enjoy my conversation with Rhonda Budge.

Welcome And Meet Rhonda

Crista Cowan 1:23

Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family. Welcome to Stories That Live In Us. Well, Rhonda, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. You have been a member of uh our Pajamas and Pedigrees group for how long?

Rhonda Budge 1:45

Um a little over, not quite a year, I guess. Okay.

Crista Cowan 1:48

And like what was it that attracted you to that?

Rhonda Budge 1:51

Um, well, it was the the opportunity to be able to be with like-minded people. So um to, you know, get in on the webinars and to collaborate. And I really enjoyed that. I enjoy the sessions that you do, and I love watching the chat, and everybody's so active. It never ceases to amaze me. You know, you'll be looking for something, and next thing you know, there's 40 people looking for the same thing, including me, although I don't think I'm quite as good at it as they are because they're always getting to it faster than I do. But I I just really like that collaboration.

Crista Cowan 2:24

Yeah. Uh well, family history is not a game of speed. No, no, not in any way, shape, or form. They will still be dead tomorrow.

Rhonda Budge 2:32

Exactly. So, what got you into family history?

Grandma Olga And Early Genealogy

Rhonda Budge 2:35

Um, well, I have to accredit to my grandmother. Um, my grandmother was a very proud Danish, uh first-generation American with uh Danish parents that had immigrated. And she was very interested in her family, and she used to uh take me to what she called decoration day, uh, to the local cemeteries, and we would walk through as we were decorating the graves, and she would tell me, you know, who all the people were, and I would ask a lot of questions. And then she started putting together a family tree on it's sort of like butcher block paper, um, but it's large. And uh she would write everything out on the paper, and she would write letters to her cousins over in Denmark and get information. She uh there's an extra generation gap there because my father was adopted, and so uh she was born in 1900 and she had a lot of history, and it was always fun to talk with her, and um, she was a great storyteller. She would uh I would spend a lot of time with her, and she would sit down with me and she'd pull out all of the photo albums, and she had saved newspapers, and she would pull them out too, and tell uh stories about everything. And she had grown up in the San Bernardino, California Mountains. Her

Danish Immigration And The Skyland Inn

Rhonda Budge 4:02

father and mother had run an inn up in what is now modern-day crestline called the Skyland Inn, and she would tell all the stories about growing up there, her and her cousin. And um I found a lot of newspaper articles about uh Christmas at Skyland and other events that they had. And she was very proud of her heritage. She used to always say, you know, Christopher Columbus didn't discover America, the Vikings did. And um, and so she was just very proud of that. And we used to take her to Solvang, um, and which is a little Danish town in it's by Santa Barbara, right? Yeah, up by Santa Barbara. And we'd take her up to Solvang, and uh and we'd spend a couple days up there and walk around, and she'd always very much uh was very proud of that. And she had um this photo of her grandfather that uh before you talk about that, I what was her name?

Crista Cowan 5:04

Her name was Olga. Oh, very Danish names. And what was her last name, her maiden name? Hansen. Olga Hansen. Yes, and she is your father's mother. Yes. Okay, and so she was born in California?

Rhonda Budge 5:18

Yes, she was born up in the mountains in um in 1900.

Crista Cowan 5:23

Okay, so did her parents immigrate together or did they immigrate separately?

Rhonda Budge 5:27

They immigrated separately. So he came over, Hans was his uh Danish name. He went by John when he came to America. He came over about 1880, um, and he uh kind of wandered around a little bit. He started in Iowa and made his way out uh further west, came to California, came to San Bernardino, and then actually went up to Oregon for a while and then came back to San Bernardino. What I don't know is where exactly he met Charlotte, um, her mother. Um she came in around eight late 80s.

Crista Cowan 6:02

And um Were they both adults when they came or were they teenagers? Okay.

Rhonda Budge 6:06

He was about 17, she was about 18.

Crista Cowan 6:08

Okay. So did they come with people or by themselves?

Rhonda Budge 6:11

He came with his brother and she came with her sister and a brother as well. Okay. So and they met in San Bernardino and got married, and um and he worked for the Santa Fe Railroad for a while, and then he was working on a road crew that was um working on the Lake Arrowhead Road. And from what I understand from my grandmother, he saw the Skyland Inn and he really liked it, and so they became proprietors of it, and they ran it until Charlotte's death in 1909. And then when she passed away, then he sold the inn and he moved back into the city with my grandmother. And she had an older sister who had just gotten married, and uh they lived in the city until he passed in 1912.

