As our current active members grow older, it is vitally important that we have younger members of the family ready to step into leadership roles.

You can help prepare your children and grandchildren to be active NAVVF participants. Sign them up now as junior members. Show them pictures of VVs in the newsletter. Tell them stories about their VV ancestors. As children get older, give NAVVF memberships as holiday gifts. Bring them to reunions - just this week I had a letter from the mother of an 11 and an 8 year-old who really enjoyed last year's reunion at Hartford.

Get started now involving the young ones in your family. We'll need them down the road!

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One of best things about being Membership Chairman is the letters I get from VV descendants who have just discovered the NAVVF. "Where have you been all my life?" one enthusiastic family researcher wrote. "My sister and I have been searching for other VV's for years." Another VV said, "At last a ladder to get over this brick wall I've been up against for so long!"

It's most fun, of course, when we can point people to data either in the VV Genealogy books or in the database on the NAVVF website. But I get a number of queries about VV ancestors for whom the NAVVF has no data. You'll see some of these in the "Queries" column in this issue. Obviously, there are many more VV's in this country than are enrolled in our organization. And that's a challenge for our Membership Committee. So here's how you can help.

Keep your eyes and ears open for references to the name Van Valkenburg. Check your phone book at home or when you travel. Listen for VVs on the radio or TV. Look in newspapers or magazines, on the Internet or just in daily conversation. When you hear about a VV, try to track them down. Tell them about the NAVVF. Show them a newsletter. Send their name and address to me and I'll send out an information packet. If each NAVVF member could do this, our numbers would continue to grow. And so would the family history data that our genealogist compiles.

From: Florence Davis