THE GANIM FAMILY

THE GANIM FAMILY is a familiar immigrant tale.

It is a simple American story.

It is a sweeping panorama of the 20th Century

as it pulses through the lives of one Arab-American Family:

The Ganims of Lebanon.

It is a story of two lovers, Yusuf and Naza, and a leap towards freedom.

It is the story of 14 children, 29 grandchildren,

74 great-grandchildren, 53 great-great-grandchildren

and counting...

It is the story of the definitive American Century as it caroms through War and Peace, from Depression through to Prosperity, as Industry, Technology and the Media roar into dominance.

It is a story which explodes at the nexus of the Old World and the New, where the values and moral protocols of East and West literally collide.

It is a story of the courage to change.

It is a story of the strength in constancy.

Encompassing the worlds of business, politics, religion, the military, entertainment and sports-

ricocheting from serene triumph to bitter tragedy-

and featuring major cultural figures on the national landscape-

THE GANIM FAMILY is a classic American saga of the "invisible ethnicity": The Arab-Americans.

Ganim Family Reunion, 2003Ganimanim

For information on how to support this film

please visit the "Support & Funding" page

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Scroll down for a

decade-by-decade

treatment of

THE GANIM FAMILY

A Documentary Film

The Film - Chronologically

THE GANIM FAMILY is a chronological meditation on culture, the family, immigration and the 20th Century. It will be composed of archival footage and still photographs, interviews with members of the Ganim Family from 8 to 93 years old, commentary by prominent Arab-Americans, and will feature a classic soundtrack as well as compositions recorded expressly for the film.

THE GANIM FAMILY is currently in varying stages of production. Much of the film is yet in pre-production, including continued research and fundraising, however, due to the nature and scope of the project, initial interviews and filming have already begun.

Keep reading for a current treatment of THE GANIM FAMILY, A Documentary Film.

Byblos, Lebanon - the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

Greek Orthodox prayer book, written in Syriac

Protestant American missionaries had been in the Holy Land since the early 1840s, drawn by the spiritual allure of the region as well as the burgeoning, exotic appeal of "the Orient". Though these proselytizers did effect some conversions, the indigenous people, the Syrian-Lebanese, were already deeply religious and the words of the Americans that rang in their hearts and stirred their passions were not those of the Gospel, but those of the new Promised Land: Freedom, Liberty, Bounty, Success. America promised democracy and equality and by 1869, the exodus of Christians from the Levant to the New World had begun.

Over the next 30 years, over 25,000 would emigrate to America, the vast majority of them Greek Orthodox and Maronites from the great Mount Lebanon, home to the fabled groves of trees, the "Cedars of Lebanon", symbol of the eternal strength, the hardiness and endurance of the Lebanese people.

A Cedar Tree on Mount Lebanon

1860. The Levant. The Holy Land.

Having held dominion over the region for almost 500 years, the mighty Ottoman Empire is now crumbling from within. Local sherifs have a stranglehold on the populace and lawlessness, corruption, heavy taxation and oppression run rampant. The Lebanon is in crisis.

This ancient seat of civilization, home to the indigenous Canaanites and Phoenicians as well as the conquering Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans, this region in which various sects of Christianity and Judaism had long flourished, had been dominated since the 7th Century by the thunderous sweep of Islam.

The nomadic nature of desert peoples had already engendered a patriarchal tribal culture amongst the Syrian-Lebanese and the natural geography of Lebanon had further fragmented the population into self-sustaining communities, societal pockets dotting the rugged terrain of Mount Lebanon as well as the mercantile coastline and the cities of Beirut and Tyre. A fragile mosaic of religions had co-existed for centuries, but the rise of Western expansionism, hastened by the rotting rule of the Ottomans, would now shatter the relative peace and leave the citizens of Lebanon reeling.

The recent advent of imperialist forces from France and Great Britain had aggravated the simmering sectarian divisions in the region and in this year, 1860, the Lebanon explodes in civil strife - the bloody massacre of Maronite Christians by the Druze Muslims. As America fractured during her own Civil War, so did Lebanon.