Crista Cowan 7:03

Wow. So was it just Olga and her older sister, or did they have other siblings?

Rhonda Budge 7:07

Um, they had a brother who passed away in 1904. So when she was very young.

Crista Cowan 7:12

Okay, so that's so such an like immigrant story, right?

Rhonda Budge 7:17

Yes. Yes. And and to read the articles about the Skyland Inn, it's so fascinating. And she had a lot of old photos, um, you know, with the uh cow at the inn and the milk wagon. And then um I found in this book called The History of California a biography. It was done in 1907, and so it was a biography of John Hansen and his wife Charlotte, and it talked a lot about the Skyland Inn, details that I never knew. Um, if she had told me I'd forgotten them, but that, you know, there was the main lodge, but then you could also do camping, and then they had cabins that you could rent and all of the things, and then the newspaper articles that I found again around Christmas at Skyland and other people going and visiting Skyland. And up in the mountain areas, there were a lot of these kind of um guest ranches, I guess. And when my grandparents got married in 1923, one of the things that they did for a while shortly after they got married is they ran a uh guest ranch called Moon Camp up at Big Bear Lake. Okay. Now both the Skyland Inn and Moon Camp are now both gone. That um they don't exist anymore. But the interesting thing about Moon Camp um is that it was in the area where, I don't know if you've followed the news at all, where the famed Eagle couple, Jackie and Shadow. Yeah, it's where they have their nests. And now Katie. But uh yeah, so it I didn't know that until one day I was I was watching the Eagle Cam and I was looking at it and I was like, oh gosh, I think this is right near where Moon Camp was. And I looked it up and it was. That's so cool. Um, do you know where Wildwood is?

Crista Cowan 9:05

Yes. Yeah, so that's my grandpa's sister had a cabin in Wildwood. So my dad grew up going up there a lot.

Rhonda Budge 9:12

Yeah, and my my grandmother, she just loved the mountains. And so um, when we would be out in the car anywhere, she'd always say to me, Um, look for the arrowhead. Are you familiar with the arrowhead on the side of the mountain in in San Bernardino? So there's uh Lake Arrowhead, and the reason it got its name is because there's this arrowhead formation on the mountain. And so she'd always say, Look for the arrowhead, look for the arrowhead. Um, and recently I was out there visiting my brother, who still lives in the area, and he's a private pilot, and we flew up to Las Vegas and we went over the mountains and all the way over, I was like, Where's the arrowhead? Where's the arrowhead? And I couldn't find it. And then when we came back, I was like, Where's the arrowhead? And I was pretty sure he was ready to eject me from the plane. And I finally saw it, and I'm like, There's the arrowhead.

Crista Cowan 10:03

How old was your grandma when you were born? She was 64 when I was and how long did you have her?

Rhonda Budge 10:11

20 years. Wow, and that's all that's still does, but she just loved to tell stories, and um she, like I said, she would pull out the photo albums and we would go through, and I would sit next to her and we'd go through the photo albums. And even though I'd heard the stories a million times, I would re-ask, you know, tell me about this. And she had a lot of items that she had kept over the years that um she had a a wool, men's bathing suit that belonged to um my grandfather's uncle email, and it was from the late 1800s, and it the men's bathing suit that comes down to the knees and it has the short sleeves and it feels awful. And it's made out of 100% wool. And I I I would look at it and I'm and plus it's small, and I would think, gosh, what would happen when that got wet? They'd drown.

Crista Cowan 11:06

Um, so did more of Hans and Charlotte's family come over after them?

Rhonda Budge 11:11

Um I don't believe, not that I found on Hans' side. Uh Charlotte had a sister that was here, um, and their daughter Elna was uh right around my grandmother's age, and they'd got into a lot of things. And then um she had a brother that stayed in the Iowa area in Audubon, uh Audubon, Iowa, I believe it was. And did they ever go back to Denmark? My grandmother did go. The um Hans and Charlotte didn't. They both passed away when my grandmother was young. So Charlotte died in 1909, and Hans died in 1912.

