In recent years my bride, Penny, enrolled us on the website Ancestry.

My parents both passed 50-plus years ago. I knew some aspects about their background. They both met at university, raised three sons, and I was brought up in the Methodist church. However, I knew little about each other’s family heritage.

Ancestry revealed to me I was almost 30 percent Ashkenazi Jewish with most of the remainder being from England and Northwestern Europe.

The Jewish aspect brought back memories when I was 8 or 9 years old, of my fraternal grandmother, who resided in Portsmouth, Ohio. Her special kitchen cupboards offered a rope running through the handles and a Star of David was positioned in the breakfast nook’s window.

This revealed to me that in the early 1930s, my parents were in a closeted mixed

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