The shadow of the Holocaust looms over Flo Giltman of Johns Creek.

Her father, William Frohlinger, was a reliable and honest — but bitter and stoic — man, she says, who never talked about his life before the Holocaust as a farmer in Czechoslovakia or his family there.

Phil Skinner/pskinner@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Flo Giltman (above) writes in the Silvery Quills parks and rec class about the Holocaust survival guilt her father, William Frohlinger (in photo above), felt after his wife Elsa Frohlinger (below) and their children died in a death camp.

Phil Skinner/pskinner@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

As Hitler gained power, Flo Giltman's father William Fronlinger left Czechoslavakia to prepare a place for his family. While he was gone, Hitler closed the border and the family was killed in a death camp.

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Giltman, 60, has researched her family's history and wants those stories to remain alive, to be remembered and honored from generation to generation. So, she joined Silver Quills, a writer's group organized through the Alpharetta Parks and Recreation Department.

Led by amateur writer Norma Taulet-Ball, eight senior citizens are busily recording their individual stories, family histories and the era they grew up in.

"These aren't necessarily to be published," said Taulet-Ball. "We wanted them to write down their stories to leave for their kids."

Giltman said the exercise has been rewarding, though painful at times. She's not writing a memoir, per se; she calls it an ethical will, a document for her descendants that records her values and how she came to view them as important. Naturally, much of it goes back to William Frohlinger and his guilt and pain.

As Hitler gained power, Giltman's father left Czechoslovakia to prepare a place for his family. While he was gone, Hitler closed the border and the family was killed in a death camp. She found a relative who had a picture of her half-brother and half-sister, who perished.

"I want someone to benefit from all this heartache," Giltman said. "I don't want my descendants to take it for granted. Freedom. Our religion."

She inherited some of her father's pain.

"Finding the pictures was heartbreaking and wonderful," Giltman said. "It was like being reunited with people who have been a part of your existence. It was like, 'I've been grieving for you my whole life.' "

She is including pictures in her document.

Giltman said learning her heritage gave her some needed perspective. Her father's aloofness made her more independent, she believes. His sense of responsibility made her more responsible.

Not all the stories penned by the Silvery Quill gang are so somber.

Val Areias, 72, has written about his first car, a 1947 English standard-shift Coventry that had the driver's seat on the right side. The car, purchased from an uncle, broke down several times on the way home.

"I'm a storyteller," said Areias of Alpharetta. "My father came to America from Portugal in 1918, and I know very little about his life before he married Mom in 1928. I regret not pursuing that. I don't want that to happen to my adult daughters."

Taulet-Ball said all but one student in the class are women. Ages range from 60 to 80 years old, long enough to acquire a lifetime of tales and memories.

The hardest part is teaching the participants not to be afraid of a blank page, she said.

"It's daunting," Taulet-Ball said. "They're not writers. I'm trying to push them into doing it. I tell them write anything. When you were 9 or 11, did you have family prayers around the table? Who said the prayer? What prayers did they say? Just write it down. When you have six or eight anecdotes, then put them in chronological order."

Areias said he's added a vignette about a cattle drive he was in when he was a boy growing up in California.

"I hadn't thought about that for 50 years," Areias said. "It brings back those memories that were buried."

Giltman said she'll write until she's done.

"I don't know when that will be," she said.