The Fearnleys (from Ruth Cameron)

Well, in between food preparation here's what I recall about the Fearnley etc group: Alf Fearnley (NB correct spelling) and Raie, his wife, visited us in Cresskill. For family rift reasons, he hadn't known about his uncle in the States (Grandpa) until middle age, when he revisited the Brick Lane area of his childhood and a shopkeeper still there enquired about his uncle in the States. What uncle in the States??? was the gist.

It was an exciting reunion. Alf, his brother Jack (who'd changed his last name to Lewis, making things more complicated), and their younger sister, Anne, were the children of one of Grandpa's sisters. Another sister lived in Toronto ; Esther I think she was called; she was the one who had been Grandma's best friend, at least at the Warsaw factory where they both worked, and so she brought Jenny (Charna) home to meet her brother, and the rest is history. Grandma didn't talk to her for some 40 years; her name wasn't allowed in their house, etc, until Esther became terminally ill, and then suddenly she became an angel. I remember all that, Mom (so exasperated with her mother, for good reason) explaining it to me. Maybe I was like 12?

In 1967, when Neil and I went to Miami for him to meet them, Jack Lewis and one of his daughters was there. Neil even remembers him. Then some years later Mom relentlessly pursued the whereabouts of their sister and we all met her. She lived in Hackney Marshes, a big bleak council estate.

Alf and Raie had a son called Leon - we never met him -- and then 2 daughters; I can't recall the older one's name, but the younger was Susan. Neil and I went to her wedding. Then we drifted apart; not a lot in common.