Denmark Trips And Family Letters

Rhonda Budge 11:46

Um my grandmother in 1969, she and my grandfather went over to Denmark and they visited um some family there. They had she had found out in the 1950s that she had a cousin who was working as a merchant marine, and he came to California on one of his ships, and they went down to San Pedro and picked him up and took him around and visited all these places in California, you know, the desert and and uh Long Beach and the beaches, etc. And um kind of showed him around. And then in 1969, she and my grandfather went to Denmark, and that was a big deal. I was a little girl, and we all got dressed up because back then you got dressed up to go to the airport, and we drove down to LAX to take grandma and grandpa to the airport and uh had lunch and then waited for them to take off on their flight, and then we went back to pick them up, and she put together this uh very detailed travel biography of all the places that they went and with pictures, and she went to where of the house where her father was born, and she went to her grandfather's grave site, and um, and then they toured around other places in Denmark and then eventually went to England and spent some time there and then came home.

Crista Cowan 13:14

What an amazing trip. So, did had she kept up a correspondence with people in Denmark this whole time or just to plan for the trip?

Rhonda Budge 13:21

She had kept up a correspondence with um Joe, who was the the young um man cousin that had come over on the merchant marine ship, and she'd kept up a correspondence with him up until the time that she died. And then um I had corresponded for a while with his daughter and um and then kind of lost track because as I was working, I didn't do a lot on my family tree. And uh so then when I took it back up and started looking at it again, I kind of tracked her down and and so she and I had corresponded, and she's helped me with some of the translations and things like that.

Crista Cowan 14:04

So

The Heirloom Portrait Everyone Noticed

Crista Cowan 14:05

I love that. Well, the story uh from your family history that caught my attention was about this picture that was hanging in your grandmother's home. How big is this picture?

Rhonda Budge 14:14

It's pretty big. It's the well, the picture is probably about eight by ten, but the frame is quite large and it's deep. It's one of those deep frames. And so altogether it's I don't know, maybe 12 by uh 14. Okay.

Crista Cowan 14:32

It's and I've seen a picture of it. Yes. Like he looks kind of imposing. Yes. As a child, like, did you have a reaction to that photo?

Rhonda Budge 14:42

I I don't think I not negative, other than it was just always fascinating because he is he has very it's one of those where you're depending on where you're sitting in the room, you feel like the eyes are following you. And um, and she always had it hanging in the living area of her house. And so, and it was her prized possession. You know, she had a few things that were very important to her, but that was if if I'm pretty sure if the house was burning down and she could grab only one thing, that would have been what she would have grabbed.

Crista Cowan 15:17

So she so she was nine when her mom died, yes, and twelve when her dad died. Yes. How did she come into possession of this portrait?

Rhonda Budge 15:25

That I'm not entirely sure of. Um, I noted that she had it framed. So she had a photo uh that was it has a torn edge, and she had taken it and gotten it restored. And so if you look at the photo now that's framed, you can kind of see where they blurred it on that one edge. And I actually now have the photo that has the the tear in it. Um I think it must have come when her sister passed, that she probably got it from her sister, but that I don't know for sure. And where did the family get it? Like I think it must have come from her father, and he had gotten it from his father. So did somebody send it to him, or do you think he brought it with him?

Crista Cowan 16:10

I think it's his grandfather? It's his father. It's his father, okay.

Rhonda Budge 16:15

I think he might have brought it with him. Okay. Yeah. He he had come over with a brother, and then he had other brothers and sisters that stayed in Denmark. And um the between the two brothers, they had uh some possessions that they had brought over with them. Um, the photo and and they had talked about some other things that they had brought with them. There was a cup that actually belonged to her great-great-grandfather um that the brother had, and she used to talk about that a lot because it had been inscribed for the her great-grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary.

Crista Cowan 16:54

So what a treasure. Yeah. So it's always amazing to me that some of these immigrants come from so far and they travel by ship and they cross the country and the things that they choose to keep and to protect.

Rhonda Budge 17:06

Yes.

Crista Cowan 17:07

And so a photo of your father, like when you think you may never see him again and he didn't, right? Like that's a big deal to that. He had that.

