Over on Facebook, Lisa Louise Cooke wrote an intriguing note called Who Do You Think You Are Separated From By Six Degrees? Lisa explained how she is connected to Claud Rains, famous movie star, through a 4-step series of relationships. She doesn't mean genealogy relationships, but instead knowing person A who knows person B who had some connection with person C who in turn knew person D.
This note struck a chord with me, as on the weekend my husband and I were talking about how many famous people I have personally known or had some encounter with. Our chat became a rather intriguing conversation as more and more names came to the surface of my rather muddied brain! It's not that I run in famous circles or hobnob with the rich and famous but for some reason I have had a few personal encounters with some fairly well-known figures in my lifetime.
I am going to be writing about that as a future prompt for my 52 Weeks of Sharing Memories series, so don't want to give it away here but using Lisa's Six Degrees of Separation as a prompt, here is my little story of degrees of separation from someone famous, that person being Frederick Banting, the discover of insulin and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1923. I've talked about Banting previously on my blog in Another Not-So-Famous Ancestor of Sorts
How am I connected to this great man?
1. I am my mother's daughter
2. My mother's second husband (and thus my step-father) was Godfrey Harwood
3. Godfrey's first wife was Greta
4. Greta worked as Frederick Banting's lab assistant at the University of Toronto
And there you have it - my four degrees of separation from Frederick Banting, Nobel prize winner and discover of insulin.
Lisa asks on her post for readers to post their own Six (or less) Degrees of Separation. This is mine - do you have a similar story to tell?
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3 comments:
I have 3 such connections.
1. My ex husband had, as clients, a couple who were very close friends with John Denver and his family.
2. Same ex husband had, as a client, a wealthy lumberman from Canada who was a friend of Dr. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral of Orange County, California.
3. I and my children were friends of the Fleming family whose oldest daughter is Renee Fleming of the Metropolitan Opera in NYC.
As my father was an actor I could name quite a few - but here's a genealogical one I'm quite proud of - my mother's grandfather played cricket with the famous cricketer, W. G. Grace!
Growing up in a small diaspora community provides numerous opportunities for degrees of separation!
1. Many of my Latvian friends growing up lived in Montreal. Montreal was also the home of former Latvian president Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, who was also involved in the Latvian community there. I've met her once that I know of, and she had a cottage by the Latvian summer camp I attended as a child, so I'm certain I've probably met her more often as well.
2. I went to Latvian Saturday school with the grandchildren of Conservatory of Music composer Tālivaldis Ķeniņš.
3. A friend of mine is the grandson of poet Gunārs Saliņš.
4. My own great-grandfather Augusts Lūkins was a member of the Latvian Saeima (Parliament), and thus probably rubbed elbows with many other Latvian politicians.
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