Reunion

A great mystery surrounded Larry Sousa, my husband's grandfather. As far as anyone knew, he showed up in Conneaut Lake around 1930 and never gave any clues about his past. My mother-in-law grew up never meeting a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin. This kind of thing drives me nuts and occupies my thoughts. When Kate came home this past winter with a family history assignment, we decided it was the perfect time to play detective. With only one bit on information to go on, and lots of help from Ancestry.com, we were quickly in contact with newly found relatives!

While we will never know the true reason for Larry Sousa's estrangement from the family, it's all in the past now. We were invited to yesterday's annual family reunion at Erie's Waldameer Park and were welcomed with open arms.  The above photo was taken just moments after we arrived.  My mother-in-law met her first cousin for the first time in her life and immediately took a stroll to get acquainted. (You can see pictures of our visits to Waldameer in 2011 here, and 2010 here.)

Since this is all so new and we're still adjusting, I won't give too much away. I will say that Larry Sousa was 100% Italian, something unknown to us until a few months ago. In honor of this new-found heritage, Will had the face painter paint the Italian flag on his arm.

We feasted on homemade meatballs, sausages, and pasta and drank homemade wine. We even won a gift basket in the raffle drawing. Bob and Kate check their tickets below.