So long, Art

In our house we have two huge sports fans: my son and myself, one casual sports fan, my daughter, and my musician husband who roots for the halftime show. Those of us who follow sports in this house pretty much live and die with the Indians and the Browns (though as fans of curses we have a warm place in our hearts for the Red Sox). Following the Indians (and to a lesser extent the Browns) through the 70's and 80's was a lesson in living with frustration. My son, on the hand, did not have his formative year blighted by baseball frustration as he arrived 2 months before the Indians made the first World Series in 41 years. (Yes there is a picture of him, in his little Indians uniform watching game 1 with his great grandma)
On the other hand, his football fandom has been tarnished by what happened a few days after that World Series ended, when Art Modell announced that he was moving the Browns to Baltimore.
Although football has always been secondary to baseball for me, I still was a Browns fan, partly due to many years spent watching the team's games with my father, who remembered the true glory days of the Browns in the 50'S and 60'S and would talk endlessly of Paul Brown, Otto Graham. Marion Motley, Lou Groza, and Jim Brown. I know that had he been alive still in 1995 he would have gloried in the Indians and been heartbroken over the betrayal of Browns fans by Art Modell.
This was a team that was loved and supported by its fans and it was financial mismanagement that got them into the hole they were in, not poor attendence. They left, not for the new stadium they could have in Cleveland eventually anyway, but for the huge cash payouts made directly to Modell for moving the team. The NFL went along, with only the owners of the Steelers and the Bengals opposing the move. Fans were left with a few crumbs of comfort: there would be a new stadium, and a new team, and that team would be called the Browns. Art could take the players, but they wouldnt be wearing orange and brown. But when the franchise became available it somehow wound up in the hands of the man who brokered the deal with Baltimore, and although the new stadium is beautiful most of the teams have been dreadful.
To a person who doesn't follow sports this may all seem unimportant. But sports teams do matter. To people in other parts of the country it is often the single most important instance of a city's visibility. If the sports team goes so does part of that community's identity. Just ask Brooklyn.
So all this ran through my head yesterday when I heard Art Modell had died.
The news media in Cleveland has tried to be fairly balanced, writing about what a great guy he was personally, how much he did to bring football into the television era, all the charity work he did and so forth. To me it just makes the whole thing worse. When someone who is supposedly so wonderful and involved in the community does something that so thoroughly betrays rhe interests and needs of that community, what is one to think? I think it is actually worse than when someone is a clear outsider to the community with no interest except the profit margin. When someone who has lived in a place and spent a lifetime with a corporation moves it out of town, or shuts it down completely doesn't that sting more than when Bain Capital types do the same thing?
Sadly, at least in this part of the country, that will be the mixed legacy of Art Modell.
On the other hand, Lebron James will never have to worry about being Clevelands most hated sports figure.

Line 27

Like many Americans, I come from a ethnic mix that could only happen in this country, my mother being Irish and Manx and my father Hungarian and Slavic. I love genealogy, but cannot go back further than great-grandparents in any direction before I come up against a boat. In this respect I am envious of my husband whose people have all been here since the mid 1800's or longer and also came from places like Holland and Switzerland where excellent records were kept.

As a child I grew up very aware of being Irish (with an Irish grandmother born on St Patrick's day how could I miss) especially the history and culture, particularly the music. (Trying to learn anything about my Manx heritage was another adventure). The heavy focus on the Celts occasionally annoyed my father ("you're Hungarian too you know", he'd mutter, somewhat amused). Ironically one area that we were very Hungarian was the cuisine, since my mom never learned to cook till her mother in law taught her. But when I tried to explore in more detail that side of my family tree I ran  into not only boats, but the Iron Curtain.

It wasn't my dad's fault either; as the youngest of 7 kids (and 11 years younger than the next oldest) his immigrant father was quite assimilated by the time he came along. Fluent in English by then, Hungarian was only spoken when my grandparents wanted to talk in front of the kids. My grandfather seldom spoke of his roots, telling his children "We're Americans now."

My grandmother lived with us when I was a child, but her stories were mostly about my dad's childhood, not hers or my grandfather's. Because my grandfather died when I was a baby,(the only one of my grandparents I never knew) I felt a particular desire to know him better.

And then the Ellis Island records went online.

As soon as I could get online with my poky computer without crashing I went searching for my grandfather. I knew the spelling of the name had been changed, supposedly on Ellis Island, because we had a a Hungarian prayerbook that my grandfather had brought with him. I typed in the name in what we believed to have been the original spelling and got a hit. I told the computer to take me to the page.

There it was, the log for the Cunard ship Pannonia, which arrived at Ellis Island on November 9, 1907 at 1048am--and on line 27 I found my grandfather.

I can't describe the thrill I felt as I stared at the screen. Finally I felt I had made a connection with the side of my family I had neglected for so long. It was one of the great moments of my life.

In a few minutes of Internet searching I confirmed everything I had ever known, and picked up more. He had been trained as a butcher. His next of kin was his mother, whose name was Kathy. I had the name of the town he had come from, the location he was staying at in New York. I had his age and height. I knew he was literate.Because Austria-Hungary was a big empire at the time his exact ethnicity could have been uncertain, but here it stated "Magyar".   His boat had sailed from Fiume and could carry 400 regular passengers and 800 in  steerage.

The Ellis Island site also has a link to all the ships that came through immigration, so I was able  to view a picture of the Pannonia, and learn a little of  its history.  The Iron Curtain had come up a little bit.

Since then, with greater digitization and availability of records, I have learned more about my family. For example, Ellis Island was totally innocent in the matter of the name change, it happened some time after the 1920 census.

I have learned several lessons from this particular exercise in genealogy. First is the vital importance of oral records. If a family member tells you something, write it down.  If the kids or grandkids give you one of those memory books for Christmas, fill it out.  (My Irish grandmother filled one out and my mom and aunts made bound copies for all the grand kids. It has been invaluable.) Share info with other family members. Remember what you are doing now will be your descendants' genealogy, so take lots of pictures and label them.

And if anyone in your family came through Ellis Island go toEllis Island's web page and check it

out.  Looking at the documents is free, free, free (you can purchase prints if you like).

The site is very informative and easy to use. And I wish you the same thrill I had when I landed on Line 27 for the first time.