This comes to us from
Silvio's sister, Ethel Maso Paoletti. In 2007 she sent me
Silvio's scrapbook to copy. She wrote: "As promised, here
is my brother Silvio's scrapbook for whatever use you can
make of it in connection with the history of Freeland. ...
'Sil' was my parents' firstborn child, who was born July
22, 1917, and died April 3, 2007. Their second son died in
infancy, but they went on to have seven more sons and two
daughters, all of whom grew to adulthood ... Sil was the
only one of my siblings to finish college. ..." The
article at left discussed Silvio's passion for volunteering
and how that was instilled in him through his experiences as
an Eagle Scout. At right is Silvio in his 1932 FHS class
group photo. The entire photo can be seen on the page of student class photos,
about 2/3 of the way down the page.
I copied his scrapbook and
mailed the original back to Ethel, later giving a paper copy
to Tom Landers for the Freeland historical society. Now,
years later, I'm posting the scans of Silvio's scrapbook
here so that others can enjoy it. His pages begin in 1931,
when he was 14 years old, ending in 1939, with the addition
of one more page from 1956. Major themes range from local
and national sports to automobiles, aviation, and national
and international politics. Think of this boy and later
young man making this collection of articles about
everything that interested him -- growing up in a small town
and keeping his finger on the pulse of news items large and
small. It's no wonder that his sister Ethel wanted to share
it with everyone, and to share him with everyone in this
way. Silvio died in 2007, and his obituary is shown at
right.
Clicking the links below will open the Adobe PDF files of
this scrapbook. If you don't have Adobe Reader on your
computer you can download it for free at www.adobe.com.
Silvio
Mason scrapbook, part 1 - (PDF file size = 8 MB)
Silvio
Mason scrapbook, part 2 - (PDF file size = 9.7 MB)
Silvio
Mason scrapbook, part 3 - (PDF file size = 9.8 MB)
Silvio
Mason scrapbook, part 4 - (PDF file size = 11.7 MB)
Please know that the actual scrapbook was all one book,
not divided into parts as I have done here. I've divided
it just so that it's not too much to download at one time.
Thank you to Ethel Maso Paoletti for sharing this
remarkable record of her brother and his life and times.
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