Last year I published a book about my family – based mostly on stories heard frequently entre nous.
I had always loved the stories, and since my father – born in Kentucky and raised in Shelbyville – was one of 12 siblings, considerable editing was required. Over several years of intermittent effort, I acquired the compiling services of Susan Owens. Her company is called Tales For Telling, and I had lots of tales. She is also a researcher, fascinated with genealogy.
The family, just counting the direct descendants of my paternal grandmother and grandfather, numbered about 79. That’s only counting in-the-blood kin – no in-laws or children by previous marriages (although those characters, and two generations of cousins, are all in the book as well).
Toymaker Lego is issuing a new series called Women of NASA. Featured are five pioneers of the space program. Among the women is Nancy Grace Roman, my double cousin whom I have never met, and is thus not in the book. But intrigued by her history, I called Susan, who called back with her address and telephone number, and my double cousin and I have now chatted on the phone. (Would I have been so excited if she had been an axe murderer instead of a NASA scientist? Of course not! )
What is a double cousin anyway? My paternal grandmother’s brother (Al Roman) married my maternal grandmother’s sister (Carrie Rosenthal). But only because my father (Al’s nephew) married my mother (Carrie’s niece) were my brother, my sister and I double cousins to Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s chief astronomer and mother of the Hubble telescope.
We are leery of inter-family breeding in Kentucky, but I want to clean up some of that curse. Of all the enumerated and extended families in my book, “Not Necessarily Kosher (Life, Love, and My American Jewish Family),” there were only my double cousin Irwin Roman, his daughter Nancy Grace Roman, my sister Vivian’s son Neil Marks, and myself, Harriett Rose, whose efforts at scholarship resulted in the Ph.D., proudly called the “terminal degree.” The book is filled with accomplishments in other fields – but only four Ph.Ds.. Those four happen to be double cousins. There are, I think, seven other double cousins in my family, all of whom have been achievers – no failures among them!
What does all this mean? I really don’t know, but I think about it in the nights.