By 1900, there were Syrians in nearly every state in the Union, major communities in Worcester and Lawrence, Massachusetts, as well as Cleveland and Chicago, not to mention the great colonies in Brooklyn and on Washington Street in Lower Manhattan (later, the site of the World Trade Center). There were 8 Arabic language newspapers serving the communities in New York City alone. These new Americans, referred to alternatively as "Syrians" and, until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, "Turks" - were a subject of great fascination for the contemporary citizen, enchanted by the spiritual purity of the "Middle East". Before 1900, profiles of the Syrian community in New York - the foods, the lifestyle, the tightly-knit families, the deep religious faith, the admirable work ethic, the narghileh or "water pipe" to be found in every Syrian restaurant - had appeared in major American publications including the New York Times, New York Herald, Harper's Bazaar, and the New York Sun.

These first immigrants largely avoided factory work, instead employing their Levantine mercantilism to become pack peddlers and dry goods purveyors, selling everything from toiletries and notions to icons and relics from the Holy Land. Some Syrians (they would not be called Lebanese for nearly 40 years until Lebanon finally won autonomy in 1943) opened restaurants or coffeehouses while still others opened retail outlets in the realms of lace, silks, and white goods. Proud to be Americans and grateful for the opportunities in their new homeland, over 10,000 Syrian men served in the United States Armed Forces during World War I.

By 1922 and the publication of Phillip K. Hitti's landmark sociological treatise, The Syrians in America, these Arabic-speaking immigrants had carved a distinctive profile, characterized thusly:

"Pride of race, a high degree of native intelligence...shrewdness and cleverness in business, devotion to the institutions of this country, imaginativeness, religious loyalty, love of domestic life, courtesy and hospitality, eagerness for education, fondness for music and poetry, temperance in the men and chastity in the women, self-respect and self-reliance - such are the more obvious traits of the Syrians."

Throughout the first part of the 20th century, the Syrian was regarded as both "exotic" and yet wholly American - industrious, generous, and law-abiding, in short - "a model citizen". Yet, over the course of the ensuing 70 years, this vibrant ethnicity would disappear almost entirely into the fabric of American life.

Despite two more major waves of Arab immigration to the United States (many Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948, even more after the Six Day War in 1967, as well as a continuing stream of Muslims drawn by economic and educational opportunities) by the middle of the 1970s, not one major study of immigration to America contained a mention of the Arab, Christian or otherwise. Despite Americans of particularly Lebanese origin having scaled the heights of success in America, from entertainment (Danny Thomas), to sports (Doug Flutie, Joe Robbie) to business (Paul Orfalea of Kinko's) to politics (Donna Shalala, Darrell Issa, Emmanuel Rahm) to name just a fraction, the Arab-American has almost entirely lost a viable identity in the American consciousness.

How did this happen? Why?

There may be no easy answer. But, perhaps, through an exhilirating exploration of one extraordinary Lebanese-American family as they confront the triumphs and the tragedies of a century in America, some illumination may be sparked.

And so...we begin at the beginning...

Julia Kassouf, mother of Evelyn Kassouf Ganim, wrapped in the American flag - circa 1910

THE JOURNEY

1903 - 1909

Yusuf Assad Ghanem is 23 years old and the eldest son of a farmer from the village of Falougha, a poor community known simply for the lush greenery and pure mineral springs found nestled at the foot of Mount Lebanon. He has nothing - save for a vigorous spirit, a dedicated resolve, and pride in his name. Indeed, he is reliant upon itinerant field work to contribute to the welfare of his family and is often away from home.

Naza Bojde is 15 years old, the elder of two daughters born to a wealthy merchant and a mother who has since died, in the newly commercial hub of Zahle - the internal port of Syria, the agricultural and trade center between Beirut and Damascus, between Mosul and Baghdad. Zahle is a cultured community renowned for its climate and cuisine, for its poets and intellectuals,for its open-air restaurants which line the banks of the Bardouni River and most of all, perhaps, for its wine and 'arak.

At the northern end of Zahle is the Wadi al-Arayesh, or Grape Vine Valley. It was here, in Zahle, on an afternoon in the early spring of 1903 that Yusuf, a poor farmer from the simple city of water, and Naza, a privileged young woman from the cultured city of wine, one of them working, the other one wandering, looked into each other's eyes...and fell in love.

