re: Things you find out from family later in life.

I was 15 hanging out in my parent’s living room. My Mom had a friend of hers over and they were having a conversation in the dining room. Mom just casually mentions she was adopted. I was like what? She evidently was born in New Orleans and was adopted by my grandparents. I just thought she was born and raised in Hattiesburg.

Side note is my Ancestry.com gets a lot of connections of people I have never heard of.

Visiting my wife’s grandmother in her final months and asked her about her father (wife’s great grandfather). I’m a huge history buff but my wife just is not. I knew he was an officer and was there at Tarawa and fought throughout the Marianas in WW2. She told me he actually led a group of men from the Marines 2nd Division onto the beach that first afternoon at Tarawa and that he rose quickly through the ranks during the war. I’d imagine other officers being wounded and KIA played a major role. I know it’s morbid to think about but one of those bullets buzzing past his head is a few inches to the left or right or an airborne mortar shell catches a gust of wind and lands a few dozen yards closer and three generations of her family never exist. She also told me about him arriving with MacArthur for the occupation of Japan and they entered a 100,000+ square foot warehouse that first day and it had row after row of racks and shelving full of guns stored floor to ceiling. Just about every caliber of firearm that had been invented before 1945 was in that warehouse. They had been confiscated from citizens of conquered places (Korea, Manchuria, the Philippines etc.) as well as Japanese citizens. Of course now we know the plan was to arm every man, woman and child so they could fight to the death during the invasion of mainland Japan.

I found out that Papa was a rolling stone and where ever he laid his hat was his home. When he died, all he left us was alone.

I had an older female cousin that was raised by our grandparents. As a kid, I never understood why she called our grandparents "mom and dad". I would ask my mom and she would just tell me that she's my cousin and that my grandparents were her parents and to stop being nosey. I would fire back "wouldn't that make her my aunt?" And I would get a pair of eyes.

When I got older, she told me that my aunt had a baby at 15 and basically didn't want it, so my grandparents raised her. Then I find out that it happened two more times but they were raised by other family members out of state.

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it happened two more times

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You’d think the teen mom would learn cause and effect after the first two. Gee whiz!

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You’d think the teen mom would learn cause and effect after the first two. Gee whiz!

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I know. The next child was born a year later and I only met her twice. My mom said that her sister wanted to give her to my parents but my mom was pregnant with me and already had two kids. My great uncle raised her.

It was only about 10 years ago that I found out that my grandma on my mother's side, who died at age 97 in 1989 had never married the second man she had kids with-----------and they had 6.

Both her first husband and the latter father of her kids were long dead by the time I was born in 52, so I never got to know them.

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Divorce and children born out of wedlock is difficult for people over 80 to talk about. They were guilt tripped by their churches to believe it was shameful and should not be discussed.

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And society was healthier for it

My great uncle was allegedly CIA. He went ‘awol’ for like 3 years in Vietnam. My grandfather was SF and ended up abandoning his family to go kick it with his brother in Vietnam for a year, I think he also ended up with an AWOL charge - at least that’s the version of the story I was told.

Probably have lots of Vietnamese cousins.