Beth Colburn Orozco | Family Ties

My mom and I took a road trip from Arizona to Wisconsin for a family reunion held at the fire station in Reedsville, Wisconsin. This was the Doolan reunion; the Irish side of my family who came from County Claire, Ireland during the potato famine and homesteaded as dairy farmers in Manitowoc County, forty minutes south of Green Bay. The matriarch of this clan of descendants was my great-grandma Elizabeth Doolan, who had six daughters referred to in our family as the Doolan Dolls.

As a kid, I loved going to the annual reunions. They were held at a park where my sisters and I ran wild with our cousins. I stopped attending the reunions once I graduated from high school and was on my own. Like me, many of my cousins went off to college or found jobs out of state and never returned to their hometowns. The annual family reunions were eventually canceled as my generation and those that followed set off in search of greener pastures.

My cousin Mary Jo passed away in May of this year. As the family historian, she was the messenger of family lore and ties. We all felt unmoored at her funeral. Would we ever see each other again? Many of us floated around the idea of having a family reunion at the dinner held following Mary Jo’s funeral Mass, and a date was set.

My mom and I arrived at my sister Kelli and her husband Carl’s home in Green Bay a few days before the reunion. By then, it had grown from a small gathering of twenty, to a shindig of some sixty folks, many of whom I hadn’t seen in decades, and others I had never met, especially the children. Each family claimed a table in the firehouse community room before mingling about, catching up on missed years of connections. My daughter, her husband, and four of my five grandchildren attended. I had given my daughter up for adoption. Through perseverance and miracles, we found each other. This was her first time meeting her birth family’s Irish clan. Watching her children play with their fifth and sixth cousins seemed to close the gap of loss and longing I had felt for decades after giving her up. Kelli’s children, Michael and Robert and his new wife, Morgan, attended as well. From my daughter and nephews to the little ones running around, these are the generations to watch. Years from now, will a wise, family historian emerge from these kids to honor and hold a space for the rest of us?

My cousin Mike, the fire chief, gave the kids a tour of the firetrucks and sounded the sirens for affect. A delicious catered meal provided by De Greef Ends Here in Greenleaf of broasted chicken with all the fixings was served family style. My mom made my grandma’s sugar cookies, my cousin Mark’s wife, Lisa, got up at 4 am and made trays of kolaches, and my cousin Janet brought kneecaps. There were also homemade pies and brownies. No one left hungry.

Frank and Elizabeth Herold clan (my family)

There were photos to share and laughter to be had as the older cousins- my mother’s generation- shared childhood memories of spending time together on my great-grandma and great-grandpa Doolan’s farm. And there was love. Family love that burrows deep inside us with a sense of belonging and familiarity. I joked with Lisa that she should have runaway from this crazy clan before she got married. In earnest she replied, “Your family is one of the reasons I married Mark. I never had this growing up.”

I envied the people, including Mark and Lisa, who stayed close to home, rooted in our family’s legacy.

I wandered through the large community room taking photos, overwhelmed with nostalgia. Whether I had stayed or left, these were my people. People who came from Ireland, a place wrought with starvation and disease in the 1840s, who were no longer welcomed in their homeland as the English claimed the land their own. People who homesteaded in this swath of Wisconsin land with its rich soil for growing crops and raising dairy cows. And I realized I am both an insider and an outsider. This is my homeland where those who came before me loved, married, had children, worked hard, and were buried in the soil that had given them so much. It is also the home I abandoned, leaving for untamed, wild spaces.

I am grateful to those who believed enough in family and our shared history to put the reunion together.

The following day my mom, Kelli and I took off on a journey I have made with my mom several times but had never paid close attention to. Armed with my mom’s recollections and Google Maps, we headed back to Manitowoc County for a treasure hunt. We were on a mission to find the farms, churches, old shops, and taverns once owned by my mom’s side of the family.

I drove while my mom gave directions. “Wait, turn left here.” “Okay, I think we went too far.” “I’m not sure if it was this house or the one next door. Nope, it was this one,” she uttered under her breath as we drove county roads past farms and a landscape that hasn’t changed much in the past 170 years, working to summon childhood memories. It was a windy, cold day that threatened rain. We stopped at Saint Patrick’s Church in Maple Grove where my great-grandmother Elizabeth Doolan, who lived to be 103 years old, went to school, then later taught, attended mass, baptisms, confirmations, and weddings of her six girls (Athlyn, Elizabeth, Margaret, Rita, Donna, and Lou) and her grandchildren until she was laid to rest next to her husband, my great-grandpa John, in the cemetery adjacent to the church.

It was a windy, cold day that threatened rain. We stopped often, so that I could take notes and photos. Memories of the reunion still fresh, I wanted to know everything about my family. We had pizza at The Iron Buffalo, a bar that was once owned by my mom’s cousin, Bobby Kvitek, on the Herold side of the family. These were my mom’s dad’s people. Also, farmers who homesteaded in Manitowoc County, they came from Tabor, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. We drove past the Kellnersville Bar and Banquet Hall where my mom’s parents had their wedding reception. We scoured cemeteries looking for gravesites; beacons proving my existence. And I thanked those who came before me, leaving their anecdotes behind like glinting gems to unearth and pass on as heirlooms.

On the drive back to Arizona, I listened intently to family stories my mom had gathered over a lifetime. Maybe it was the long hours on the road, or the residue of feeling part of something much bigger than myself, but I yearned for connection to my past. Each story took shape like scenes in a movie. My mom, a wealth of information, was the thread pulling the past forward. And the fact that at my age I was on a road trip with my mom, filled me with gratitude, as I have so many friends who have lost their parents.

At the reunion, my daughter asked me if I would be home for Thanksgiving. To be asked by this amazing woman who has accepted me back into her life and that of her family is a gift. Of course, I accepted. So, Kelli and Carl joined my husband and me for Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter’s parents’ house where we have pieced together a new kind of family, and where I experienced something akin to hope; a future no longer marred by my choices.

There are often minefields to navigate during the holidays when families come together with good intentions that can sour. As I get older, I am drawn to the family tales of hardship of those who came before me endured. Each generation building on the previous. And I am grateful for the decisions my great-great-great grandparents made over a hundred and fifty years ago that has resulted in this big, fun-loving Irish-Bohemian family.

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