Zahle, the "Bride of the Beqaa Valley"

Yusuf and Naza were both Maronites, so faith proved no barrier to their great desire to be married. However, Habeeb Bojde, Naza's father, did. Yusuf, the farmer from Falougha was not good enough for his daughter and Habeeb refused to grant his blessing on their marriage.

Yusuf had cousins who had gone to America, as had many young men, bound to "pick the money off the trees" and return home to their families. Yusuf proposed that he and Naza elope to America, where they would be free to love, to prosper, to start the family they so fervently desired together. Naza said yes.

On April 23, 1903, Yusuf Assad Ghanem and his new bride boarded a ship in Beirut, bound first across the Mediterranean to France. Having nothing with them but great love, a good name they now shared, and unbridled hope, Yusuf bartered working on the boat for their two tickets towards tomorrow. By early summer, they embarked upon the grueling two week passage across the Atlantic to America.

The New York Times publishes an article on mercantile immigration from Syria. Lucius Hopkins Miller publishes his social treatise, "A Study of the Syrian Population of Greater New York" in 1904. One year later, the Syrian populace in New York erupts into street warfare as strife develops between the Maronites and the Greek Orthodox, mirroring the sectarian divisions at home in the Levant. The event and its aftermath are reported in every major New York City newspaper for six months. The era of the "pack peddler", so active during the period of westward expansion in America, is slowly coming to a close. The utility of the peddler is brought to its knees by the advent of new "catalogue ordering", popularized by Sears Roebuck. The Syrians begin to settle in communities throughout the country, embracing many service industries: dry goods stores, restaurants, and repair outlets. In 1909, the United States District Court in St Louis holds that Syrians may not become naturalized citizens as they are categorized as "...aliens other than white.". This decision is later overturned by the Circuit Court of Appeals after it had been raised again in the Southern District of New York. The Syrian could now become a citizen and exercise the sacred right of democracy - the vote.

Family lore holds that when Yusuf and Naza arrived in America, Yusuf could write only two words in English, "Joe Turk", and so that is how he signed his name at Ellis Island. As of this writing, however, exhaustive research has yet to yield the actual record of their arrival. We do know that they settled first with Yusuf's cousins in Torrington, Connecticut - where there are still Ganims to this day. It was in Torrington in 1904 that Yusuf and Naza welcomed their first child, a son, Albert. After two years, Yusuf was offered work in a woolen mill just outside the Syrian community of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Yusuf and Naza Ghanem, now known in America as Joseph and Naza Ganim, moved once more. Two more children joined the family in Massachusetts: daughter Nora in 1906 and another son, Joseph, in 1908. In 1909, the family of five moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Joseph and Naza would live out their lives, building a great American family in the simplest Lebanese tradition.

1909- Joseph and Naza with children Albert, Joseph and Nora.

THE STRUGGLE

1910 - 1936

Over the course of her lifetime, Naza Ganim would carry 22 pregnancies. Of these, 8 would end in either miscarriage or stillbirth. A further 2, Henry and Junie, would die in toddlerhood. By 1914, she had given birth to 5 of the 12 children who would outlive their parents. Two more sons, George and Louis, had been added to the family and Joseph Sr. would now make three important decisions to ensure the health and future of his growing brood. The first was to install his family in their first home, at 612 Bolivar Road in Cleveland. The second was to address the practical matter of income. Calling upon his Syrian shrewdness, he capitalized on the American fascination with the "Middle East" and with the new citizen, this "Arab-American", in their midst and opened "Turk's Coffee House" on Bradley Road. (Take that, Starbucks!) The third decision he made, as the Ganim Family now settled into their adopted country and looked towards a prosperous future, was perhaps the one dearest to his heart. Joseph, Naza and their five children, along with a small number of other Lebanese families, rent a 2-story apartment, remodel it into a church and rectory and create the parish of St. Maron, Patron Saint of Lebanon and founder of their Maronite Catholic faith. Fr. Peter Chalala arrives from Baalbek, Lebanon to serve as the first pastor of the new church. The Ganim Family had been in America just over a decade. They would now begin to stake their claim to it.

