Way back when, in 1963 and then again in 1969, two baby girls were born to Janice (Keilholtz) Landis and Wesley Landis. While raising the two of us, they attempted to teach us many life lessons. One of the more important ones being trust! The others being love and respect and so on.

Janice and Wes truly loved, respected, and trusted each other. My sister and I witnessed this on a daily basis while growing up. Anyone who knew or met them could see it right away.

However, I didn't know that the true lessons of love, respect, and most of all trust were taught to us more not in life but in death. The death of our mother, Janice (Keilholtz) Landis.

Now when Mom was alive, she had a box. It was her box. My sister and I had no knowledge of this box. Dad knew of the box but not of the contents! Mom had told him, "This is my box, and you don't look in it!" And you know, he ever did! That is until she passed away. Then when he was cleaning out a closet, he came across the box. When he opened it, he discovered scrapbooks she had put together. In one of them, he found several poems she had written, one of which was all the way back when she was in sixth grade. She kept all of these a secret! We had no idea she had written any of them. She loved, respected, but most of all trusted our dad to not look in the box, and he never did until her death. As we read through them, we found they were too beautiful to be kept a secret anymore and wanted to share them with everyone. We hope you will enjoy them as much as we do!

—Wesley Landis, Leann (Landis) Weaver, and Jennifer (Landis) Wootten