Meeting Family

Meeting Family Again For the First Time
Rev. Kathleen Ellis
21 May 2006

My sister Madeleine and I have been delving into genealogy of late. She has some advantages, being eight years older, in that she remembers more of the people I can only read about. The visits with our Uncle Bill and Aunt Evelyn in Houston have strengthened a relationship that has grown through conversations about our relatives. Uncle Bill was interviewed as a Army engineer from Texas who worked on the China-Burma-India pipeline during World War II. The videotape will be among those available at the Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg. In watching it, I learned a good bit of history as well as finding out about his life before I was born.

Our Uncle Bill and Aunt Evelyn, who live in Houston, traveled to London, Ontario a few years ago to visit the places where my mother’s parents had grown up. My grandfather, Frederick Glynn Ellis, was a physician who married my grandmother Edna Kathleen Given, a nurse. Looking for better opportunities in the field, he found a job in Shreveport, LA. He became a pharmacist and the founding director of the Shreveport Laboratories. His partner, who also worked as a coroner, was on vacation when Granddad was pressed into service as a Deputy Coroner, a job he never liked. He and several other relatives were also organists for churches and Masonic orders for many years.

My grandmother was an accomplished ice skater, but she fell and damaged her hip as a young adult, and walked with a limp for the rest of her life. The story in the family is that she was born with one leg shorter than the other. No one had ever mentioned an ice skating accident, which was uncovered only through research. Perhaps one shorter leg contributed to the accident!

I was always curious about my grandmother, for whom I was named four years after her death. My grandmother was pregnant with my mother when first little girl died, not yet two years old. It’s hard to imagine the grief of that loss.

Another interesting ancestor was my great-great grandfather, Colonel James Moffat. He was born in Lanark, Scotland, immigrated to New York in 1841, and married an Englishwoman two years later. They moved to London, Ontario in 1845 in their mid-twenties and raised eight children.

Along with his military career, Col. Moffat became involved in politics even before London was a city. He was very active in the Masonic Lodge and was even made a Knight Templar, which some of you may have read about in The DaVinci Code. He was one of the first Aldermen in 1855 when London became a city. He served as Alderman for several years then was elected the sixth Mayor of London in 1860. It happens that the Prince of Wales visited the city during this time, and the whole town turned out to honor him. Moffat had an opportunity to welcome the prince.

His address began, “May it please your Royal Highness—We, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of London in Upper Canada, do, in the name of the inhabitants, most cordially welcome your Royal Highness.” The entire speech was printed in the paper. That evening at an extravagant ball, Prince Edward filled his dance card for every one of the 21 dances. The first dance was a quadrille with Miss Rachel Moffat, the Mayor’s daughter and my great-great aunt.

Family stories disappear if we don’t take the time to tell them, write them down, leave a paper trail, and identify photographs with names and dates. Novels and biographies are wonderful ways to get the flavor of a whole family or an era. Willie Morris writes beautifully in North Toward Home of his life in Mississippi, Texas, and New York. In his 20s, Morris met a man his age who turned out to be his half-brother. They discovered that their father had raised a parallel family they had never known.

Jon Montgomery’s Aunt Maude was beautiful, but was treated somewhat as the Cinderella of the family. Her sisters were slack-jowled and had bad teeth. It seems that the beautiful Maude was conceived by their dad’s brother and the servant girl. No one ever spoke of this; She was raised as one of the sisters and only the pictures gave a clue to her background. Much later, as an adult, she horrified her Southern Baptist family and became a Christian Scientist. She outlived them all.

My friend David McLatcher, from my former church in Waco, told me about his Aunt Agnes. As a young boy, David enjoyed visiting her rustic cabin and was impressed that the other woman who lived there smoked a corncob pipe. Only after she died, did he learn the two women were committed partners and lovers throughout their lives. He also learned that her financial generosity helped his mother’s family of seven children survive the Depression.

Matt Manard, a member of the Young Adult Religious Network here in Austin, told me his family ought to be rich! It seems that in the early 1900s, a wealthy relative died in Germany and left a lot of money to his family. The American relatives could only afford to send one person to Germany to receive the inheritance, so they drew straws and sent a representative. They never saw him again!

Diane Schultz shared another interesting story with me. Her brother discovered in his research that their grandmother had been born out of wedlock. None of her children knew about it until after she died. The grandmother had taken the family name, but her own mother did not marry until years after she was born.

Not everyone has access to a family history. Alex Haley went to great lengths to get at the roots of his African relatives, divided through the wrenching displacement of American slavery. Adoption can also displace family history. When my sister-in-law’s children were born in Russia; a cousin’s child born in China; my sister’s children born in the United States, no one could have predicted their future adoptive parents. Some of you were adopted or you have adopted and fostered children of your own. There may not be the generations of stories to pass down, but the stories of your coming together as a family began a new chapter and now they are part of your lineage.

It is difficult for many families to share stories on a regular basis, because we live so often hundreds of miles from parents, grandparents, or any other biological relatives. Some families are divided by more than simple geography—they have chosen not to interact at all.

StoryCorps has been traveling the country to record interviews between friends and family members to store at the Library of Congress. Live Oak member Nisa Sharma interviewed her dad, and Melissa Davis interviewed her neighbor. Nisa is working in the nursery today, but this is the summary she sent to me:

So the story of my parents meeting and marrying is one of those legendary stories in the family. You know, boy from Nepal comes to the U.S. to study, boy from Nepal meets girl from Nebraska, boy and girl fall madly in love and marry 3 months later...

but the details had become almost fictional until I had Dad recount the details for me in the StoryCorps booth, and it really grounded the story for me.