1915 - Naza with Louis, Albert, Nora, Joseph and George

World War I Draft Registration Card for Joseph Assad Ganim, 37 years old. He was denied active duty as he was, in 1918, the father of 7 children.

1911 - The first novel in English by an Arab-American writer, The Book of Khalid, by Ameen Rihani, is published in New York City. It is the beginning of a great movement in Arabic Literature, Al Mahjar, or Emigrant Literature. Rihani and his contemporaries Khalil Gibran and Mikhail Naimy will attempt to bridge the chasm of East and West, balancing the ambition and industry of America with the wisdom and serenity of their Lebanese heritage. 1914 - Europe erupts into War. The feeble and corrupt Ottoman Empire is soon drawn into the conflict and Syrians in America, longing for freedom for their homeland, fervently hope that America, the great beacon of democracy, will enter the War on behalf of the Allies. Kalil Bishara publishes "The Origin of the Modern Syrian",written in both English and Arabic, asserting that the Arab-American is, racially, a Caucasian. 1915 - Allied (British and French) Naval Forces blockade the coasts of Lebanon, preventing the passage of any food into the ports in an attempt to starve out the Turks. Instead, the Syrians take the hit. The Turks wield an ever more vicious hand in the region, confiscating all local produce and, in a panic, executing 14 Christian and 7 Muslim rebels. The 21 Lebanese nationalists are subjected to a public hanging in what is now "Al-Bourj" or "Martyr's Square", in Beirut. In New York, the Lebanon League of Progress is formed by Arab-Americans. 1916 - The Arabs, aided by T.E. Lawrence, revolt in the Nejd desert (present-day Saudi Arabia). They have been promised post-war independence by Britain. Almost 60,000 Lebanese are already dead from the famine. Khalil Gibran is named Secretary of The Syrian-Mount Lebanon Relief Committee. Syrian emigres the world over, led by the Americans, contribute over $235,000,000 to the cause. President Woodrow Wilson makes a plea to the American people to contribute to the humanitarian effort in Syria. 1918 - At the close of the Great War, during the Peace Negotiations at Versailles, nearly every promise made to the Arabs has been broken...and support for a new Jewish Homeland in the region has gained great currency. Nevertheless, at the end of the conflict, over 13,000 Syrians, almost 10% of the Arab-American population, had served in the United States Armed Forces.

Joseph Sr. had registered for the draft himself but was passed over as the father of 7 children. His fifth son, Emil, had been born in 1916 and a second daughter, Ardelle, in 1918. One year later, another son, John, would be born, bringing the family total to 10. "Turk's Coffee House" could no longer support the Ganims and the house on Bolivar Road was bursting at the seams. In 1921, the family moved to 4306 Cedar Avenue, the house in which son Arthur would be born. Before opening "Turk's", Joseph Sr. had worked as a blacksmith, shoeing horses. Now, he noticed more and more of the new "automobiles" on the road. General Motors had just created its "Acceptance Corporation" - (GMAC) - which allowed middle and lower income families to "finance" an automobile purchase. Sales were certain to skyrocket. In 1922, the C.W. Edwards company loaned Joseph Ganim $1800.00 to build a house as well as a gas station and blacksmith shop at East 140th Street and Glendale Avenue, a fairly undeveloped area at the time. Joseph Sr. had the confident vision that the area would prosper (due to the advent of this "automobile") and he had even bigger plans for the future. For now, however, though great love and laughter reigned in this Lebanese family of 11, times were tough. They were about to get tougher.

