Despite the town named Janesville in Wisconsin, it appears that our antecedents seem to be in the Eire Canal region of New York States.
It appears that my Great Grandfather Janes was a Minister as were others in the family. Eventually sometime before the turn of the century part of the family
traveled down the canal to the Hudson River and from there to Yonkers just north of New York City. My father's father married in Yonkers but eventually
moved to River Edge, New Jersey, about twenty five miles due west of New York City. My grandfather commuted via train to the city most of his life, walking
about three miles from the house to the train station and return. Needless to say he was as skinny as a rail.
My mother was born in River Edge the daughter of a wealthy farming family, the youngest daughter in a family of fourteen children. The Bogert family has a
history in the United States dating back to the New Amsterdam period of the 16th Century.
As the land in the area grew more valuable much of the land was sold off and my Mother's father dabbled in local politics for several decades. There are streets
and building all through the county bearing the name of Bogert.
My father, the oldest of two sons, decided to make the military a career, and took the most obvious route to do. He stayed on active duty until 1965, returned to
the University of Maryland to pursue an advanced degree in education specializing in reaching those sweet little darlings that other teachers couldn't reach.
My mother, a graduate of Montclair State Teachers College with a degree in mathematics pursued her career later in life after my brother and I were able to fend for ourselves, indeed, I had left home by that time. She enjoyed teaching very much and simply couldn't understand why people did not see the beauty of math. Of course this became a phobia for me.
There are two brothers, little Ol' me being the oldest. My baby brother Clint is a space cadet working for the NROA doing research using large array antennas in Socorro, New Mexico, Maua, Hawaii and in Chile. He states the purpose is to attempt to contact "intelligent life" in extraterrestrial space; I sort of think that the search should first start here on Earth. During an early assignment at the observatory near Ft Davis, Texas, he met and married Jacque. He has two progeny, daughter works in Albuquerque, the son works in Seattle.
Me, I have a very spotted past. I joined the military less than a year after high school, didn't like it, got out for a year, and went back and made it a career having overseas tours in Puerto Rico, Alaska, Korea, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia plus a couple I prefer not to discuss. I retired while during an assignment in Stuttgart, Germany. Shortly after I left for Korea, worked for Westinghouse Nuclear building power plants until the plants were complete and then returned to federal civil service. Of course I fell in love with Korea and a Korean, Mimi, and the two of us have tramped around the world ever since. While living in Korea I pursued advanced studies and managed trips to Japan, Taiwan, The Philippines, The People's Republic and Hongkong. We are ardent photographers and amassed a collection of some thirty thousand slides in the Orient. We also were acquired by a Yorkshire Terrier - Thai - who allowed us to share his life for twenty years.
We left Korea for German in December 1986, living in Aschaffenburg for eight years and outside of Heidelberg for two before it was time to return to the United States and plan for retirement. While in Germany we became addicted to Volksmarching and did these hikes over all the former Western Block countries plus East German, Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
We traveled as much as possible, putting over 650,000 kilometers on our poor "House of Wheels." We managed to travel as far North as the Scandinavian countries, East to Hungry and the Ukraine, South to Sicily and Spain, and West to England. Additional trips were made to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Turkey, Egypt and Malta. We did one long trip in France to photograph the Gothic cathedrals of France, another trip to photograph the chateaus of the Loire. Other long trips were made to the Iberian Peninsula and several were made to Italy.
Since returning to the states we have acquired "Tiny", another home on wheels and have made trips to Michigan, Florida, Niagara Falls, Montreal and Quebec and the last trip was to Nova Scotia. Most of these trips were for volksmarching purposes and of course for photography. We have gone almost exclusively digital making it much easier to show and to archive.
I retired the 20th of October and once my Honey Do list is whittled down to reasonable size plan on traveling around the United States and visit the National Parks and in some, volunteer for a while.