52 Ancestors Project - Luck

As part of genealogy project I am working on this year. I am participating in 52 ancestors in 52 weeks- Amy Johnson Crow's Blog. Every week is a prompt and last week's prompt was "Luck".  I haven't shared any of these on my blog but with all this free time I am going to start.

One of my favorite photos of my husband's grandfather, Charlie Berg is the one below. We called him Pappy. Pappy is holding a 4 leaf clover. He often looked for them.

Charlie was LUCKY. He was born to Geneva and Carl Berg in 1920 near Aiken, Minnesota. At 5 months old, his mom left. She literally left him in the front of the fire and never returned. It was the middle of winter in Minnesota. His Dad found him in a cold house and ran carrying him all the way to his grandparent's house, Bonsak and Hilda Berg, who lived on the neighboring farm. He spent his early years on their farm. His grandmother raised him.

During WWII , he was in the Army Corp of Engineers. In Charlie's words, "Then they needed a CAT skinner and I got the job. When I climbed on the CAT, a guy told me I was the 7th one, the previous six had died. So I told him, seven was my lucky number! And it was, I made it without a scratch from Normandy to Munich."

Charlie was a survivor in every sense. He survived cancer, heart attack, the death of his wife. Things that have done others in he survived. He lived an amazing 98 years.