How fortunate Michele Norris was to have learned the history of her father’s mysterious gait before it was too late. A decade ago, I dug out the truth behind why my siblings and I knew nothing of my dad’s family. I learned then that the family – my dad as a young boy – came, like millions of others, from Eastern Europe though Ellis Island in 1913; my grandfather renounced his allegiance to the czar in 1917 to became a U.S. citizen, and in 1928, died in the family’s garage in St.
Louis from two gunshot wounds to the chest. The police called it a suicide. From reading the report, my sister and I think otherwise. All involved are long dead, and whatever actually happened is now unknown to us, and unknowable.-Tom Ruppel
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