Short Story: The Truth About My Family History

My dad’s great grandparents came from Lithuania went through Ellis Island. Their last name was Lithuanian, but translated to English as “red man”, so that is what they told the immigration officials.
However, their thick accents sounded like Rutman, and so the name was changed.
Then they went to Cleveland and started a kosher wine business during Prohibition, which is the law that prevented the sale of alcohol. But a religious exemption allowed kosher wine, so they could sell that. My great grandfather and his brothers all worked in the wine business. My great grandmother’s grandfather was an educator and taught in religious school. His wife died in childbirth, so my grandmother was raised by her tyrannical aunt, who mistreated her. Her aunt was religiously strict, and therefore my great grandmother associated religious strictness with tyranny, so she was anti-religious. My grandparents met in Cleveland in elementary school and met again in college, where they started dating. A lot of my dad’s childhood immediate family moved to Israel, and both of my grandparents have relatives there. My grandparents met again in Boston while they were in college. They married while my grandma was in grad school, and their first kid was born when my grandma was still in grad school. father residency in Maryland, they moved to San Antonio to start a medical practice, where my dad sister and two brothers were born. My grandparents always planned on moving to Israel. They were planning on staying for five years, then moving to Israel, but they ended up not going to Israel until they turned 60.

My mom grew up in Houston, and both her parents were public school teachers. Her mom taught science and her dad taught physics. Their family was originally from Kansas, where my grandparents still live, and both of them mostly grew up there. Then they both went to Boston, where they met, then Wisconsin, where my uncle was born and still lives, and then Texas, where my mom was born. John is a name that runs in the family. Both my grandad and my uncle are named John E. Beam, and I have a great uncle John. My great great grandmother moved around a lot because my great great grandfather was in the newspaper business, and he would move around for the stories first, and then my great great grandmother would pack up all their stuff and the kids and get on a train and go to wherever he was. My great great uncle Henry was a Lieutenant with the Medical Corps part of the Navy, and he was a director of the red cross at the end of WWII. He also was a surgeon in the war front to help injured soldiers. Because blood was hard to transport because it needed specific temperatures, people were dying from blood loss. So he created a prototype for an insulated box that could hold blood which led to more reliable versions of this. It completely changed how people survived because they only had plasma before, which helps stop bleeding but it doesn’t replenish blood. So if people had already bled too much, there was nothing that could be done. But now they could replenish their blood which would save a lot of people. He also founded the Topeka Blood Bank. Funnily enough, my grandparents live about half an hour away from Topeka currently.

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