Louis Roney: Thicker than water

“Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling.” – Abraham Lincoln

Human beings are among the animals that by nature gather into groups. The earliest humans evolved from the jungle to create towns and then nations — but first came the group we know as “the family.” Just as a family can produce the highest degree of pride and happiness, so can a family bring disappointment, squabbling, discord, and destruction. The family is, of course, made up of people, and the kind of people determines the kind of family. Education is the magic elixir that manages somehow to convert sows’ ears into silk purses. Educated leadership in a family can produce wonders, but the family must first produce that educated leader who respects education and its powers, and then make his or her self-respected by the pack.

As a boy in Georgia in the ‘20s and early ‘30s, I heard a lot about “family.” My grandmother, who was born in Rome, Ga., and lived most of her life in Atlanta, had three nephews who lived in Waynesboro, Ga. Each of those nephews owned a house on the same street.

Every summer I was sent some 150 miles on a train to Waynesboro with my destination pinned on the front of my shirt for the train’s conductor to see. After changing trains in Augusta, I rode 27 more miles and got off to a smiling group of relatives who were waiting for me in Waynesboro. These people had absolutely nothing in common with me except that we were “kinfolk,” but that term meant a lot in those days.

In Waynesboro, I had seven male cousins, and I was the youngest, and the only one far from “home” — a combination that made me grow up fast! We played softball with other kids in the neighborhood, and played touch football, but not tackle. I usually stayed for two weeks, and then my older cousins put me back on the train to Atlanta. Those people in Waynesboro remained everafter as people of special importance: they were, after all, “kin” to me and we had the same blood in our veins.

After I got out of four years in the WWII Navy, I came south, and drove my grandmother down to Waynesboro to visit the “relatives.” Most of the males had been in uniform, and like me had been in exotic places such as Greenland, or Guadalcanal. None of us had been killed, I was happy and quick to note.

However, today Waynesboro contains few, if any, of the Evans clan that was my kin. We had all seen other places that held good futures for us, and, for myself, I had migrated to New York City and Europe to make my life as a concert and opera singer.

Working careers and magnetic mates pursued to far-flung places tend to attract more attention than “old hometowns.” Friends, in many cases, replaced relatives in our importance. Common interests proved to be stronger than blood connections, and friendships longer lasting even than kinships. Grown kids all too often settle far from their families. What has happened to the traditional strength of families? Would we be better off if society had made marriage simply a private contract between two individuals, with no wider implications of kinship?

In the final analysis, relationships are what we make of them, and two siblings can grow up in the same house and be as distant as though a continent divided them. Simultaneously, similarities can iron out all our differences and create lasting “kinships.”

“Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family. “ – Abraham Maslow

The human family is still struggling with varying success to learn to live in peace with itself.