"I have not been a perfect person during my life. Far from it. As a young person, I did things that I now wish I hadn't done. Given my upbringing, I could have turned out with a hard heart, but somehow I managed to gut it out, grab myself by the boot straps, and pull myself up. Life does not allow one to go backward, only forward. "That said, one can look back, and sometimes it's important to do just that. This is the story of my life journey, with a brief history of my mom and pop and their families. In some instances, I try to put our story in historical context. Mostly, this is a short...