1948

In August of 1948, Harry Truman was the president of the United States. On May 14, the state of Israel was proclaimed. That summer, LBJ celebrated his fortieth birthday and became a United States senator the next day. A brand new Cadillac cost $5000.00 that year, and a gallon of gas was twenty-five cents. For two hundred fifty dollars you could buy a ten-inch television set and for twenty-one cents you could smoke a pack of cigarettes while you watched it. 1948 was the year Porsche was introduced, and the U.S. Supreme Court ended religious instruction in public schools. U.S. News and World Report began publication and the Cleveland Indians won the World Series. The game Scrabble was copyrighted. An engineer named Georg de Mestral was walking through the woods with his dog and became fascinated by the way burrs stuck to his wool suit. Then and there he conceived the idea of velcro.

A young mother and her husband had also conceived a daughter who made her debut in August of 1948. Jim and Florene lived at 648 Keen Avenue in Ashland, Ohio. Jim was the associate sales manager for Western and Southern Life Insurance Company. He was a twenty-nine year old veteran of World War II who had returned from North Africa to marry Florene after D-Day. Florene was thirty-four years old that year. Dr. Paul Kellogg had delivered her first daughter eighteen months prior to August 3; so, he was there for the delivery of this seven pound, four and half ounce baby girl. Florene, or Flossie, as she was affectionately nicknamed, had been pregnant for nine and a half months and she was in labor for three hours before Kay Kimberly Strickling arrived red and hollering at Samaritan Hospital.

"You made my whole being; You formed me in my mother's body. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother's body. When I was put together there, You saw my body as it was formed. All the days planned for me were written in Your Book before I was one day old." Psalm 139