The Story of Our Lives

My Dad recently asked me the question, “How much do you know about your grandparents?”  I thought for a few minutes and answered honestly, “Some.”  My Dad sighed and responded, “There are some stories that I am the only one that knows them.”  This exchange made me think – how much do my children know about their grandparents?  How about my grandparents?  Oddly enough…about their own parents’ stories from before they were born?

I had the unique opportunity to know my four grandparents.  That ended at the age of fifteen, when I lost both of my grandmothers within a year.  I do have memories of them and remember some of the stories from their lives.  I remember a few more stories as told by my maternal grandmother, as it seemed she was also still finding family members.  My maternal grandfather had a bad stroke shortly after she died and remained homebound and needed help the remainder of his life.  He was a good storyteller and came from a large colorful family.  But once he was sick, his speech also suffered.  My paternal grandfather, the only grandparent Debbie met, died just after Rebecca was born, which meant that I had the opportunity to have an adult relationship with him.  Naturally, as of today, I know most about his growing up poor in Europe, moving to America in 1920, his many jobs and his life in general (he lived the American dream). 

Most of what my children know of my grandparents comes from me.  As with most oral histories, the actual stories begin to get diluted, some of the holes in the stories get replaced (sometime consciously, sometimes not) and stories transform into legendary tales or family folklore.  All of us grow up hearing them and we all try to pass our favorite stories on.  In my house, some of the legendary tales my brothers and I always laughed at are greeted with blank stares from my girls followed by the question, “Why would you know that?”  And generally speaking, the stories about myself, while told in all seriousness, cause them to laugh at me, and keep getting recycled (always at my expense).  For example, I shared that my parents taught us how to dance for my Bar Mitzvah, specifically the Waltz.  That has given them hours of endless laughter, wondering who else in the world Waltzes in the basement and why is it that the only goofball that did so was their father (my brothers conveniently do not remember this).

I realized that the stories, however they remember them, are the stories that they will carry with them and become the tales that they will tell.  I remember my grandfather relating a scary story from the mid-1920’s.  He and a few friends were out driving in a car when the car got slammed into on the side by another car.  At that point in time, the cars were not made heavy duty like today and split in half, the front going in one direction and the back going in another.  As they got out of the car, the drivers of the other car were gangsters of some sort and the threat they gave buried any further action.  To this day, I only have the image of the car breaking in half and going in two different directions like a cartoon and I am laughing while typing.  I asked my dad to fill in the blanks.  He remembered the friend’s name (Sam Katz), he laughed and was fuzzy on the rest of the story.

These are the stories of my life; I am sure my girls will pass on the stories that made them laugh, taught them a lesson or inspired them. 

Where Were You?

“I remember where I was…” was a comment my mother made.  The reference, for her, was where she was when President Kennedy was shot.  We were living at the time in an apartment in Fort Lee, NJ.  She said that it was surreal because when it was announced, everyone went out into the courtyard, feeling kind of lost but looking for other people to be around, whether they knew them or not.  This was a story that I heard a number of times growing up, generally around the end of November near the anniversary of the shooting of our 35^th President.  I still remember her saying that and never really understood it.

On September 11, 2001, two planes brought down both of the World Trade Center towers.  I remember when I heard about it.  I was at a client in Bristol, Virginia, walking through the lunch room and heading into a meeting.  There was a small television where they were just announcing the breaking news that a plane just hit the Trade Center.  At the time, I was thinking that this happened before when a plane hit the Empire State Building in 1945.  A short time later, someone came into the meeting to tell us that the second tower was hit and the Towers collapsed.  I immediately called home and my family was safe.  My brother was working downtown in one of the nearby Trade Center Buildings.  I called his cell phone – there was no answer.  I immediately called Debbie, who could not contact him either, as the phones were out.  There was no way of knowing if he was safe or not.  My wife called a short time later and told me she spoke to his girlfriend.  My brother was in Delaware playing golf with some clients.  I cannot tell you how relieved I was.

We were lucky.  We all know people that were not so lucky and lost a loved one, knew someone that was lucky to not be in the building at the time or were involved in the cleanup.  The greater New York area was greatly impacted.  All plane travel was cancelled.  If I was not already at a hotel, I would not have been able to get room, as everyone was frantically driving north to get home.  I drove home a few days later and came home to people that were afraid to travel, go to New York and cross bridges.  A few days later, I needed to be in Atlanta for a meeting.  The airports had re-opened, were empty and crawling with military personnel for protection.  Debbie was not happy that I had to travel, but it was safe and easy.  That flight was the last time I would be able to check-in at the gate.  The world had changed, air travel would never be the same and an attack on US soil became real.  Last week was the 9/11 anniversary and we still share where we were and what we were doing.  I now understood why my mother always told her story of where she was.

Recasting History into our Own Image

“This is the way it happened…”  I could start any recounting of an event with that line, tell the story with a sense of strong conviction and if told enough times to enough people, gain a measure of credibility.  In the right circumstance, at the right time, told to a targeted audience, I could make other people believe my stories as the truth, even if I have distorted the facts.  To paraphrase the adage (or variant), “a lie told often enough becomes truth.”  I have always ascribed to the value that honesty is the best policy, so the chance of me not telling the truth is almost non-existent.  But, like myself, I am sure you have come across individuals that have altered “the truth” to serve their purpose.

I remember a few months after 9/11, driving at night to a client (this was when I was consulting) on the border of Virginia and Tennessee.  As I was flipping through the radio stations, I came across some local preacher talking about the Jewish conspiracy and the “fact” that the Jews were behind the attack.  He stated that all of the Jews were notified beforehand to leave the world trade center prior to the attack – obviously, he did not have the conversation with the Jewish spouses and children that lost family on that day.  There are the people that try to change history to say that the Holocaust never existed.  While the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, some survivors are still alive that can tell the true story.

There are plenty of bad time-periods in all of the nations across the world – whether it was slavery, ransacking, or general brutality.  These are events that makeup nations and, in some cases, have provided rich legends and historical accounts for where we are today.  The lessons they provide in pointing us to a better future are still pertinent today.  In an age of political correctness, pulling down statues, whether in this country (i.e., Robert E. Lee – people forget he served with distinction in the Mexican-American war and was the Superintendent of the US Military Academy, also known as West Point) or elsewhere (i.e., ISIS destroying ancient statues), the truth is still that – the truth.  In ancient times, if you fell out of favor with the leader of a nation, the punishment was having one’s name stricken from the books – in other words, they erased your name from history, altering the truth.

I understand that we all see life through the prism of our understanding and desires.  However, that does not account for the deliberate actions to alter the truth, whether it is placing a grave marker without interring a body (under a false guise), pulling down statues of heroes / explorers that had a small black mark against huge positive accomplishments or providing altered educational curriculum to unknowing students (i.e., some third world / terrorist countries).  Most important is to keep the truth, “warts and all.” 

We are taught that we should be givers (not takers), to help and educate others, as well as ourselves.  Those that alter the truth either do not have full knowledge (will not put out the effort or the time to learn), uses the opportunity to blame others by recasting the truth and, at the end of the day, uses the opportunity to selfishly manipulate the truth.  While we are all entitled to our opinions, based upon our perceptions of reality, we do not have the right to maliciously recast history in an effort to twist the truth so that it provides a different outcome.