I never knew, for instance that instead of going to Stanford in the fall, his scholarship plans were canceled due to the three day war in Israel. His life-long hopes of studying in America crushed, he decided to become Buddha, and went into the mountains alone to live in the trees until he could figure out what to do next. It wasn't until a stray, dehydrated, nearly dead American wandered over to his campfire to be rescued one night a few months later, that Dad went home and learned that he would go to America in December.

I also never knew that when my Dad wrote his father with the news that he was married and had a child on the way, that the letter back, which he expected to be a tirade of anger was actually a 12 page letter on how a husband should care for his wife... and in the interview, this moved my Dad to tears... which is not something I had ever seen before.

The other thing I learned was something I guess I always knew, but one rarely gets a chance to discover if its really true... and that is that now I know my Dad will tell me whatever I want to know from him, and all I have to do is ask. We've always been very close, my Dad and I... woven from the same cloth its been said... but this experience brought us even closer.

Melissa is here in person to tell us what she learned from her neighbor Ida:

When I first heard that StoryCorps was coming to Austin, I knew immediately that I had to interview my friend and neighbor Ida. For the past 6 months, Ida and I would go walking around the neighborhood after work. Ida is battling cancer and because her immune system was weak, she was unable to leave the house. Our walks were often the only chance she had to get out and talk with someone other than her husband, Ken.

Each day I would hear a new and fascinating tale about Ida’s former self—as a pioneer in the computer industry, she traveled all over the world working on computers and teaching others how to use them. As a free-spirited, fun-loving woman, she went from one adventure to the next, living each moment to the fullest.

Inside the tiny, MobilCorp Booth, it was just the two of us (along with the moderator) going through our prepared dialog and I realized that Ida’s stories were a gift that she shared with me. A gift we both cherished. That in the end, all we have are our memories, and our stories. Stories to share with those we love. But those stories begin with today—what we do right now, how we live each day, to create wonderful memories for the future.

Ida is not about cancer. Ida is all about living life to the fullest and sharing her stories, and most of al her laughter, with everyone around her.

In another conversation posted on the NPR website, Kristi Hager remembered her mother Norine, who had recently died. After visits made during her mother’s last year of life, when she was leaving to take the shuttle to the airport, Kristi would say, “Well, Mom, I don’t know for sure if we’ll get to see each other again.” One of the last things her mother said to her was, “Well, Kristi, it’s been really nice knowing you.” Just that one sentence sums up a lifelong relationship, made more poignant by the knowledge of impending death.

To know someone in depth, listen to the messages within their stories. We learn what we learn not so much from reading, though that’s a great resource, and certainly not from yet another sermon (J), but from our interchanges, discussions, vignettes, experiences. Martin Buber suggested that conversation is a way to experience the divine. Not every conversation can have the depth of an I-Thou relationship, but it helps to create safe places for this kind of interchange. Stories can convey meaning, knowledge, and understanding of those things that matter most.

Forrester Church reflected on the story of life. In his book Lifecraft, he offered this:

“Think back beyond your parents and grandparents, and then back further. Think back a thousand generations. If our closest ancestors have populated this planet for a million years, we have to go back fifty thousand generations just to trace human ancestry. For each of us, an almost unimaginable number of human predecessors survived infant mortality, plague, famine, and a myriad of other hardships simply to get to puberty and make love. And then, every single time, the unique sperm of millions that had us somewhere deep in its genetic pocket somehow made it to the equally unique egg. Reckon the odds. That we should even exist staggers the imagination.”

We share the story of human evolution. We carry within ourselves unique stories of life and death, struggle and triumph, shame and pride. Some of them will be passed down from generation to generation within the family itself or broadcast on radio and television.

This week at the coffee shop Jon Montgomery and Max Nofziger were exchanging profound thoughts with a group of friends when a woman they hadn’t met yet came in and exclaimed, “This is just like Italy!” She was invited to the table and explained that she had recently been to Italy, and loved the constant interaction among people in the cafés in Rome. In fact, she recently moved to South Congress, where she can be part of the friendly downtown culture. In her former neighborhood, all they talked about was golf. She also got to share her story about being a former nun. No one got her name, but they think she’ll be back.

France is also a nation of talkers. On the street and in cafés you’ll notice people conversing intently. There’s a low murmur in the air all the time, and since tables are set so close together, it’s almost impossible not to catch remnants of stories.

In the Luxembourg Gardens, a lovely park in Paris, a small white-haired woman from Brussels sometimes sits in the late afternoon sun inviting conversation. She holds a sign in her lap that reads "Hello! Let's talk."

Miss Lily wants people to talk to each other. NPR's Susan Stamberg sat down for a chat to learn why she is at the center of so many conversations. [Morning Edition, July 26, 2005]

Miss Lily’s goal is simply to get people to talk: about the world, life, interests. Just about any topic is fine with her except for politics and religion. As a former interpreter, she speaks several languages and welcomes people from all over the world. There’s no obligation and no money exchanged, just a woman with a sign: “Let’s Talk.” Miss Lily says she is just right for the job—old enough at 81 to have some life experience, and female—not threatening to people as a rule.

While Susan Stamberg was visiting with Miss Lily, an African man spoke of missing his homeland; a Frenchman was excited that he had finally found a job; and a student was getting some help in translating Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Kerouac is another great storyteller, a master of conversation.

Maybe you already have enough friends, family, and acquaintances to fill you up with conversation. But we need your ears and we want to hear from you. Your story is unique—pass it on. With enough stories, we can create another sermon, Part II, if you will.

After the service I’ll be in the Fellowship Hall with a purple binder of blank paper, or feel free to email me with stories. So tell me: What is your story? Let’s talk!

And all the people said, “Sure!”