Though the negotiations were intense and the pleas prolonged, all hope of independence for the Arabs was dashed and both Lebanon and Syria would become French Protectorates by 1926. Palestine comes under British Mandate. In America, the 18th Amendment is ratified to the Constitution, banning the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol throughout the United States. "Prohibition", enacted in 1920, would backfire, (and ultimately be repealed in 1933). In the meantime, it spawns an underground network of nightclubs and pleasure halls, "speakeasies" that personify the abandon and ribaldlry of what would come to be known as "The Jazz Age". World War I had thrust America onto the global stage. This new and heightened awareness fostered a growing xenophobia in the American citizenry. Immigration legislation is passed in Washington, tightening restrictions and quotas. The great swell of humanity to American shores is effectively stoppered. F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes throughout the decade. Louis Armstrong records with his "Hot Five" and "Hot Seven" groups. Khalil Gibran publishes "The Prophet", (to date, second only to The Bible in worldwide sales). Ameen Rihani travels the country, speaking on The Fate of Palestine and the dangers of creating a Jewish State in the Arab homeland and presciently writing, "...the peace of the world depends largely upon peace in the Middle East." Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic Ocean in The Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. In New York City, newspaper publishers Naoum and Salloum Mokarzel, who are brothers, publically debate the "identity" of the Lebanese and the future of Arab-Americans. Naoum publishes Al-Hoda, an Arabic-language newspaper, Salloum, The Syrian World, an English-language publication. Though the Lebanese believe they are descended directly from the Phoenicians and have long considered themselves "apart" from the Arabs, Salloum argues that culturally the Lebanese have been a part of the Arab World for many centuries and are united in that and in the Arabic language particularly, and therefore must rightly consider their heritage and identity to be Arab. The debate continues to this day.

Texaco had helped Joseph Sr. get his gas station started, but now Fleetwing stepped in and 3 electric gas pumps were installed. The business was growing, but - so was the family! He and Naza welcomed their eighth and ninth sons, Lawrence in 1923 and Richard in 1926. The children all called Joseph Sr. and Naza, "Pa" and "Ma". Albert became "Al" , Joseph Jr. "Joe", Louis, "Louie", Arthur "Art", Lawrence "Lorry" and Richard "Dickie" and later, "Dick" in addition to Nora, George, Emil and Ardelle. Al had dropped out of school at 14 to work in the gas station and Pa would soon put the rest of his sons to work for the family. The boys sold newspapers on neighborhood corners and had staked out a couple as their "territory". The brothers got into more than one scuffle with rival "gangs" of paperboys, yet were not immune to their own fraternal infighting. There is an old Arab proverb, "I against my brothers, my brothers and I against my cousins, my cousins and I against the world." It is the tribal mentality. It shows up again and again in the story of the Ganims, both as family solidarity and as bitter internal division.

Joseph's brother Tom had emigrated to America and he now lived across the street, with his wife and two daughters, in an apartment above his barber shop. He also ran a deli next door. Nora and Ardelle were put into service managing the home with Naza, cooking, cleaning, and even, as Ardelle remembers,"...having to draw a bath for my brother Joe! He was a real prince." The Ganims had been immensely blessed with their many children, and though there was great love and unity, feeding and clothing 13 people, while building a future for the family, required everyone's vigorous participation.

The parish of St. Maron continued to grow and the Ganims were a vital force in their religious community. Joseph and Naza worked hard to instill a great love of faith into their children, yet their moral structure was more than a weekly obligation. It was a practical and applied way of living. There would be many lessons associated with living a life of honesty, industry, integrity and generosity. Dick remembers:

"Most of us went to St. Timothy Catholic Elementary School. There were very few Lebanese, but a great deal of Irish, Polish and Hungarian children at the school. The rule was that at recess, whatever group of boys got to the ball diamond first, got to play there. One day, Art and his friends got to the diamond first but the Principal told them to let the Irish kids have it instead. Art said no, he got there first and that was the rule. The principal took Art to her office and hit him with a paddle. Art left school and walked home. He told Pa what happened. Pa taught us never to lie to him and he trusted us to obey so he believed Art. Pa left the station immediately and walked to St. Timothy. He came to each classroom door and called our names in that deep. booming voice of his: "Johnny!, Lorry!, Dickie!" There was Pa, standing at our classroom doors, calling us! I just jumped up and left the classroom, not knowing why, just knowing that Pa was calling me. The pastor, Father Brendan, tried to talk to Pa but Pa told him that his son was treated as a liar when he's not one and that was that. We never returned to St. Timothy. The next day we were enrolled at Moses Cleveland Elementary and the following year we went to Holy Family to finish elementary school."

