Family Tree
CABOT — More than 250 family pictures hang from the branches of an 8-foot artificial tree in Peg Traggiai's living room.
"It's my family tree," said Traggiai, 92.
Traggiai has enough photographs to fill dozens of albums, but she prefers to have them on display at her home.
"It's nice to have them out where you can see them, instead of in an album," said Traggiai, who has three children, eight grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
Encased in small plastic frames on key chains, the pictures span more than 60 years and show her family in countless stages of life.
The collection includes smiling newlyweds, newborn babies, children's school portraits and even a black-and-white photograph of Traggiai's late husband Dario Traggiai in his Army uniform, lovingly placed near the top of the tree.
"It goes back to her parents and grandparents and my father's side of the family," said Jane Cooper of Cabot, Traggiai's daughter.
Traggiai displayed a similar tabletop-sized tree with family pictures each year during the holidays, but decided she'd like to keep the pictures out year-round.
"I had so many (photographs), I thought I might as well get a bigger tree," she said.
Last summer, she made phone calls and sent letters and e-mails to relatives in more than 20 states in search of pictures."I started collecting pictures from all the family last summer and I'm still collecting," Traggiai said. "Some of them live so far away that I'm still waiting on a picture from them."Almost every picture shows a different family member, although there are a few duplicates, Cooper said.Using her home computer, Cooper scans the submitted photographs and resizes them to fit the key chain cases.Most of the pictures are about 2 inches by 3 inches, she said."It's one of those projects that starts out small and keeps growing," Cooper added.Cooper and sister Donna Bocchi, also of Cabot, frequently pick up frames at craft stores to keep up with their mother's project."(The stores) keep running out," Traggiai said. "They'd get more and I would buy them all!"The influx of pictures has slowed considerably since Traggiai began the project."It gets hard with everyone scattered all over the place," Traggiai said. "It's getting harder to track people down and find new additions."Traggiai isn't sure how many more pictures she needs to complete the project because she doesn't know how many children some of the distant relatives have.She plans to keep working on the tree indefinitely and has no plans to dismantle the display."It's staying up, you worked too hard on it," Cooper said, putting an arm around Traggiai's shoulders.Also, the tree is a work in progress as new babies join the family."The family keeps growing and growing," Traggiai said proudly.
