“Harvesting Memories” abounds with intimate and heartfelt recollections from “a lone survivor” of a family and, by extension, a way of life that has virtually disappeared from the American landscape. The life she vividly portrays as a child growing up in rural Ohio as the youngest member of a farm family in the 1950s and 1960s— one generation away from two sets of grandparents who immigrated from Czechoslovakia— taught her invaluable life lessons among its triumphs and setbacks. Coal mining and farming coexisted as unlikely bedfellows in that part of the country, but the author’s father, who dropped out of school to work in the mines, ultimately came to live a hardscrabble but fulfilling life as a farmer dedicated to his undying belief that “the land will feed you.”
Edward Cermak’s realized dream of providing for his family by living off the land came with a death sentence of Black Lung Disease from his years of breathing in coal dust. He and wife, Anna, were married at the onset of the Great Depression, a most challenging time, and it is fair to say that they shared a prodigious workload and occasional hardship over several decades of farming and never regretted their journey together. The greater the difficulties, the harder they worked, and the more they learned to adapt.
As for daughter, Linda— the baby and unexpected addition to the family joining a much older sister and brother— her two decades on the farm were so special that she, as sole survivor, had to put it all into the words that comprise this book as she embarked into her seventies. There are many stories, from the exultant to the tragic, told in these pages. Linda takes you back in time through her memories and, ultimately, sharing the many truths that came to serve her well as a wife, mother, and grandmother.
Perhaps most fascinating is a way of life so reliant on and respectful of family and neighbors captured in this memoir. You might even find yourself, as did the author in her youth, enjoying the antics of a pet groundhog or “dealing with the meanest gobbler ever to walk the face of the earth.”
It is a compilation of stories and maxims that can only be shared by a dwindling number of those among us who have experienced this rapidly disappearing way of life.
“All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated equally to the Dillonvale High School Alumni Association and to the community of East Palestine, Ohio who suffered the tragic train derailment in 2023, in memory of Linda’s Dad and Mom, Ed and Anna Cermak.”
About the author:
Linda Lee Cermak Kocan, the youngest of three children, is the second daughter and only surviving child of the late Edward and Anna Cermak of Dillonvale, Ohio. At 71 years of age, Linda decided to take pencil to paper and record her experiences and lessons learned growing up on her small 150-acre family farm in Ohio’s Jefferson County in the 1950s and 1960s. Just jot down a few interesting stories in a notebook to tell her children and grandchildren about their rootsand pass on some important life values she had learned during those years.
A vociferous reader, Linda is not a formally trained writer, but this memoir reveals a natural talent for writing about what is most important in life via an approach that is inviting, gentle and authentically warm and loving.
She asks that you place your hand in hers as she takes you on a virtual journey back in time to her farm and a childhood replete with memories told in an unpretentious style that can be humorous, charming and, at times, assertive and life-affirming. She promises that Harvesting Memories will inspire and inform you in ways you might
find surprising.
Linda currently lives in the verdant countryside outside of Towanda, Pennsylvania, with Mark, her husband of 52-plus years. They live on a 22-acre piece of land, which they share with deer, various wild critters and their 17-year-old cat, Sydney.