Rhonda Budge 17:14

Right. And his mother had passed when he was very young. So his mother had passed when I think he was about four or five years old. And so it was just his brother and his father there for a while until he remarried and had other children. Okay. So what is Hans's father's name? Johan. Okay. Johan Christian Hansen. Could you get a more dangerous? Yeah, but it's kind of like searching for John Smith in the United States. So it makes it a little harder, but yes.

Crista Cowan 17:46

Okay. And and did you grow up knowing the story of him? Like, has it always been part of your memory, or is there a moment when you remember hearing the story?

Rhonda Budge 17:56

You know, I think I don't remember a specific moment hearing it. I think I just have, as long as I've known the picture, I've known the story. And Okay, let's

The 1872 Baltic Sea Rescue

Rhonda Budge 18:06

hear it. So the story was that in uh the 1870s in Denmark, there was a flood. And um the Baltic Sea. So now the thing to remember about Denmark at the time, there was on the on the area that's known as, and I apologize for slaughtering Dana's pronunciation, but on the area that's kind of known as Jutland is um where haters slave and that my grandfather, great-great-grandfather lived at. Um, that was under Prussian control. Okay. The area where Copenhagen is was Danish. And so um there was a flood that affected the area that was under the Prussian control, and um it devastated a lot of homes and a lot of people were stranded. My great-great-grandfather was a ship captain. He had a a boat, and he and um some friends of his who also had boats were going out and they were rescuing people from their homes. And um and so when it was all over with, though, his ship was was uh totally lost. It had washed ashore onto a knoll, and there was no salvaging it. And he had um rescued these people, and the Prussian government awarded him some money for his efforts and also a medal. And he was very proud Dane and did not like the fact that the Prussian government was in in Denmark, and so he refused the medal, but he took the money and he divided the money up among some of the people that had lost um their homes in the flood. And so that was the story that I always knew. And so that was kind of the whenever you'd asked who's the person in the picture, that was the story that you got told. I didn't really have a lot of around dates. I didn't know for sure where in Denmark. I knew it was near Hater Slave where he was from. Um, but I didn't know a lot of the details around it. And it and again, you kind of grow up knowing that there's a story, but I think every family has a story. It's it's kind of like the fish story, right? And through the generations it goes from being, yeah, I caught a fish, to next thing you know, they've landed Moby Dick and they're dinging. Right. And so you never know quite how much has been um enhanced over the years.

Crista Cowan 20:41

So is there this moment where you're like, I need to figure out if this is true

Using AI And Archives To Verify

Crista Cowan 20:44

or not?

Rhonda Budge 20:44

Roots tech. Okay. How long ago? So last year. Just this last rootsteck. Uh yeah, the one in March. Okay. So I was sitting in one of the AI um uh sessions that they had, and they were talking about, you know, how helpful AI can be for translation and for um transcription and, you know, kind of digging through large amounts of data to find things. And I thought, you know, I and you had talked in one of our uh pajamas and pedigree session about having research goals. And so I had put together my research goals, and one of them was uh Johann, Johann Christian Hansen, to get more information. Um, I had all of the information that my grandmother had done, um, but it was really just the facts, you know, born in in 1832, died in 1908, married, and so on, but not a lot of the other information. And so when I got back from Roots Tech, I um started playing with AI a little bit, and it dug up some information on the flood. And so I thought, okay, well, now I'm on a I know. That which is true? Yeah, I know that's true. So now what I need to do is find out, you know, the rest of it. So I um wrote a letter to the Hater Slave Arc Archive. And I asked, I, you know, told them everything that I knew.

Crista Cowan 22:17

Did you have the letter translated or did you write it in English?

Rhonda Budge 22:20

I wrote it in English, but I had um AI translate some words because I figured it might be easier, you know, if if some of it was the Danish language. And so I wrote the letter to the archive and asked them to uh give me any information that they had on Johan Christian Hansen. He had been uh a ship captain, believed he was involved in the flood. And what year was the flood? 1872. Okay. Next thing I know about it took about four weeks, but I get an email back from them, and she had included his uh death notice in the paper, and she had translated it for me. And I was reading it and it was all there in the death notice. They wrote the story as part of his obituary. Yeah, they wrote the story as part of his obituary. And and then after he had lost his ship, he stayed in the shipping business. He worked, um, he opened up a store where he sold, you know, shipping-related goods, and he also was involved in the the local insurance, uh, maritime insurance.

