As I begin this, I spend three days a week as a receptionist at the U.S. Department of State greeting visitors and providing badges to allow them access to the building. I see and sometimes chat a bit with famous or infamous people, mostly from past or present government administrations. Of late, it seems the ghosts of President Reagan have been hovering with his Secretary of Education William Bennett in for lunch with Secretary of State Pompeo one day, and Bennett’s Undersecretary Gary Bauer, another ultra-conservative who ran for President in 2000, another day. I chatted with Bauer a bit and asked his opinion of the Secretary of Education and Bauer’s friend, Betsy DeVos, and he said she is a lightning rod. I watched the Saudi Foreign Minister as he was interviewed after a ministerial meeting on ISIS. When I was checking in an activist, Rania Kisar, Christine Legarde, then Head of the International Monetary Fund (shortly thereafter President of the European Central Bank), appeared and the activist ran toward her, saying she knew her; fortunately, she did. This was the same day that Callista Gingrich appeared in the lobby, and my elderly colleague said she hated her because she slept with a married man (whom she later married: Newt). A fellow named Abramowitz appeared before me, so I asked if he was related to the Ambassador Abramowitz I met as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, and he said Mort is his uncle. On June 5, Neil Bush, the brother and son of presidents, came up to the C Street reception desk with Louis Freeh, the Director of the FBI during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. We had trouble finding their contacts in the building, so I chatted at length with both of them. They asked about my career and thanked me for my service. Bush reached over the counter to shake my hand. Freeh told me about his early days as an FBI Agent in New York before becoming a prosecutor and judge. Earlier that day the son of Ambassador Charles Twining appeared, and I told him how much I appreciated his father from my time with him inCambodia.

Before my time on this receptionist perch and before my time at all, there were those from whom Idescended.

My mother’s father, Albert Carl Skarjune, was born in Detroit in 1895, and died of cancer at the Allen Park, Michigan Veterans Hospital in 1939 at the age of 44 when my mother was just 10 years old. My grandfather received an honorable discharge from the Army after serving only from October 4, 1918 until January 1, 1919 and this apparently made him eligible for veterans’ medical benefits. Albert’s father was Fred Skarjune, who was born in Germany in 1863 and his mother was Anna Sepull, who was born in Prussia in1855.

Albert’s brother, Frederick Adolph Skarjune, was born in Essen, Germany in 1882, so the family must have emigrated to Detr