Time out for trivia: Do you want to know how I remembered the exact date of my Bar Mitzvah?  October 26th, 1985 just happens to be the date on which Marty McFly goes back in time in the movie “Back to the Future”, one of my all-time favorite movies.

This event also served as sort of an unofficial Levine family reunion.  I know some families have big reunions every year but the only official family reunion I’ve ever been to was a Miller family reunion that was held in Washington, D.C. back in 1989 (and we were far off on a side branch of that family tree).  Other then that, nothing else from either side of my family tree until this past weekend.  On the Levine side, this was probably the first large celebratory family event since my own Bar Mitzvah.  (If you’re thinking I forgot my own wedding, that was a very small and low-key event.)

Enough with the set-up.  On with the actual story.

We left for Richmond on Friday.   I wanted to leave between 9 and 10 a.m. but we didn’t even leave the area until noon.  Luckily we hit no traffic and the drive to Richmond took only 5 hours; shorter than we expected even with several pit stops.  The reason we got a late start was because we first had to stop by Sandi’s house and drop off Boomer for the weekend.  We also borrowed her portable DVD player and a Garmin GPS (more on that later).

We arrived in Richmond around 5 p.m. and my mom arrived shortly after us, but she left much earlier in the morning because she drove all the way down from New York along with other relatives.  Maegan and Darah were thrilled to see her and my Aunt Barbara.  Then the continuous introductions to long lost family members and family members I didn’t even know soon followed.

The next morning we met for breakfast and then off to the actual Bar Mitzvah in downtown Richmond.  We were all given directions and a map but I decided to use the GPS that we had borrowed from Sandi instead.  It worked great and brought us right to where I told it to go… but there was no temple.  We got out of the car and walked a block or two east but found nothing.  We walked back and then another block or two west and still found nothing.  We then entered a hotel lobby and asked them for directions but they told us that there was no temple nearby.  Huh?  It was hot and I was sweating in a suit, carrying a 3 year old, and lost in a strange city.  When we got back into the car I realized what happened.  Instead of 1111 West Franklin Street I had mistyped in 111 West Franklin Street.  We were in the wrong location but the GPS had taken us to the location I entered.  So we drove about a mile and a half and soon arrived at the temple.  The ceremony had already started but we hadn’t actually missed too much.

It was a nice ceremony and my cousin Joshua, the one being Bar Mitzvahed, did a great job.  It was different from my Bar Mitzvah in many ways.  The biggest difference was that he was the only one being Bar Mitzvahed.  At my Bar Mitzvah there were three of us at once in a joint ceremony.  Another big difference was that many different family members came up on to the bima to take part in the ceremony, including my mom and aunt.  I don’t remember any family members coming up on stage and taking part in my ceremony, but that may have been because the temple was still somewhat of a construction site with no stairs leading up to the bima.  I had to walk up a makeshift plank to get up there.  Mine was the first Bar Mitzvah in the new temple after more than a year of major construction and they weren’t quite done in time.

After the ceremony I finally met up with my sister who had driven in from Washington, D.C. that morning.  She of course expected to see me before the ceremony began.  Afterward we went back to the hotel and passed the time until the evening reception by talking to relatives in the lobby and swimming in the pool.

The reception was a lot of fun.  Darah danced all night long (as you’ll see below).  Maegan spent the night with her cousins, especially her cousin Hannah who’s the same age as her.  They hadn’t seen each other in more than six years (when they were both only five years old) but they clicked again right away.

Here are some photos we took over the weekend.  Most of them came from Amy’s camera because it performed much better in low light and took better quality photos in general.

Oh, perhaps I should comment on that last photo of Maegan and Hannah in jail.  The Bar Mitzvah had a Monopoly theme so there was a jail bars setup to take photos.    Anyway, here’s some video I took with my Flip UltraHD.  You’ll notice that just like the photos above, there’s nothing from the actual Bar Mitzvah because you just don’t do that.  And sorry about so much of it being Darah dancing.

In the afternoon we all went to see “How To Train Your Dragon” (in 2D).  We weren’t sure how well that would work out with Darah, not only because we’re not sure if this would be her first time in a movie theater and just keeping her still and quiet, but also because she could get scared.  I sort of prepared her ahead of time for the dragons and the loud volume by having her watch the previews on YouTube with the volume up.  I guess it must’ve helped because everything went well.  She stayed quiet the entire movie and didn’t seem to be afraid.  The movie itself was very good.  Maegan says it’s the best animated film ever produced by Dreamworks (which would include Shrek and Kung Fu Panda).  The only downside was the asshole father in the row in front of us who not only didn’t turn his cell phone off, but he let it ring four different times during the movie and proceeded to answer each call and talk.  The nerve.  Want more nerve?  This jerk had the audacity to turn around and give us a look when we laughed at a funny line.  Are you kidding me?

