If you're one of those people that thinks all of academia is holed up in its ivory tower, with its collective face buried in a stack of books, I present to you the case of John Pustejovksky ...

Sorry, it'll take me a minute to get there. I have to set the scene. Growing up with only a vague notion of my family's various heritages, I've grown into something of an expert on my Italian family. But my mom, born in Milwaukee, is half-German and those roots have long been a bit of a mystery, beyond an OK family tree.

Oh, and yes, that small box of letters in German that were my great-grandmother's. I've been trying, unsuccessfully, for years to find out what is in them. I've asked friends and acquaintances who usually would agree before then backing out upon seeing the letters. One local mover and shaker in the German community even promised to put the weight of a respected local institution of higher learning to work to translate these letters than span the entire 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. A few strays date from the 1950s and early '60s.

Said mover, skimmed the letters and with a flourish told me that some historical archives in the city would kill -- hopefully not literally -- for these. One letter (1802) mentioned Napoleon and the others, it seems, suggested that my ancestors loved to gossip about their small-town Rhein-Pfalz neighbors and didn't especially love Catholics.

But, other things intervened and once again, nothing happened with the letters.

Until Chris Stolarski handed me a copy of Marquette University's experts guide, a book that many universities provide to the media, hoping journalists will interview and quote faculty from their schools in stories. When I randomly opened to a page with German language experts, I contacted him.

He hooked me up with John Pustejovsky, an associate professor of German in the Foreign Language Dept. at Marquette who told me he'd give the letters a look and see what he could do, if anything. It seemed like he'd be able to scan them and translate them for me.

A week later he told me the scanning seemed to be working fine, adding, "I've also ordered a text from the AATG on reading old handwriting / manuscripts, and will use the first couple of letters as an activity in my evening class in a week or two."

He ordered a textbook ... to help with my letters. Clearly, approaching Pustejovsky was a good idea.

Occassionally, I drop him a note to check in -- I feel a big responsibility for keeping these letters for the next couple centuries (although I won't be here to do it personally for much of that time) - and he updates me.

Pustejovsky decided to make the letters a project for one of his classes, which delights me. I'm thrilled to know that these fragments of my long-deceased relatives' lives will help engage students and help them learn to read, translate and preserve these bits of history.

This week, John told me, "we've been working on reading them in my class on Monday nights -- up to now actually practicing the script, and just getting started reading.

"Realizing this may take a whole lot longer than you're hoping, I've contacted a colleague here who's an expert in dealing with manuscripts from this time period. We're going to get together and he'll read them aloud to me while I record them, then I'll translate them and type them out. We may be able to finish in a month."

A month? That's nothing, I've been trying for years to get this done.

But don't think that Marquette or any other university has the staffing to do free translations and similar work. I'm just lucky enough that my letters seem to have educational value, according to John.

"This was an educational opportunity that seemed promising -- (and) it has been!. ... The students are happy to be learning the "deutsche Schrift," a handwriting that predates anything used by Germans in the mid-/later 20th century. Monday evening all 12 or 14 of them were sitting in desks, perfectly quiet (very unusual!) and concentrating intently on forming these very beautiful, difficult characters."