What do I do with Dad's diplomas?

November 10, 2008 4:27 AM

My Dad died October 4 of this year, and I wound up with a big box of all his framed diplomas and certifications. 3 are his college degrees (Masters in Music Theory, PhD in Electrical Engineering). Then there are a bunch of others, like his engineering licenses.

Maybe just an aspect of grieving, but I felt like it would have been disrespectful to just toss them curbside. I don't know what to do with them. I don't feel any need to hang them up. Should I return them to the universities or just throw them out?

posted by yoga to human relations (25 comments total)

save-em for your kids. you could get a nice archival album for the certificates and re-use the frames/matts if u want?
posted by By The Grace of God at 4:38 AM on November 10, 2008

Sorry for your loss. I'm seconding the archival frame. You could have a small box or chest with some other of his keepsakes, too. Your kids, and their kids, will thank you.
posted by boeing82 at 5:02 AM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

Every normal person who inherits a quantity of stuff (as opposed to mere money, or an empty house, or whatever) gets this same feeling. What was precious to them, what's just junk? Did you throw out their favorite watch, and keep a teaspoon they unintentionally took home from work? Are these paintings all $5 garage sale junk, or is there a $5,000 rare piece among them?

The only solution is not to worry about it. The same sentimental argument can be made to keep anything of your dad's. So instead, keep a few things. Keep those things that are independently useful to you, that you didn't actually own before you inherited it. Keep those things that would appeal to you, even if they hadn't been your dads. And keep one (or maybe a few, but well-separated in their use and nature, like a clock and a teacup) item that strongly reminds you of your dad. Everything else, you can sell, give away, or junk, but you can't keep it.

Now in your case maybe someone else has already done the above, and the box of diplomas are what you got at the "give away" stage for them. Just because they gave it to you, and it was your dad's, doesn't oblige you to keep them. Maybe keep one: the best-looking one, or his first degree, or his highest degree, or the degree he (in your mind) was most proud of and interested in. Or the one you think he'd have wanted you to keep.

As for all the rest, the least "disrespectful" thing you can do, IMO, is take out the diplomas etc from the frames, and use the frames for pictures that you yourself enjoy.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:03 AM on November 10, 2008 [3 favorites]

(Recycle the diplomas; unless there is something extremely unusual about them, making them of independent historical or typographical or other interest, the university will not want them. It's in the business of handing them out.)
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:05 AM on November 10, 2008

I'm so sorry for your loss.

One thing to consider is that you don't need to make a final decision right now, when the grief is so new. You can wait a while and then decide whether or not the diplomas are meaningful to you and something you want to keep.
posted by jeri at 5:17 AM on November 10, 2008 [2 favorites]

Do not get rid of them. Remove them from the frames, get some acid-free paper and an archival acid-free envelope, then layer them as such: a-f paper : diploma : a-f paper : diploma : a-f paper : diploma : a-f paper etc, etc. Now instead of a big box you have a slim envelope. Now you have a manageable sized package to store as you wish.

With due respect to aeschenkarnos, its by throwing out things like this that we lose our family history. If it were me, I would store them away in a nice box along with any letters you have in his handwriting, twenty or so photos that you feel really capture him, maybe a piece of clothing (a tie or a ball cap or t-shirt or whatever reminds you of him) and be sure to include everything you know about him: his full name (maybe a copy of his birth and death certificate?), birthplace, siblings, some stories about him. After all, he's your dad.

If nothing else, some future generation will treasure this little glimpse of him as a person.
posted by anastasiav at 5:20 AM on November 10, 2008 [10 favorites]

Put them on the best scanner you have access to and scan them at the highest setting you can. Then put the files in folder on your hard drive called family history (or some such) or maybe set up a bio page about your dad on the web somewhere in case distant relatives somewhere are doing research.

