Is Meets Was

Mrs. Kramer, Aunt Gus (Augusta Bals), Mrs. Hughes, Frances Grant, and Aunt Marie (Marie) Bals of Flatbush c. 1915 Cathy Merrill holding Stephen Cidlowski and Christine Cidlowski and Laurie Press Happy Halloween! I can't find any photos of my parents or their parents celebrating Halloween. That may be why I especially cherish the above photograph of my great-aunts. At the time, my aunts were still living with their parents at 32 Kowenhoven Place, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. The next photo was taken in my parent's backyard in Valley Stream, New York about 1957. Right now, I am sitting at the computer and waiting for the next group of children to ring the doorbell, wishing my grandchildren lived nearby. Hopefully, by tomorrow I will see photos of them in their costumes. In the interim, the last picture is a collage showing my three grandsons, all superheroes, and our granddaughter, a very serious-looking bug. Two of the photos were taken last Halloween and t...

Knocking down one brick wall after another over the last decade, each celebration of victory has been dampened by a twinge of guilt for not tackling our gaping hole. For our family, the gaping hole is our Greek heritage. When Nick and I were first married, we enrolled in a conversational Greek class, knowing that we wanted to meet his uncles, aunts, and cousins living in Greece, the homeland of Nick's father. That was 39 years ago. With the advent of 2010, we still hadn't learned Greek or met his uncles, aunts or cousins living in Greece. And we know so little about our Greek genealogy!  For the other branches of our family, we have family history information extending back at least to the 1850s.  Not so with the Greek side of our family! Rather than delaying a trip to Greece until we could overcome the language barrier and establish a relationship with Nick's cousins, we decided to enjoy Greece as tourists, deferring the finding of family to another trip. We arrived in ...