I've decided to write a family biography about my father's side of the family. We already have one for my mother's side. That one goes back to before the Revolutionary War. This one will be easier because my grandfather was a doorstep orphan, and so all our information stops with him.
Highlights: Grandpa did well for a doorstep orphan. Within 25 years he had immigrated to the US and become a real estate tycoon with properties in both New York and south Florida, including a Hardware store in New York that was so famous that someone heard my daughter's last name a couple of years ago and asked her if she had anything to do with the hardware store in New York (which we closed down after he died in 1972). He also had beach front hotels and restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, which is near Miami. Much to my eternal sadness, we also sold those in 1972. I could have been working in my own beachfront cafe instead of playing games all day.
Meanwhile, Dad was a chemist and was drafted into the army. He invented a number of things while in the army, most of them still classified. One thing he invented that isn't classified was the precursor to Luminol. He has never talked about the other things he invented in the army, but back when everyone had a listed phone number we used to get whackos calling the house. One time, as a child mind you, I answered the phone and this man said, "I know what your father did." My father is the kindest person you will ever meet. He was basically still a kid and he was under orders, but whatever he invented didn't sit well with him, and one day he just announced he was leaving and walked out. Normally this would get you arrested for going AWOL, but his commanding officers quietly gave him an honorable discharge and let him go on his way. That tells me the whackos were probably right. Anyway he was accepted into Harvard and got his PhD in chemistry. He then proceeded to invent many things that found their way into everyday items. He invented, for instance, an additive for plastic that allowed you to store food and drinks in plastic without worrying about the plastic seeping out into your food. They don't use this additive today because cheaper additives were invented. They aren't as protective, but, hey, what's a little plastic in your brain, right? He had many others. One injustice is that if you look up the patents today, they don't have his name on them. They have his boss's name, instead. But whatever else they did, they paid him according to his value, so he got over not getting full credit, and eventually he became an SVP of the company. He ran two divisions of the company and retired when the CEO told him he needed to lay off 500 people. He said he just wasn't cut out for that kind of thing. But his inventing didn't stop when he left the research division, and he created a new 24 hour work schedule that gave all the employees 12 to 14 (just depending on where you were in the schedule) days off each month, which they loved, and which is still in use today.
I've bored anyone who who happened to actually read this enough. But I have enough material to make a quite sizeable book. Then I'll have it printed and pass it to all the surviving members of the family.