The quiet joy of discovery

Oftentimes a search is called.  We decide we must find a particular item.  And off we go.  The search is hard, tedious, eye-tiring and brain-number work.  It involves digging into digital records from all sorts of sources. And the search goes on and on and ON, seemingly without end.  Oftentimes, we come close to despair that our search will ever prove successful.  But we never give up.  We never give in.  We keep searching and searching and BELIEVE we will find our quest...that one ONE particular item can fulfill.

And so it has been for days and days, going on close to a week now.  We decided we MUST find a photo of Arthur Lorenzo Crawford.  No matter what, we were going find his photo and we didn't care how long it took.  His picture HAD to be out there somewhere and somehow we kept thinking it HAD to be right under our nose.  But our nose simply couldn't find Crawford's picture....until just before 7 PM Wednesday evening.  Bingo, we got out man.  Man!  It's such a rush.  Oh! The quiet joy of discovery.  We sit silently here at the computer basking in the glow of hours and hours of work.

I guess in some sort of strange way, it is these types of moments that make it all worthwhile.  Not all searches are successful.  In fact, I'd guess less than half reach their goal.  So we know fruitlessness and disappointment equally as well as the quiet joy.  But it's that quiet joy that continues to draw us in for yet another improbable quest. Because we know if we win--if our search is successful we will once again feel the bright glow of that quiet joy.  And so it was this evening.

And so who was Arthur L. Crawford?  Well, you can read a lot about him in the clipping below. (You can enlarge the clipping by going to the source link here:  https://www.newspapers.com/clip/88712811/arthur-l-crawford-1946/

We became smitten with Mr. Crawford because of a portion of his remarks at the 1946 Hite Dedication Ceremony.  He essentially equated the new road between Hankville and Blanding using Arth Chaffin's brand new bubba-boy ferry boat across The Colorado River as the opening of "the last frontiers of loneliness"!  Well, when I read those words and understood their context, I simple HAD to find a photo of this eloquent man.

Indeed, it was Arthur Crawford's speech at the 1946 Hite Dedication that triggered our full understanding of the significance of that ceremony and what it meant on so many different levels.
We're getting much closer to closure on our Hite Project now.  The pieces are coming together and we think we can make this jigsaw puzzle visible to one and all...and soon.  Thanks, Arthur!