A Remarkable Meeting

Last year I Goggled the name Floria. Through some digging and a letter I talked with a Kevin Floria on the phone. We apparently have some common ancestry. This summer I made arrangements to meet with he and his family in a little UP community called Engadine. I know from past discussions with my father that he had an Uncle Art Floria living in Engadine, but I never met the man. It turns out, that Art had a brother Charles and these men would've been brothers to my grandfather Burt Floria. Charles had a son Charles who married a woman named Arlene and she is the mother of Kevin Floria.

Saturday, July 5, 2008 I drove to Engadine and met Kevin and his brother Rick Floria, and the mother Arlene. I also met Kevin's wife, Janice and Rick's wife Barbera. We gathered around the dining room table in the family vacation home in Engadine located just across the street from Millecoquins Lake just east of Engadine.

We did trace our ancestry back to a common thread named Joe Flory. It seems old Joe was a bit of a rounder. He had a family in Ohio, probably near Toledo, and abandoned that family and moved to Mecosta County, MI. Joe married a lady named Eva Bancroft and had eight children with her. These children include Burt, my grandfather, Art the Uncle in Engadine and Charles, grandfather to Kevin and Rick. Upon moving from Ohio to Michigan Joe Flory changed his name to Floria. Joe Floria eventually left his family in Michigan and moved to Oregon where he apparently started another family. Joe died, or committed suicide on a train heading east to visit. Where he his buried is not known.

Kevin and Rick have two other brothers and a sister. Kevin and Rick live in the Lansing area, one brother lives in Chicago and another in Cheboygan, MI. They love the outdoors, hunt deer, fish and hunt ducks. They were a fun group to meet and we were together for perhaps two hours. Nice folks and a chance meeting that was very enjoyable.

A Family Cheer?

My youngest daughter checks out my blog from time to time. I've been trying to record bits and pieces of family stories and history on this site. I am the youngest of the children born of Earl & Rebecca Floria, Vernon and Margeret Floria and Cecil and Lucille Floria. I am 62. In a time frame yet to be determined that unique threesome of Vern, Earl and Cecil's direct descendants shall be gone. With the passing of my generation a loss of wit, wisdom and history will disappear.
I do not have the energy or the will to write a history of the Burt and Nettie Floria progeny, but I do think that they represent times that are important and in some ways unique to our history. So I am attempting to write stories and pieces of history as I recall them.

One of the things that has fascinated me for years was the use of language by the three boys. They grew up in rough times, little in the way of toys, and of course in the early 1900's there was no TV, Radio, Movies, or entertainment open to their life style. So their imaginations had to fire up and provide them with what entertainment could be gleaned in a logging community on the shore of Lake Superior.

Some where, my Dad made up a saying, I call it a cheer that has always amused the family, but no one in the younger generation has taken up to pass on. The "cheer" is nonsensical, it is words put together, yet it could be recited by my father, Vern at the drop of a hat. I've learned it, and have attempted to pass it on but no other member of my family has picked up this little piece of verbal memorabilia. So here it is in all its insignificant, nonsensical glory.

Ra bic a bing, bic a bing bang bowow
Yip skiddley ay there, git there stay there.
Amen my brother Ben, killed a duck and goosed a hen.
Verily, Verily I say unto thee, so Mote it be.

The end comes from the Masons, but the rest is pure dad. I find it amusing to sit and picture the old man sitting down and with a serious face and a deep bass voice roll out the "cheer."