My sister Andrea has spent the morning researching our family’s roots in Germany, Switzerland and France, in turn educating me on the interesting findings she’s uncovered. As it turns out, our family occupies a not-so-small bit of space in the world. Here’s a bit of what she’s shared:

Firstly, a direct ancestor of ours opened the Kresge chain of grocery shops, which eventually developed into the K-Mart chain of retail stores. Yay, big capitalism!

Secondly, my grandparents shared common ancestors that aren’t quite as far back in the family line as we’d wish they were. Yay, incest!

There’s a town in the Catskills that’s named after an ancestor of mine.

And lastly, my grandfather participated in D-Day, though he originally enlisted in the Air Force, in his own words, for the “excellent recreational activities… pool/billiards, volleyball, basketball, softball” which were apparently “unavailable otherwise.” His group was assigned the first mission of the day on June 6th, 1944. He went on to fly 62 missions in France and Belgium.

And before all of this, he moved 34 times and changed schools 28 times before graduating from high school. There’s so much to talk about.