Of the remainder, pick the ones that seem like they might be the most significant (I think aeschenkarnos "most proud of" might be the best criterion) from a family history point of view and put them in a scrap book or some such. See if other family members have any interest in some of the others, and if not, I'd go ahead and dispose of them.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:24 AM on November 10, 2008

My Dad, still alive, gave me his grade school class photo. It has about 125+ kids in it taken outside on the playground of PS 99 in Brooklyn. As it turned out with my children, my wife was just a delivery vehicle for kids who look exactly like my side of the family. My youngest could have been my father's identical twin at the same age. He loves the picture as do I. But, if you look real closely there is a kid named Allen Stewart Konigsberg in the picture too. He decided to make his name easier. He now calls himself Woody Allen. If I told you Woody Allen was in this picture from 60-65 years ago of over 125 boys you would be able to pick him out.

I am not sure if it applies directly to your diploma dilemma, but before you toss out historical artifacts from a relative think about the future uses. While i agree that keeping every item is over the top, diplomas, pictures, school report cards, etc can be kept with minimal effort and minimal space.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 5:35 AM on November 10, 2008 [2 favorites]

I think it might be too soon to make any decisions about what you might want to keep or pitch. My dad passed away when I was young and had a ton of stuff, including professional commendations, so I do know where you are coming from. If you can, put this stuff away for a while, and in a few months you might be able to sort out what's really important to keep and what you can part with. I also think the idea of scanning them is a fabulous one.
posted by katemcd at 6:05 AM on November 10, 2008

There's really no right answer to a question like this. I myself am not sentimental about objects and would not keep the diplomas; but then, I don't buy souvenirs on vacation and have no trouble getting rid of my own old stuff. I've accepted that I am not that person who's going to end up with the unexpectedly valuable archive of family lore in the attic.

Other people are their family's archivists and historians. My mom is that way. She's the one who went through old photos, carried them around to family events and showed them to old people until the people in them had all been identified, wrote the info on the back in pencil, then had high-quality reproductions made, put them in albums, and gave them to everybody who was interested.

So: which person are you? It's actually OK to be either one of those people, or anybody in between.

People are giving you lots of conflicting advice. Which advice resonates with you? That's the advice you should take.
posted by not that girl at 6:18 AM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

Call an artists' supply store for ideas about how to store them - portfolios the right size, acid-free paper to put between each, they'll know what to do. Do keep them, and I'd keep all of them: it sounds like an interesting part of his story is the sheer number of accomplishments he had. I'd love to have something like that from my grandfather, the only person in my family (before me and, I hope, some of the other grandchildren) to graduate from college.
posted by amtho at 6:18 AM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

I have old diplomas, military discharge papers, etc. from my Dad and did what Kid Charlemagne suggested. I scanned everything in to my computer and put the originals away for safe keeping. I couldn't imagine throwing that stuff away and hope that my kids or even their kids will appreciate seeing them some day.
posted by gfrobe at 6:48 AM on November 10, 2008

With due respect to aeschenkarnos, its by throwing out things like this that we lose our family history.

With due respect to anastasiav, diplomas and certificates are not family history, they're junk unless they're yours (in which case they're still mostly junk but you probably have some sort of attachment to them). I went through this with my father, who was in the foreign service and had dozens of framed certificates; I used aeschenkarnos's approach and picked out a few particularly interesting ones to keep and chucked the rest, along with decades' worth of accumulated crap that my parents saved for the usual reasons of sentiment and laziness that most of us save crap. My brother and I filled up a dumpster with stuff from the house, most of which had been untouched, unseen, and unthought-of for decades (and my brother, getting into the spirit, dumped out a lot of his own crap at the same time). My wife and I are planning to purge our own crap before we die so our heirs and assigns don't have to go through this agonizing process. Save photos, letters, diaries, and other things that actually bring a person to life; official documents are by and large pointless to have around unless you need them.
posted by languagehat at 7:08 AM on November 10, 2008

In the last year I have lost my husband and both parents. Do not make any decisions about what to keep or get rid of just yet. Let things settle.
posted by bjgeiger at 7:17 AM on November 10, 2008

I just came in here to say that with graduate degrees in Music Theory and Electrical Engineering, your father must have been a cool guy. My condolences.
posted by PercussivePaul at 7:39 AM on November 10, 2008

If nothing else, some future generation will treasure this little glimpse of him as a person.

This is a nice romantic idea, but there's also the possibility that they'll sit unopened in your attic until you move, and then get dragged to your next home to sit unopened in your attic until you move, ad infinitum, until you die and your kid or grandkid opens yet another box of papers that he doesn't actually have any connection to at all.

