Being married to a wonderful woman and raising three kids who are far smarter than we ever were matters more to me than having anything I created preserved in the Smithsonian Institution or the Newseum.

I was a show business press agent, managed press relations for Chicago’s huge Chamber of Commerce, promoted Food for Peace in the American Hemisphere, convinced reluctant Americans to use Zip Code, created The Washington Post’s Public and Community Relations department before Pentagon Papers and left for a senior position on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Watergate. 

Later I consulted with USA and other national government entities, such as the European Union. Also, I was among a small group of professionals who produced most of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates for over 25 years … and along the way worked hard to promote science, blood donations, contributions to non-profits, and prove to the world that people with disabilities had untold abilities.

Then I retired, was bored, and began gathering string. That’s a journalism term for figuring out a complex story by accumulating a batch of sometimes small facts and then weaving them into a cohesive story. 

The story I focused on was my families and my wife Susan’s families. I thought about creating a family tree and found the forests were full of family trees, many sprouting dates without context.

I couldn’t find out why our forefathers and mothers did things that affect you and me today … like why we were born in a particular place. Or the impact of fires, railroads, and the telegraph. 

My wife’s Orthodox Catholic family lived a couple hundred miles south of my Jewish Orthodox family in Eastern Europe. Their lives were the same thing but different.  

Meanwhile, about a dozen of my Krolevetsky (Kroloff) relatives were wanted by the Tsar’s police for draft dodging. By the time the notice was posted, some, if not all, were in small towns along the Missouri River in the USA Midwest. 

And then there were the bribes.

For some of us, without those bribes we would not have been born.