Crista Cowan 23:33

So he didn't get another boat.

Rhonda Budge 23:35

He did not get another boat. Okay.

Crista Cowan 23:37

And so if the flood happened in the 1870s and uh Hans did not come to America till the 1880s, yes, he was he may have been involved. He may have helped his dad or he knew the story firsthand.

Rhonda Budge 23:50

Yes, okay. He definitely, I'm sure, knew the story firsthand. I don't know what whether he would have been involved or not. It it happened um a little ways away from Haterslave, from what I've been able to tell on the map, in a town called Halsmund. And um so that's where the rescue took place. But I'm sure the whole area was affected. So, I mean, having been through Hurricane Harvey, it, you know, if that kind of stuff spreads.

Crista Cowan 24:17

So that's amazing. So, was there any more information from the archive? Uh they sent some um I'm being really greedy.

Rhonda Budge 24:26

Yeah, that's fine. They they sent some um some of his maritime records. Okay. So I have those as well. They sent a tax record. Um, everything's in Danish. They did not translate everything, they translated the uh the death notice, but they did not translate everything else. But so I'm still looking through some of that. And um and then I asked uh when my grandmother had gone in 1969, she had taken a picture of his um grave. And uh but when my when in the early late 1990s, early 2000s, my mom and my stepfather went to Denmark and I asked them, hey, you know, while you're there, since you're gonna be in hater slave, would you mind going and asking them if um the grave still exists? And so they went to the cemetery and they said, No, the grave doesn't exist. Um they told my stepfather that what happens is, you know, they basically recycle the the land. That is very European. Yes. And um, and and that they they um possibly had paved over that area. And so the way my stepfather put it to me is he was quite the jokester. He said, We did not visit your grandfather's grave, but we may have uh driven over it at one point. Like, okay. So I had asked the archive, you know, do you know if the grave still exists? And so then they referred me to the church where he would the burial was um handled through. And I wrote them as well. And they wrote back, they were also very helpful and said, Yes, we can confirm that uh we did handle the burials through this church. We believe he was buried at this cemetery, but the grave no longer exists. And they didn't get into any details.

Obituary Details And A Danish Flag Burial

Crista Cowan 26:31

So wow, that's amazing.

Rhonda Budge 26:33

But I have the old photo.

Crista Cowan 26:35

Well, and not really like when you think about what perpetuates stories, oftentimes it is some kind of a visual cue to tell the story, right? Uh to remember the story, to like make sure that people have curiosity about it. So the fact that it hung in your grandmother's home and she told the story to you, she inherited it from her father, right? However, it came to her. I think that's that's amazing.

Rhonda Budge 26:59

Yeah. And she was so so proud of it. And and it's such a striking photo. Uh, even in the, you know, the 30 years that I've had it hanging in my house, um, people will come in and they'll see it and they'll, you know, who is that? And I'll tell them the story. And well, that's my great-great-grandfather. And it was something she was very proud of. And so when she passed, or before she passed, she asked me. She said, you know, I don't know who it was just my dad. And she said, I don't know who's going to want to to take the photo, and and um, I want it to go to someone who will appreciate it. And and I told her I would I would take it. Yes, please. So um, and it's uh it's moved with us as we've gone through the years, and it is hung somewhere, always somewhere um where it can be viewed, at least by me, maybe not in an area where everybody else can see it, but at least where I can.

Crista Cowan 28:00

So well, you said earlier if there was a fire and your grandmother would grab one thing, it would be that. You don't live in fire country, you live in hurricane country, but probably a similar sentiment.

Rhonda Budge 28:11

Yes, and it it has made it into the back of the car along with the dogs.

Crista Cowan 28:17

It has been kept safe all this time. Yes. So um in the obituary about the event, did it list anything about the people he rescued?

