People
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Assumptions About Given Names
There are many issues surrounding surnames and their variations when doing genealogy, but we can also encounter a lot of assumptions about given names, or first names. To arrange for my dad’s footstone from the VA, I had to provide a few documents to verify his service in the US Army. One of these documents was the DD 214. On this document my dad’s name was listed as Lawrence John Brill. Let me say, this was all kinds of wrong… For most of my dad’s adult life he dealt with the effect of one mistake that was made when he enlisted in the Army. His given name was always Larry.…
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A Wedding and a Divorce
The anniversary of my paternal grandparents’ wedding is approaching. Clarence Lee Brill and Josephine DeBaise were married on April 24th, 1935. Now, this event was not something that was actually celebrated by my grandparents anytime during my lifetime, because they had divorced only a few years later. After my grandmother asked my grandfather to leave, my grandfather moved out of Connecticut, enlisted in the US Navy, and eventually remarried and had another son; my grandmother raised my dad as a single mother, though with great assistance from her mother, her many sisters, and even her in-laws. Since the date was not celebrated, it wasn’t even noted or known by many,…
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Larry J. Brill, my dad
My dad passed away December 18, 2022. I’m not yet up for posting much, so for now I’m just going to share his obit: Larry Joseph Brill, 86, devoted father and grandfather, passed away December 18, 2022. Born January 20, 1936 to C. Lee Brill and Josephine DeBaise Brill, Larry was a life-long Wallingford resident. He graduated from Lyman Hall High School in 1954, and spent two years in the U.S. Army, from which he created some lifelong friendships. In 1965 he married Ann Rykas. He was predeceased by her in 1975, and he raised their two children on his own. As a young man Larry discovered a love of…
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Happy Birthday, Babci
Last night I was perusing housing listings in my hometown, and I eventually browsed my way over to Google Earth where I looked up the house where my mother and her three sisters had grown up. It was on Blatchley Ave in New Haven – or Fair Haven – Connecticut. This was a modest home, to say the least, a very small house with small rooms and a small backyard, on a street that was not known to be very well-off or safe (I do love understatement). My mother and her sisters grew up quite poor, though both of my grandparents worked very hard in rather arduous jobs. My Grampa…
