Outside of joke fodder and a few great memories I have never found it within me to put any emphasis on or strong feelings toward my ancestry. I understand why it's a fascinating subject for many but I just don't happen to get into it myself.

I am of predominantly English ancestry. In the mid-forties one Margaret Birney Pittis wrote a book of the Pittis family genealogy and that traced my grandfather's family back to the Isle of Wight. My grandmother's family had no written history but also traced themselves back to England in the late 1700's.

My Dad's parents emigrated from Germany(mother) and Italy(father) and both were Ellis Island "veterans" with, in Grandpa's case, the sometimes accompanying name change which happened there. It was never a topic of conversation with the family and I learned most of what I know only because I kept asking about Grandpa's accent! My Dad put NO emphasis on his heritage at all and I guess I just follwoed suit.

I picked up a lot more of the Italian side simply because I grew up in a community with a relatively large percentage of Italian-Americans and I enjoyed the way they spoke and the food. Listening to men of my Dad's generation was a riot.....None spoke the language much, but the "sound" and the animated speech was truly priceless.

Most of them were WWII vets and a high number had served in the Italian campaign, my Dad included.   They were much more focused on being "Americans" than anything else so many of my friends as well as myself never cared or thought much about that either.

I think the other thing which was an interesting influence on my "Don't Care" attitude was that we moved when I was in the 5th grade. The Columbus suburb we moved to went from 750 people to 20,000 people in 3 years. As one of my classmates said at a 30 year reunion, "We were all from somewhere else in the 5th grade so it wasn't important to anybody what anyone had done or been before. The only way we could make friends was based on the here and now." Completely true. So almost all of us grabbed onto our new community as home and being a "Reynoldsburg Raider"....school team name.... was far more important than whether you were anything else.

Spaw