When I visit an estate sale or any kind of weekend sale I honestly don’t know I am looking for. It could be old, it could be new, it may be some kind gadget, or discounted, discontinued technology. An estate, tag, or garage sale is free reign for my curious soul to explore possibilities. It is a quest to make the unfamiliar, familiar.
When I walked into this bethel home back in 2012, I wasn’t expecting much. It was a new home with some construction going on and there were mostly new items on the porch. Inside was a different story.
This was the home of someone who had owned an estate sale service. Around the living room were various “lots” of items. There were different kinds of collectables, but none caught my eye until I came upon a dining table in front of the fireplace. On it was an assortment of papers and pamphlets packed in wooded box.
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Among the dried newspaper was a folder, when I lifted it out the seller came up to me and gave me some background. “This is some military memorabilia from a home in Danbury, an estate I cleared out a few years ago.” After settling on $20 for the lot, I made my way back to the car and back home to review what I had found.
Despite the fact that the newsprint and photos were deteriorating, I uncovered a partial record of 2 brothers who had served in World War II. John and Martin Krizan were just 2 of 13 Krizan children from Danbury. From the news clippings I learned that John Krizan had lost his life fighting in Africa and Martin had returned home safely.I held on to these papers and pictures for a while, feeling that this was too personal to share on the internet and also wondering why there wasn’t any family left that would want these few remnants of their relatives. This is not uncommon, I have had people literally hand me their family memories at sales because there just wasn’t any room in their lives to keep it. Read how the Krizan family was found and see the restoration of the group photo above, here.
