LaTullippe It Almost Was

I’ve never been a big fan of Genealogy or family trees. I tend to dismiss those infamous tall tales handed down through the generations about the ‘good old days.’ The past is the past and can’t be changed. Or so I thought.

Perhaps this laissez-faire attitude came from my own upbringing. Being raised in a single parent household, we never recognized the absence of my father. It was hardly an incentive for me to care about my own ancestry. We were poor (maybe lower middle class is a better moniker) but so were most of my friends. We had a place to call home and little else mattered.

So, it was with only mild interest that I watched my wife begin her search for our respective family trees through Ancestry.com. Sharon very quickly became immersed in the search and began tabulating ancestors on both sides of our family tree. Thus far she has researched more than 152 individuals. She was able to go back to the 1600s in Germany. The oldest person she’s found was Pierre Helle who was born in 1676. France, Germany and Canada seem to be the favorite countries of origin.

As she clicked along, some fascinating facts began to emerge.

For example, there has always been a ‘George’ Schumacher for at least eight generations back on Sharon’s side of the family. Her descendants came from a small village in Germany, no surprise there. One distant relative served in the Illinois Infantry Regiment, Company E, Unit 31.

My mother’s roots followed a much similar lineage. Her grandparents also came from another part of Germany. There was a grandfather who fought in the Civil War. He went in as a private and came out the same. But he did survive. Our assumption is that he probably got his farmland in Sterns County from the government for his time in the service. That seemed to happen to a lot of returning veterans. Most of my distant relatives come from Sterns County or nearby.

The real mystery begins with my father. As far back as I can remember there was never any mention of him in our home. Growing up, there were no pictures of him nor any references to him at extended family gatherings. It was as if he never existed. I was too young to understand the significance of his absence in my life.

I vaguely remembered that my father’s lineage was French Canadian. Beyond that… little else. He had been married once before. There was a lot of confusion about whether or not there had been a divorce or annulment with his first marriage. He married my mother but we’re not sure when. The reasons for their separation and subsequent divorce had been clouded by denial, mis-statements and confusion. About the time my mother decided to come clean, the fog of aging and miles traveled made any clear recollection of times past just a guessing game on her part.

I’ve written a play, Frenchy’s Eats, about this quagmire called my ancestry. It’s been a real challenge trying to tell their story and lineage in an informative yet entertaining way

Now, many years after my mother’s death, Sharon is finally making some headway on un-wrapping the mystery of my father. It’s been one long and arduous journey fraught with poor records, incorrect dates, family lies and purposeful misstatements to protect the innocent…or so they thought.

Stumbling back in time, we found out that the core of my ancestors settled in Quebec, Canada. Their descendants came from France. It’s probably too late to look for that French Chateau or three-story Paris walkup in my name.

One of my grandfathers was a ‘wagon loader.’ Laugh as you might, today he’d probably be working for UPS in logistics and making a nice income. Back in my college years, I used to load and unload trucks in the dead of winter. Now I know where those deft skills came from.

The French nuns at the little French school in downtown Saint Paul had a huge impact on my life even if I didn’t know it at the time. When the school was built back in the 1873 it was meant for the children of second and third generation French settlers.

By the time my sister and I started school there, our classes were a cosmopolitan smorgasbord of ethnic groups. There were Irish, Italian, German, and Spanish students. Almost all of them lived along the fringe of the downtown loop. Unlike all of our white counterparts where we lived in Highland Park, it made for some interesting playground banter.

It turns out there was a critical junction or fork in my ancestral road. The road split and one branch was named Lacombe and the other LaTulippe. The plot of flowers was on my grand-mother’s side. I never knew her but she must have been a wise woman to have chosen Lacombe. At least I didn’t have to defend myself in grade school from some bully mocking my name.

Another interesting fact was the evolution of the name LaComb. If you go far enough back there used to be an ‘e’ at the end of Lacombe. At another point, the ‘c’ became capitalized.

I was surprised to see on my birth certificate that my name was spelled: Dennis. When I asked my mother why it had been changed she had a simple explanation. She said that in first grade, the French nuns informed her that the proper spelling of my name was Denis. Mom knew better than to mess with the French nuns.

That’s okay; I’ve grown quite accustomed to Denis J. LaComb…and besides it’s not too flowery.

Deep Data Mining

Some people are adamant that you shouldn’t go back in time and revisit your past. ‘What’s done is done’ they argue ‘and can’t be changed or altered anymore.’ Often times these people don’t want to go back to their early childhood, high school or college years, past relationships, old jobs or collateral experiences of a life long since lived. They’ve closed the book on their past and only want to dwell on the present.

I find myself shouldering up to the other end of that spectrum. I would argue that you can go back and examine with the cold, calculating eye of a time-warped traveler relevant questions such as ‘why did things turn out the way they did?’, ‘what really happened between me and someone else?’ what was reality instead of ‘what if?’ In short, I think you can search your past for the building blocks that brought you to your present state of mind. I call it data mining or fact-based research reflecting on your life.

I have a friend who has defined three stages in our lives. With an apology upfront for possibly misrepresenting some of his findings, I believe he has defined the three stages as: Self-discovery, self-exploration and finally self-examination.

He believes we spend the first part of our lives discovering our own identity. Who were we as children growing up, experiences in education, finding a spouse and becoming a parents? The second stage is work-orientated where we hone our job skills, find a career that moves us forward and cements our place in the world of adults. The third and final stage is that of reflection and self-examination. Where are we relative to everyone else and how did we get here?

I have always argued that if you are comfortable with your present state of affairs, you can go back and examine your past with your feet still firmly planted in the present. You can look, without a jaundice eye, at what went wrong and why, what worked and why, where you are today relative to those around you.

Many would argue ‘who cares?’ and maybe they have a point. If you don’t care why you turned out the way you did then it probably doesn’t really matter to yourself or those around you. If you care but realize you can’t change the past then what’s the point? Because, I believe, in the end you had a life and it’s into the fourth quarter now. So how did things turn out? And if you don’t like what you see, what can you do about it.

I’m giving a workshop this fall in ‘How to Begin Writing.’ Just like the workshop I conducted last spring, I expect most of my audience will consist of seniors sprinkled with a few of the younger sect. To a person they want to write but don’t know how to get started. Few if any want to become published authors. They just want to fulfill a lifetime ambition of putting thoughts to paper in some readable form and fashion. I’m going to tell them how to begin that process.

Part of that process will be an examination of their past and what they’d like to share with others about it. It might be painful. It might be exhilarating. It will be revealing; peeling back the layers of their lives that haven’t felt the touch of a pen or keyboard in a lifetime. For all it will be enormously satisfying…if only for themselves.

I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter if a person reflects on their existence or leaves it closed shut in the darkness of the past. Each of us is on a journey called life. Some live it day-to-day and others like to cast a glance over their shoulder once in a while. We’re all going to get to the end of the trail one way or another.

I like where I’ve been and don’t mind ruminating about those old adventures every once in a while…and look forward to many more in my future.