This lesson, of course, embraced truth and had little to do with ethnic rivalries. Indeed, though the family operated within a tight Syrian circle, the "kids" were already developing wholly American personalities of camaraderie and inclusion. As Louie remembers:

"I used to go with a great gang of guys...and we weren't all Lebanese! There were Italians, Irish, German, Polish, Croatians...we used to call ourselves, The League of ALL Nations!"

By the middle of the "Roaring Twenties", Joseph and Naza had 11 children aged 24 to less than a year old. They had built a home, a business, and a church. They had been in America for almost a quarter-century. They had both mastered the English language, though they would still speak Arabic to one another. Their great risk had taken root and was beginning to flourish. Now, at the end of every long day, after dinner, with their children in and out of the house, amidst a chaos of activity, Joseph and Naza would sit quietly in their chairs and, together, smoke the narghileh, or waterpipe. These moments were just for the two of them, moments that could take them back to Lebanon, to the Wadi Al-Arayesh, to the instant they had fallen in love.

"The voyage to America is the Via Dolorosa of the emigrant; and the Port of Beirut, the verminous hostelries of Marseilles, the Island of Ellis in New York, are the three stations thereof. And if your hopes are not crucified at the third and last station, you pass into the Paradise of your dreams."

Ameen Rihani, The Book Of Khalid

An Arabic "narghileh", or waterpipe.

When Naza left Lebanon in 1903, her younger sister Ardell (for whom Naza would name her second daughter), was only 4 years old. By 1921, Ardell had also emigrated to America. narrowly escaping the tightened immigration quotas, had married railroad conductor Arthur Quinn in Buffalo, New York and had finally moved to Cleveland to be nearer her elder sister and the Ganim tribe.

Ardell possessed the Syrian's "shrewdness" as well as a Phoenician's solid sense of business and trade. Her ingenuity and sharp eye, however, led her in a far different direction than the Syrians who had come before her. Capitalizing on the current state of "Prohibition" along with market trends and demands that were older and more established than either America or even the West at large, in 1921, Ardell Bojde Quinn opened her "Hollywood Royal Club". Located in an enormous 3-story home at 1916 East 84th Street, the organization was a "private club" with a membership roster and fully licensed by the State of Ohio. The club was a favorite and frequent destination for much of Cleveland's most prominent set. The elite leaders of society, business and politics were drawn by the elegance, charm and discretion that were Mrs. Quinn's trademarks.

"Ardell's Place" promised a rarefied environment for its clientele, who often arrived for an evening of relaxation in chauffeur-driven limousines. The club boasted an impressive art collection, featured in each of its 15 rooms, all decorated with a tasteful yet luxurious hand. Oriental rugs blanketed every floor, overstuffed sofas and chairs were artfully arranged to foster intimacy, the soft yet vibrant lighting served to accentuate the mood, and the heavy floral draperies were always drawn, (even during the daytime), insuring the desired privacy for the members. In the words of more than one of her many clients, "Ardell had class." She insisted upon proper behavior on the part of her members as well as her employees. The "girls" were only permitted to drink ginger ale while "on the clock", though alcohol was available and plentiful for the members. Delivery boys, (who never met Ardell, only a genteel hand full of money passed through a cracked back doorway), fondly remember her generous tips. Ardell was a businesswoman and a proud Clevelander as well, firmly believing in the importance of strong community ties, commercially and civically, and ultimately thriving in her adopted hometown for nearly 20 years.

When all is said and done, however, the simple truth is that Joseph and Naza came to Cleveland and built a church. Ardell came and opened a whorehouse.