Rhonda Budge 28:29

Um, no, it just uh mentioned that the the area that that it happened. Uh they were on the attic of their house. And again, you know, that um as I was reading the article, I I can so you know, those are visuals that we have seen multiple times. We've never had to deal with it, knock on wood and and thank you, but um we've seen it on the TV a lot, and so I can I can only imagine, you know, at that time, well, first of all, you've got to think about it was the Baltic Sea. Yeah. So, and it was uh November. So yeah, not warm water. And um, and I imagined raging. And so um I can only imagine the fear of being, you know, on a house that's being pounded by seawater and wondering, is anybody gonna come? And in the death notice, what it says is that he and one of the other um uh ship captains, they didn't have a big enough boat to take everybody. So what they did was he stayed behind on the house while they brought people in. And um, and then eventually they were able to get everybody rescued. Wow. And he in the death notice, it also said that he um had always wanted to be buried with the Danish flag that had flown on his ship. That was the one thing that he had from his ship, was the Danish flag, and he wanted to be buried with that, and so they had buried him. The family had made sure that the the Don and Brag flag was with him.

Crista Cowan 30:07

Wow. That's so cool. Um so the genealogist in me just wants to go see if there's like newspapers at the time that listed the names of the survivors. I would want to be doing their family tree.

Rhonda Budge 30:18

Like, do you know this story? Yeah, I may have to do that next. I was just this is all so recent, and I was able to confirm that all of this actually happened. That's so cool.

Crista Cowan 30:28

Rhonda, thank you so much for sharing that story. That's amazing. I love that. And thank you for coming all the way from Texas. I know you had some stops along the way, but coming to be here in person to share it too. I love that.

One Word One Story Chocolate

Crista Cowan 30:40

Well, before I let you go, we have this new segment in season three called One Word, One Story. Oh. Okay. Our word is chocolate. So, do you have a story about chocolate?

Rhonda Budge 30:58

Um, only that I'm a self-affirmed chocolate. Okay. Did that come from somebody? Uh, probably my grandmother, I'm sure. Um she was a chocolate as well. And um so I I can honestly say that there is never chocolate far from me wherever I'm at.

Crista Cowan 31:18

And um, do you have a particular brand of chocolate that you love?

Rhonda Budge 31:21

Ghirardelli. I'm I'm from California. So Ghirardelli, I I can remember as a kid, we used to always go up to San Francisco at least once a year, and we would go to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory and we'd watch them make the chocolate, and then my mom would let us uh buy some. My other memory is that uh C's candies were the big in California. And there was a C's candy in the mall that we used to go shopping at. And so whenever, and it was right in the door, the in the main entrance of the mall. And so whenever we would go to the mall, my mom would say, Okay, if you guys are good on the way out, I'll let you get some C's candy. And so we always were made sure we we met that goal so that on the way out of the store, we could stop at C's Candy and and pick out a candy.

Crista Cowan 32:09

That's so fun. I am also a California girl, so um you know C's candy. So I know C's candy well, yes. That was my grandmother. She used to, we wouldn't get the chocolates, she would always get herself a box of chocolates, but we would get the suckers. Do you remember those? Yes. So good. So here's my chocolate story. So I went to grade school in a little town in central California called Turlock. And uh it's not far if you head up toward the Sierra Nevadas. There was a town called Oakdale.

Rhonda Budge 32:35

Okay.

Crista Cowan 32:36

And Oakdale had a Hershey factory.

Rhonda Budge 32:38

Oh, wow.

Crista Cowan 32:39

Uh-huh. And so whenever we would go like up to Columbia or up to the mountains camping, every time we came back down, headed home, we would stop at the Hershey Factory. You had to take the tour, but if you took the tour, you got a free candy bar. Um, and so that was also like every time anybody would come visit, we'd be like, Do you want to go to the Hershey factory? Because that meant free chocolate. So that is one of my favorite childhood memories.

Rhonda Budge 33:03

Well, I'm gonna have to check that out.

Crista Cowan 33:05

I don't even know if it's still there. Well, that is the one

Share Your Chocolate Story

Crista Cowan 33:09

word. I would love to hear what your one story is. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave it in the comments. Do you have a chocolate story? If you're listening on a podcast app, uh you can put it on Facebook, you can put it on Instagram, tag me so I can read it. I would love to have you share that with me. Well, Rhonda, thank you again for being here. Thank you for sharing Johan and Olga with us. She sounds like she was a delightful grandma.

Closing Thanks And Sponsor

Rhonda Budge 33:47

Studio sponsored by Ancestry.