P.S.  Here’s a link to all our vacation photos on Picasa.

My uncle Julie (great uncle Jules) was an Army private serving in Italy during World War II. On June 2nd, 1944 his platoon needed to seize control of a hilltop near a highway junction. This was strategically essential to allow safe highway passage for Allied troops. Uncle Julie led a group of soldiers up the hill under heavy enemy machine gunfire. After being pinned down, Private Levine charged right into enemy fire - alone – and captured the enemy emplacements. What’s more amazing is that he then ran into the forest and single-handedly captured three of the fleeing enemy soldiers, including an officer. On August 5th, 1944, Private Levine was awarded the Silver Star. Below you can read the transcription of the original order (some details were redacted by the government). As a recipient of the Silver Star, Uncle Julie is now buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

5 August 1944

General Orders ) Number 58 )

*** ******* ***

I-AWARDS OF THE SILVER STAR Under the provision of Army Regulations 600-45, as amended, a Silver Star is awarded to the following named individuals:

*** ******* ***

JULES LEVINE, 32396765, Private, Company “K”, ***th Infantry, for gallantry in action. On 2 June 1944 near *****, ***, Private LEVINE displayed outstanding heroism and disregard of enemy fire in assault of an enemy position. Leading the advance of his company to seize the high ground commanding a highway junction, he was fired upon from enemy emplacements on the objective. Aggressively moving forward in full view of the enemy and disregarding the artillery shells striking in front of him, he located located the enemy emplacements. Unhesitating in the fire of machine pistols and rifles of whom he was the target, this courageous scout ran forward alone in the assault of the hostile positions and when the enemy abandoned their emplacements in flight for the woods to their rear Private LEVINE raced on and captured three of them, including an officer. His platoon moved in and completed the seizure of the objective. The unhesitating aggressiveness Of Private LEVINE and his heroic disregard of enemy fire at risk to his life were the principal features in the success of the mission and were an inspiration to all the men who saw his deed. Entered military service from Brooklyn, New York.

*** ******* ***

By command of Major General SLOAN

R.J. McBRIDE
Colonel, G.S.C.,
Chief of Staff

OFFICIAL:

W.J. ZERGER
Capt., A.G.D.
Asst. Adj. General

Thank you Uncle Julie.

Happy Veterans Day.

In the afternoon we traveled north to Palm Beach Gardens so that Patty could visit her Great Aunt Sandi. I’ve known Patty for 19 years now and never met either of her great aunts. We had a nice time talking about family, eating dinner, and browsing through photographs.

After lunch we headed to the South Carolina Aquarium. We tried to take Maegan to the aquarium in Charleston a few years ago but were surprised to find a three hour line to get in due to the fact that tickets were only $1 for Community Appreciation Day, an event they failed to publicize ahead of time on their website. After a three and a half hour trip to Charleston we had to turn around and head back home empty handed. This time I called ahead of time to double check that the same thing wasn’t going to happen again. The staff told me that although there was a festival that day in the adjacent park, there would be no special discounts that would create a similar situation to the experience we had a few years ago. We got to the aquarium at exactly 2:00pm and got on a line of about 40 people. We then discovered that starting at exactly 2:00pm they were offering tickets to the aquarium for just $1. The aquarium staff totally lied to me! By the time we got to the beginning of the line 10 minutes later, the line was several hundred people long, stretching all the way down the street in a de ja vu of our last attempt to go to the aquarium, but we got lucky by getting there just at the perfect moment to save us from paying an extra $70. Long story short, the aquarium was very nice.

Later that evening we met up with some relatives of mine who live in Charleston. My second cousin, Norman, is a professor at the College of Charleston. Being only three and a half hours away from Charlotte makes him my closest relative (geographically), however I don’t think we’ve ever met before. We had a nice dinner on the waterfront in nearby Mount Pleasant. Norman, my mother, my sister, and I discussed family connections and genealogy research. Maegan spent half of dinner trading making-faces with her one of her new cousins. Until this weekend Maegan only knew of one cousin on my side of the family but she now knows three more. I enjoyed meeting family I didn’t know I had and we plan on getting together again in the future.

[Note: This blog entry was post-dated after we returned]