As family get-togethers go, this one held a lot of promise.
My immediate family – uncles, aunts, cousins and assorted other characters – is pretty much spread across North America. Some live as far south as Florida. Others reside within a few hours drive of Washington, D.C. And then there’s the branch of the family that stretches into Canada. That’s us. As a consequence, family reunions occur, at best, once a year – generally at Christmas time or for special occasions. So, when both our daughters had announcements – one a coming marriage, the other a coming birth – the results were inevitable.
“Why not have a reunion this summer at the half-way point?” suggested one daughter. “Let’s all get together in Baltimore.”
Following a flurry of e-mails, phone calls and, yes, even a posted letter or two, we all agreed on the weekend, the travel arrangements, the hotel accommodations and the even the restaurants for our evening family feasts. All that remained to overcome were the time and distance to get there. There were several glitches getting everybody there. But by last Thursday evening, everybody had arrived safely, first hugs and kisses had been exchanged and we were down to the serious business of our family reunions: Whose hotel room would double as the hospitality suite?
Our family has a long-standing tradition about get-togethers. It dates back to a cousin’s wedding in the 1960s, when not only did all branches of the family descend on the city of New York, so did the mother of all snow storms. As a consequence, most of us out-of-towners – about a dozen or so – were forced to spend several days at a motel in Astoria, New York, in just two rooms! My aunt came up with the Greek expression that best described the circumstances: “Angaze! Angaze! (Together! Together!)” she said. And it’s been a motto for family reunions ever since.
The highlight of the ’07 reunion occurred on Saturday night. We had taken over an entire room at a roadhouse restaurant just outside the city. The middle-aged members of the family decided to pay homage to the elder members – two sisters and a brother in their 70s and 80s. Virginia, George and Kay Kontozoglus, offspring of the founding members of the family, were feted and praised throughout the evening with tributes, some roasting, plenty of Greek food, dancing and laughter. We even unveiled a proclamation, declaring August 11, “Kontozoglus Appreciation Day,” and pledging that “annually as many family members be encouraged to gather and/or at least acknowledge the day and its never-ending significance.”
But the reunion had additional significance for me.
During one of the breaks between eating and partying over the weekend, a number of us non-residents decided to become tourists. We took a side trip to Washington, D.C., to do some sightseeing. Of course, we took in most of the traditional sights – the Capitol building, the White House, the Museum of Natural History (where we actually saw the Hope diamond), the war memorials and the various presidential monuments – Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. The visit to the most recent addition to the monument mall – the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial – for me proved the most moving. It brought an unexpected addition to the weekend family reunion.
There, amid the open-air bronze sculptures of FDR, the fountains and the inscriptions carved in granite, I not only learned about the longest-serving president of the United States, I also had flashbacks of my father. Dad grew up in the United States during the Depression and WWII. He adored Roosevelt and all he stood for – his fairness, his eloquence, his concern for the common man and his extraordinary leadership.
As I walked past some of FDR’s most famous quotations, etched into the larger-than-life stone displays, I heard my father’s voice paying tribute to one of his idols. There was “I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal” and “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But one quotation spoke volumes to me.
“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background,” the president said in 1940. “We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”
Now there was a believer in people. No wonder I felt my father’s presence there. Though it’s been several years since his death, my father and one of his heroes had joined our reunion with a most powerful message about the family of humankind.