Digging Up Family Roots
Some people are named after a well-known person or a beloved relative. These people had excited parents who wanted their new little bundle of joy to live up to the person they admired. I, on the other hand, was named after a meat delivery truck. My parents were in a crisis because up until I took my first mortal breath, I was to be a girl. They had a great name picked out for a baby girl of the mid-1960s – Ginger Gaylene Gibson. Instead, they got a boy. As I got older, I understood why my mom always said the phrase “Oh boy!” It started with me. Since they didn’t have a boy name, they had to come up with something, and my great-grandmother liked to get deliveries from a company called Randy’s Meats, thus my namesake is my great-grandmother’s traveling deli.
My name was fine until my first job out of college when I worked with a lady from England and found out what my name meant in British slang. She said at first she didn’t know if she would be able to work with me and say my name with a straight face. When she told me what it meant, I was a little embarrassed, but being in my early 20s it did kind of make sense for a red-blooded American boy.
In my family, I have been the one designated to dig up the family bones, including hidden ones in the closets. Both my grandmothers helped me out tremendously when I started, even though my paternal grandmother told me to be careful because I might just find out something I didn’t want to know. To say I have uncovered more than a few hidden bones is an understatement.
Family history is quite interesting. However, there are times when you can either hit a dead-end (no pun intended), or you get on a wrong line and find out a bunch of interesting things about strangers. There are times when you find others have things wrong. Several years ago, I had a lady tell me she was related to me through my maternal grandfather, John Hicks, and she wanted me to know that he had a daughter named Gloria Jean that had passed away. That was puzzling because Gloria Jean is my mom. When I told her Gloria Jean had not passed away and that I had been with her earlier that day, she said my grandfather must have had a secret affair and had two daughters named Gloria Jean born on the same day in the same hospital because she was certain her research was correct. I told her she obviously had never been to Tahlequah because nothing is secret. She was finally convinced her John Hicks was not my grandfather.
A great free site with more than a billion names at your disposal is Family Search. The site, operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has volunteers entering information from around the world and provides more than 5.7 billion images including photos, books, stories, records and more. Their phone app will also detect relatives in your vicinity, and that is interesting as well. I recently found out my wife is also a distant relative, which was amusing.
It’s important to know your history, your culture, and what makes you unique. It can also be fun and entertaining for your family and friends, especially if you were to find out you were your own grandpa. From what I’ve learned about my family, even that would not surprise me.
Randy Gibson is the CEO of RDG Communications, LLC.
