Today, I had the good fortune of meeting with Ralph and Carolyn Metzler, two good friends that I met in Kentucky about 15 years ago.  Ralph and Carolyn were the directors of a project in which homes that were destroyed by a tornado were being rebuilt.  In helping these folks who lost everything they had was an experience that I will never forget.

Since we share the last name, we were interested to know if somehow we were related.  I wished that I had paid more attention to my parents and grandparents when they would go through those long genealogies of how I was somehow related to seemly everyone in Lancaster County.  Remembering the names of my father and grandfather was easy, but getting to the generations beyond that was difficult.

Ralph and Carolyn sent me the history of the Metzler’s back to the first person who came to America.  In 1738, at 12 years of age, Valentine Metzler traveled from Switzerland to England and then to Philadelphia. Words cannot describe my emotions when I discovered my Grandparents names in that history. It was as though I was reconnected again with my roots and my heritage.

As 2010 quietly ends, I have a lot to think about.