At 12:32 PM 4/9/97 -0400, you wrote: >Hi - Count me in too -- Hi! "Count me in too" -- TOO. My parents were fairly open about discussing family origins, and spent many an evening in the farm kitchen reminiscing about the "old country" and relatives left behind. Unfortunately, I was too young, and uninterested, to ask the questions I am asking today (now that they are gone). BUT! There are many other relatives around whom I could still ask - if they were willing, and informed. For example, I have fairly good information about my great grandparents, but only the names of their parents. Another, distantly related family, whom I can trace back also to about my great grandparents' time on the maternal side, and could possibly go back further if I could do so on the male side, still are around. I asked one elderly gentleman questions about his grandfather. He replied that his parents never discussed such subjects at home, and he did not know, even, his grandfather's name. The irony lies in the fact that a Ukrainian Orthodox funeral often ends with the singing of the song "Eternal Memory (translated, of course)", and Orthodox people (at least in the rural areas where I grew up) spent a full day cleaning and 'prettying up' their family graves every spring. Yet their attitude towards the knowledge of their ancestors was, too often, "they are dead; let them be". Bill W ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "He who cares not about his ancestors, does not deserve to be remembered by his offspring".