Because I Was Lazy…

Theme song: You Remind Me by Mary J. Blige

The way you walk and the way you talk and
The way you move and you remind me, yes you do
Of the way you dress and the way you dance and
You really like to move it. You remind me

This is a message to those who wanted to do their family chart but didn’t although you have the resources.  If its calling you, then do it.   Do it then.  I wish I had did it when it first struck me because I wouldn’t be doing all this extra leg work now.

About 10 years ago I was working in the H&G dept at the local library.  A guy used to come in all the time doing his genealogy.  He was young, maybe 19 or 20 (I was 25/26 at the time).   His name was Dante my spelling might be off) and he was up on his genealogy.  He was back to the late 1800s, I believe.  He did a lot of research and went to a lot of the family reunions for the families he found to get more information and learn more about the people.

He was a real people person.

Anyway, I was working the genealogy desk one day and teasing him about going out to Oklahoma for another family reunion on another branch of his tree when he began to look at me funny.  He began to question me about my surname, my mother’s name, what was her surname and her mother’s name.  I looked at him oddly but answered him anyway ’cause it was Dante.  He then began to name all my Aunts and Uncles,  and my grandmother Cynthia.

“How do you know their names?”

He was my cousin.  His grandmother was my great grandmother’s sister.  (I forget which sister).  He then began to tell me he was related to another cousin twice (on the mother’s and father’s side). 

I was in awe that he had so much information stored.  And I was happy to be related to him because I really liked him, he was cool.  I meant to get the information from him but never did.  A few years later he married the local beauty queen and moved away.

I thought it would be easy to retrace his steps but its not.  His living resources are proving to be much more informative than mine.

O Dante, O Dante wherefore art thou Dante?