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Family

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genealogical
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becomes
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ALAN HITSKY
Associate Editor

/-

IV hen Ruth and Jim Grey
went to Australia five
years ago, they promised
Jim's cousins, former
Detroiter Michael and his wife Carole
Fisher, a party in Detroit if the Fishers
ever came for a visit.
Last year, the Fishers informed the
Greys they would be in Detroit as part
of an anniversary trip. Jim Grey began
plotting for a parry that developed into
a massive family reunion in May.
Nearly 150 descendants of Mordecai
Bennett and Mordecai Solovich from
throughout the United States, as well as
Canada, England and Australia, came
to Detroit for the reunion.
The last time these families met for
a large event was at a 1941 dinner of
the Bennett Club.
Grey assembled a committee of
interested cousins and volunteers,
including Barya and Allen Berlin, Sarah
Berlin, Joani Cohen, Ellen and Michael
Cole, Linda and Henry Lee, Sheri Lee,
Geri and Mel Lester, Amy Steinberg,
and Melanie and Marty Weiss.

During the reunion weekend, Aaron and Donnie Shelden and Byron Canvasser enjoy a game at Tiger Stadium.

"We got a bunch of community
leaders who know how to get things
done," Grey said. The group worked
six months on the reunion weekend.
The featured events
were a Saturday dinner
at the Birmingham
Temple and Sunday
brunch at Temple
Beth El. Each person
received a customized
personal kinship list
and ancestry list,
along with a family
roster and e-mail list.
In addition, the
committee produced a
$60 reunion book. It
contained the family
history, descendant
books in genealogy
Double cousin Jim Grey, Australians Carol and
format, birthday,
Michael Fisher (he's a Solovich), and double cousin
anniversary and burial
Ellen Grey Cole hold enlargements of historic family
lists and family pho-
photographs.
tographs dating back

to 1906. Genealogy branches for
each family line were displayed at
the parties.
Grey, treasurer of the Jewish
Genealogical Society of Michigan
and outgoing president of the Jewish
Historical Society of Michigan, said
the families' genealogical database
included 2,700 names. "And it took
a decade of going to shiva houses to
identify" the ancestors in the historic
photos.
At the parties, each person wore a
blue dot if he were a Bennett, a yel-
low dot if he were a Solovich, and
both dots if he were a "double
cousin." The guests enjoyed meeting
family members they didn't know and
discovering how they were related.
Seventeen cousins, mostly
strangers to each other, attended a
Detroit Tigers game Saturday after-
noon and reminisced. One cousin,
former Detroiter Aaron Shelden, was
an usher for the Tigers in 1941. He

)3

sat at the game with his brother
Donnie and cousin Byron Canvasser,
who were roommates in college.
On Sunday morning, many
attended the monument unveiling of
Lucille Lee (a Solovich) at Clover
Hill Park Cemetery and Lee Epstein
Cole (a Bennett) at Beth El
Memorial Park.
The youngest reunion attendee
was eight-month-old Aaron Bennett
Weiss. The oldest was 94-year-old
Sally Bennett of Arizona. Greetings
from Israeli cousins included a letter
from Aura Herzog, widow of Israeli
President Chaim Herzog.
Grey expects a follow-up event,
"perhaps in five years." Meanwhile,
the family will be able to keep in
communication through e-mail, per-
haps one day creating a Web site,
and via "snail mail" with an annual
newsletter. Many cousins already
have vacations planned with their
newly discovered relatives. I I

6/18
1999

Detroit Jewish News

55