As a compromise measure, if the frames are nice you could always use the new frames and leave the old diploma or whatever behind what you currently display -- just the document behind the matting, so it doesn't take up any space.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:47 AM on November 10, 2008

Beyond saving "photos, letters, diaries, and other things that actually bring a person to life" (LH, above), over time it's good to start organizing that material into the start of a family archive. In a few exceptional cases like this one, even an unorganized archive of stuff carted up to the attic over the course of a few hundred years has proved to be of great historical value. Most of us are not historical personages and don't have historic homes or businesses. Still, generations hence, families may appreciate having a trove of personal stuff saved by several generations, and adding some level of curation and organization to it will enhance its value. Whether you decide to save the diplomas or not, this is your chance to start that process.
posted by beagle at 8:02 AM on November 10, 2008

I have 20 years or so of my father's letters to me, and am "in process" of putting each one in a plastic sleeve and putting them in binders chronologically. (I started a couple years ago and got too sad.) If I had diplomas I might stick them in a sleeve, too.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 8:26 AM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was/am a kid who *loves* finding old documents related to my family. I love old documents, pictures, random ephemera from the past- anything. Do what anastasiav says, for the sake of your future grandkids who are like me.
posted by MadamM at 9:24 AM on November 10, 2008

I'd get an artist portfolio album with clear sleeves and slip them in there, if you are sure you want to hang on to them. Won't take up much space, they'll be visible and not in a box.
posted by sully75 at 9:40 AM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

If you decide not to keep them, find out if there is a small local history museum wherever your father grew up and/or spent most of his life. The caretakers of such places walk a fine line between historical preservation and compulsive hoarding, and chances are your documents will be welcomed and whisked away to sit in some appropriated binder in a back room. If your (possibly hypothetical) children want to know more about their grandfather, they can visit the museum and get a dose of weird caretaker and local history at the same time.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 10:38 AM on November 10, 2008

My father passed away over 20 years ago, and I'm only now scanning old photos of him, as well as photos he took when he hitchhiked around Europe in his early 20's. I've also got a tin full of old pre-decimal currency, a tin of foreign coins, as well as a folder of foreign notes from his travels. I'm torn between keeping them for the hell of it, or selling them on ebay. I think I'll leave it for my kids to decide (if I ever have any).

I was 5 years old when my father died, I don't really remember him at all, so anything that helps paint a picture of him, I keep. Hold on to the diplomas, and digitise them for safekeeping. It costs little to hold on to them, but once they're gone, they're gone for good.
posted by robotot at 1:27 PM on November 10, 2008

My grandfather was a barber. I have one the metal combs that he used when he was still alive, and I use it on a regular basis. Not long ago, I was able to tell my eldest son about the great-grandfather whose name he bears, while he sat combing my hair with that comb.

(I got chills just typing that.)

That said, Nthing those who urge waiting a bit.
posted by mikewas at 2:03 PM on November 10, 2008

I'd be furious if I liked the grandfather or if I hadn't met him, but was interested to learn more about him. Okay, not furious, but pretty disappointed. At least scan them if you decide to off them.
posted by ersatz at 5:32 PM on November 10, 2008

As others have said, hold on to these for now. It's far too soon for you to truly know what to do with this part of your dad's life.
I've lost both of my parents in the past 5 years. I live 3000 miles away from where they were living, and my brother was a mere 20 minutes away from them. He told me often over the years that he truly wanted nothing when it came time to clear out whatever residence mom or dad was living in at the time. Boy, did he mean it. My dad died at 93. There were documents dating back to the mid-1800s among his possessions. I got to know the grandparents I'd never met through love letters I found in an obscure metal box. I found old currency and many, many other treasures that my brother would have just as soon disposed of without a second thought.
These things have value, both sentimental and financial. I could care less what I might get on eBay for any of the things I acquired. My interest is purely historical and sentimental.
You might find as time goes on that those "worthless pieces of paper" bring you a sense of comfort, and that generations to come will thank you for holding on to them.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
posted by SoftSummerBreeze at 10:12 AM on November 11, 2008