Naza's sister, Ardell Quinn, in her "preferred photo", circa 1921

1929 - On October 29, after a month of erratic, downward activity, the Stock Market collapses, plunging America and the world into a "Great Depression". The United States would not fully recover until the advent of World War II. In 1933, Roosevelt institutes his "New Deal", designed to restructure and stimulate the US economy. In the Arab World, the fight for independence continues, most vigorously in Egypt, where rival Muslim political factions claw for dominance. In 1931, Khalil Gibran dies in New York, destroyed by drink. He is taken back to Lebanon for burial, where his funeral procession is received, mile after mile, by the grieving Lebanese. Mikhail Naimy leaves America for Lebanon, never to return. Ameen Rihani has long since abandoned America as home and shifted his literary and oratorical prowess to the fight for Arab Unity and the Palestinian cause. In America, the Syrian community was hit hard yet became resilient. Many who had "made good" in America, such as the millionaire Faour brothers,(who were bankers) went broke during the Depression. Others, such as Maroun Haggar, (of the Haggar Menswear company), discovered that they began to prosper. No matter the financial stratum in which he found himself, the Syrian did believe, however, in helping his fellow man. "Haflis", or parties, were organized even in the poorest communities, and the proceeds donated to victims of the Great Depression. The Syrian was continuing to assimilate into America. The first generation born on American soil was about to come of age, in more ways than one.

The 1930 United States Census, listing the 13 living members of the Ganim Family in that year.

This document indicates that Joseph and Naza were not yet naturalized America citizens, yet they had indeed filed "first papers", with the intent to naturalize.

Under "Occupation", both Joseph Sr. and Jr. are listed as Gas Station Attendants, Al as a Truck Driver, and Nora as a Beauty Operator.

We also see that for each of the 13, the "Place of Abode" listed is the same: the house on Glendale.

On January 11, 1932, Naza Bojde Ganim gave birth for the last time, to a daughter she named Lila Joy. Naza had carried 22 pregnancies throughout 28 years from the time she was 16 years old to her present age of 44. The family of which she and Joseph had dreamt was now a hardcore reality of 9 sons and 3 daughters. Within 5 years, the first 6 of the 12 children would be married and would begin having children of their own. The Ganim Family was about to grow exponentially.

The wedding of Al Ganim and Anne Zlaket, July 14, 1934. Al's brothers Joe and George are in the wedding party, along with his sister Nora.

No matter how difficult those years became, in the middle of the Great Depression, no matter the struggle, Joseph and Naza never lost sight of their faith nor in their constant exhortation to the children to "Be good". Be honest, self-sufficient, industrious, never do anything to compromise the family name, be good. Be good people. Time and again they demonstrated the way to a good life for their children, oftentimes enduring hardship in the process, setting a vivid example.

Louie remembers that he wandered one day into an underground poker game in the back of Uncle Tom's barbershop. An absolute innocent, he sat down to play and through an amazing streak of beginner's luck, he won hand after hand. After a few hours he had amassed $538.00, a stunning sum in the early 1930s. Giddy with his good fortune, Louie went to a neighborhood car dealership and bought himself a new car. When he returned home, he met with Joseph's stern displeasure. Joseph said the money was "dirty", ill-gotten gains and that Louie had to return the car. Louie pleaded with his father, arguing that it was simple luck and that the family would benefit from the car, putting it into service for the station and Uncle Tom's deli. Joseph would have none of it and he and Louie drove the car back to the dealership. After chastising the dealer for selling a car to a 15-year old boy without the permission of the boy's parents, he convinced the dealer to refund the cash. He refused the dealer's offer to have the two of them driven back home, choosing instead to walk the long way home, the one that passed a convent, where he demanded Louie donate the the entire $538.00 to the sisters, to give the money to God.

Many of the children remember the evening that Naza woke in the middle of the night to find an African-American woman in her kitchen, stealing from the family. Some of the boys wanted to call the police, but Naza would have none of it. She sat the woman down at the massive kitchen table and talked to her. She asked her how she had arrived at this moment, in someone else's home. The woman said that she was down on her luck and was simply trying to feed her family, stealing from others as a desperate last resort. Naza proceeded to fill up two large bags of groceries for the woman to take home to her family, all the while exhorting her not to steal and to have faith in God. The boys were stunned, moreso when Naza then asked them to drive the woman home! The African-American woman would return occasionally over the years, not to steal, but simply to thank the woman who had been so kind to her.

