June 10, 2024

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

      When you are young, family history seems ancient. You are full of growth and vigor, the future beckoning, and you barely hear perhaps just every third word about Uncle Jim, who came from Europe in steerage or Great-Grandma Sophie, who eked out a living sewing in a Manhattan tenement. Or maybe there was someone famous or a fellow on the wrong side of the law.

     But why listen over and over to the same, seemingly non-relatable tales? Boring.

     It isn’t until years, maybe decades later, that you begin to wonder about your roots. “Who am I” is a burning question as we age, and we finally get it that heritage and the particulars of our genetics and family members can influence us. And we can also take pride, assume humility and be thankful for earlier sacrifice in the family. We might yearn for a moment with a great-grandfather we never met. We might feel selfish that we did not appreciate our ancestry.

     We now look at our own offspring or family members, so young that they do not listen any more than we did about the past, and suddenly we see the connection between John the son and John the grandfather, though the two hardly knew each other.

      There is, too, the regret that when we finally want to know all about the family, those with the stories we would not hear are now gone.

     But there is always research and the Internet. And old newspapers and family photographs. Most of all there are our arms  seeking to hug our forebears in the increasingly strong pull to join the family circle.

     The writer is a retired newspaperman.

                       -30-