Bits about Me

The truth about one’s ancestry can be found in the little things they do, in words they say,  the things they believe and the way they live their life. It is found in the hopes and dreams that they share with only with a few very special friends. This is what I have done all of my life. Only a few individuals have been privileged to share my hopes and dreams. Today, I have chosen to share these with you.

On a day called tomorrow I fully intend to return to France where it all began after World War I. For it is there in Alsace Lorraine where Great Grandmother is buried. She died of pneumonia—as a Jew in a supposedly religiously tolerant society—because she refused to convert. Great Grandfather converted to in order to save her life, but the Catholic doctors let her die. 

After my Great Grandmother’s death, Great Grandfather got into trouble, I was never told what kind of trouble—but given the choice of leaving  his son and heir, who now had only one lung because Poison Gas, Grandfather himself could no longer have children, also a result of Poison Gas)  leaving his only son and heir with Roman Catholic relatives and spending the  next several years in prison, or taking my his and going to Canada; Grandfather promptly renounced his Catholic faith and chose Canada.

When my grandfather was in his twenties, he earned his first strike in the game of Barr as he decided to come to America and to rather than settling in Louisiana, he chose to settle Hot Springs, South Dakota. The Second strike was earned when he fell in love with a Roman Catholic Bar maid, (it didn’t matter that she was also French and Austrian) and the third strike not surprisingly, came when he married Grandma.

Great Grandfather sent the Inheritance to a nephew in France, and Grandpa was left to struggle for a living, but he did quite well. Of my grandparents’ three children, dad was the youngest son so he received no inheritance.  Aunt Laverne the eldest child, and Uncle Jacques the eldest son split Grandfather’s inheritance.  My Aunt Marlene was conceived on the wrong side of the sheets after Grandfather died in 1941.

Thus begins the saga of me.