Unfinished Business
Small World, After All?
"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." Or so they say. I took the plunge this year and attended the recent Okoboji Writers Retreat. It was fun to participate on two panels on the first day, but I also looked forward to learning from the wonderful faculty assembled by Julie Gammack.
A workshop called Family History: Digging Deep, caught my eye. It was led by Arnold Garson, a former newspaper writer who founded a company called Family Stories. He researches and writes long-form family histories for clients.
I love family stories, and some of mine are organized. But others aren't in an optimum format that our children and grandchildren would be able to easily understand – and appreciate – these connections.
DNA Offers Fast Track
Garson shared some very helpful materials with us early that morning. During our discussion, one participant asked about using DNA to trace family relationships. Garson was encouraging, saying, "I almost can guarantee if you send in your DNA, you'll come up with a significant discovery that you never would have known." His comments preceded Kerry Washington's recent book, Thicker Than Water, but it sounded as though potential revelations from DNA might fall into this category!
Another participant mentioned that she was working on a unique framework for organizing her family stories. Garson was intrigued, and asked her to email it to him. I was awestruck, too. Here was a woman in her early 20s engaged in family history. She mirrored my own early love of family stories. As Garson remarked, not many individuals her age share this intense interest.
Lunch followed, including a lively conversation with a woman who had moved back to Iowa after years of working in Tennessee. After sharing our initial OWR experiences that morning , I learned that her career was in a specialized area of assisting clients who require Braille services. My ears perked up. I told her I 'm currently finishing a story about a Tennessee farmer who lost his eyesight to retinitis pigmentosa. He has a small cattle herd on his five-generation family farm, and is looking for assistive technology and other resources to continue farming, with the assistance of the National AgrAbility Project.
Then we were off to the next session.
Later that day, I met a woman named Mary. I discovered she had worked on the staff of the Boone News Republican, covering the county where I live. She had left years ago, but mentioned her respect for the long-time editors and publishers, the late Robert and Jeannine Schaub. I didn't know them personally. But I recognized their names. When our older daughter enrolled at college in Decatur, Illinois, in the early 2000s, I emailed her piano professor with questions, and during our subsequent conversations, she told me she was very good friends with the Schaubs in Boone County.
Bonding Over Small Talk
The next morning, on the shuttle to Lakeside Labs, I overheard one of the passengers talking to the driver about attending a recent high school class reunion in Burlington. Interesting! My brother, his wife and their family lived there for a decade. Prior to the opening session, I sat down beside her. It was a chilly morning, and I admitted that I was holding a small cup of coffee between my hands simply to warm up. I don't care for coffee. She replied that she didn't drink coffee either. He favorite warm beverage was chai tea latte. Wow, mine, too! Â She related that she and her husband had moved back to Iowa after living in San Diego for two decades. "Oh, how interesting, I have relatives in San Diego, and my family visited there in February," I said.
Eventually, as we continued visiting, she mentioned Oskaloosa. Oskaloosa? Yes, they had decided to settle into this delightful town of 10,000 when they returned to Iowa. "We wanted to live close enough to walk to a coffee shop," she said. Smokey Row fit the bill. Now this was a coincidence: our older daughter and her husband live in Oskaloosa. When I mentioned their names, she recognized them immediately, based on their community involvement and cultural events hosted at the George Daily Auditorium. "I just talked to Andy not long ago about a poetry class," she told me. "Wow! What's your name – I'll have to tell them! " I said. Kathy and I agreed to meet at Smoky Row for a chai tea latte the next time my husband and I are there!
Journey Leading Home
The OWR passed quickly, and soon it was time to catch the shuttle to my hotel, and begin the drive home. I walked to the boarding area, and while I was waiting, I noticed the young woman from my first OWR family history workshop was standing a few feet away. I wanted to encourage her precocious interest in family history, and express my hope that she'd pursue her love of writing. "No," I told myself.
Nevertheless, the shuttle was delayed, and she was standing there alone. So, I told her how impressed I was with her unique idea for framing her family's stories. She smiled, and thanked me. As we continued to wait, I remarked I was ready to head home. She shared that she had a tight schedule, including a stop to see her grandma and other family in Sioux City before she left Iowa. "Where was home?" I asked. Kansas City, she replied. "Oh, that's a coincidence," I said. "Our younger daughter lives in Kansas City."
I told her that I grew up 20 miles southeast of Sioux City, and had relatives there, too. Glancing at her name tag, I asked if her surname was the name of her grandma and other relatives living there. "No," she replied. After a pause, I ventured to ask, "What are some of your family names in Sioux City?" She mentioned "Flossy", followed by two other surnames. "The story I'm writing is about my great-grandma Flossy's house," she said.
Hmmmm. Flossy was a familiar name. One of the two surnames rang a bell, too. But it was a common surname. "I recognize some of these names," I replied. "The Irish, Catholic side of my family." Her eyes widened, and she nodded, waiting for me to continue. "The names were in my Dad's maternal McCabe family tree," I said.
The shuttle was arriving. Spontaneously, I reached out, and hugged her. "We're cousins! I'm sure!" I told her. I gave her my business card, and we agreed to be in touch.
But on the drive home, I began to have doubts. Yes, I recognized two of the three names. But were we really related? Or, did she climb onto her shuttle, freaked out by the weird older woman who imagined a family connection?
After arriving home, I opened a file cabinet, and pulled a folder with McCabe and Tevis information. After opening a second folder, I saw my mom's handwriting on the top page: All three of the names were there, including the one that I had not recognized.
My grandmother had five sisters. One of them, Aunt Annie, was this young woman's great, great great grandma! Like many other families, we had lost touch as members of the older generation passed away and the younger generation left their roots behind. The last McCabe reunion had been in 2015, and it wasn't well-attended.
Six Degrees of Separation?
It does make me wonder: How many of us seemingly unconnected individuals might be linked? In 1967, Psychology Today featured an experiment by a psychologist who sent 300 packages to people in Nebraska and Boston, asking them to use their connections to return these to a specific stockbroker living in Boston. Only 64 packages arrived, with an average path of 5.2 intermediary connections. This experiment was cited as evidence for the "six degrees of separation" theory.
Another experiment, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, achieved similar results. But sociology researchers can't say for sure that six degrees of separation exists. If so, they say it's our random acquaintances, not our friends, who are the key.
However, questions remain:
Do the six degrees transcend race and class?
     If we're globally connected, why are we split into so many small tribes today?
Granted the OWR is an unusually open, friendly opportunity to explore connections. Many participants are Iowans, or have Iowa roots. But, how many times in life do we walk past unperceived personal connections, or fail to discover shared bloodlines, as we go about our usual routines, minding our own business, and remaining in our comfort zones?
"Extremely improbable events are commonplace," wrote David Hand in The Improbability Principle. At this year's Okoboji Writers Retreat I encountered one. And I didn't even need to submit a DNA sample.
In today's world, we are in need of learning of, and receiving, all the positive connections and interweaving of lives. Thank you from someone who loves and regales in telling stories of coincidences. PS I once introduced Kevin Bacon when his band was playing at a Prez fundraiser in Iowa. So, there is our mutual 'degree of separation' from Kevin.
Fascinating, Cheryl. I’ve had a good share of synchronistic conversations. I wish I’d followed through on a few.