Naza, it seemed, was everywhere. She never missed a wake or funeral, riding the streetcar for hours to get where a family was mourning, teaching her children that a funeral is respect not only for the dead, but presence for those left living. She was "Ma Ganim" to many in the Syrian community of Cleveland. She and Joseph continued to work within the parish of St. Maron's, and with the other families of the parish: the Abouds, Shalalas, Naders, Shaheens, Georges, Zarzours and Zlakets (among many others).

The relationship with Naza's sister, however, was difficult. Joseph refused to allow Ardell Quinn into his house, saying that she was "dirty". No matter how strained the finances of his family became, he refused her offer to help, refused her money. It is more than likely that Naza did take money from her sister and there is growing evidence that had she not, the family may have woefully suffered, particularly during the very lean years. It must have been practical wisdom that drove Naza to accept her sister's aid, for very soon, the well would run dry and Ardell Quinn's glorious run would come to a quintessentially American end.

The wedding of Louis Ganim and Mathilda Kassouf, "Tillie", September 29, 1936. Nora Ganim, 4 years old, is the little girl seated on the right, and Tillie's cousin, Evelyn Kassouf (who will later marry Louie's brother Johnny), is over Nora's left shoulder, the last bridesmaid on the right.

The "Coat of Arms" for Ardell's second location in South Euclid. The images are straight out of "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam: "...a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou..."

In 1929, Arthur Quinn, Ardell's husband, had had enough of the "underground" lifestyle and they were divorced. Ardell remained in operation on East 84th Street until 1932 when the "Hollywood Royal Club" was raided by the police, though no serious charges were brought against her. Undeterred, she reopened a year later in a new location on Belvoir Boulevard in South Euclid. Aware that she counted the top politicos and law enforcement officials amongst her clientele, Ardell allowed her bravado to get the best of her and mailed embossed invitations to her "country club", inviting members to join her in "...a pastoral setting of quiet loveliness..." where there was a "..charming lack of inhibiting formalities...". To further etch the profile of a distinguished private club, the invitations were adorned with a specially designed "Coat of Arms".

Mrs. Quinn was already on the radar at the FBI, but now she caught the attention of Eliot Ness, who had been named Safety Director of Cleveland in 1935. Ardell's houses had always had escape tunnels to facilitate the quick, surreptitious egress her clients demanded in the case of police raid. Trap doors disclosed secret rooms, so there was always a place to hide. Ness learned that, while he had been in pursuit of Alvin Karpis, (who had succeeded John Dillinger as Public Enemy Number One),knowingly or not, Ardell had provided refuge for the criminal. Eliot Ness set Ardell squarely within his sights and in 1936 he and the FBI raided the club in South Euclid.

A few of Ardell's "girls" had come to work for her from other states, and Ardell was charged with violating the Mann Act, that she had engaged in "white slavery" when she transported the girls across state lines for "immoral purposes". After the successful sting operation, J. Edgar Hoover characterized Ardell Bojde Quinn as "...one of the nation's big-league brothel hostesses arrested this year." Before the sentencing hearing, Ardell was given the opportunity to release the roster of her well-positioned clientele to the Feds. In return, they were offering leniency in the sentence, if there would be one at all. Ardell refused.

No matter her chosen trade, she had conducted her business with integrity and had insured her clients the discretion they desired. For Ardell, it was a point of Levantine honor that she not sacrifice the well-being of others (to whom she owed a merchant's gratitude), simply as a matter of her own ease and comfort. Ardell refused to name one name to save herself and on December 4th, 1937, she entered the Federal House of Corrections in Plymouth, Michigan. She served her entire sentence: One year and a day.

The house and gas station at East 140th and Glendale, circa 1935, before the Sohio partnership. "Ganim Bros." can be read on the front windows.

There had been an unspoken creed within the Ganim Family for years, one that had not been uttered but rather had been simply lived. Now, Joseph and Naza began to say it, aloud, at dinnertime, on holidays and birthdays, whenever their children were all in one room, (which was often!): "Stay Together". They would repeat it, as a mantra, for the rest of their lives. "Stay Together".

In the five years since little Lila had been born, the family had expanded and even begun to prosper. In July, 1934, firstborn son Al had married Anne Zlaket. Four months later that same year, in November, Nora married Haliem "Happy" Zarzour. George followed in 1935, marrying Emily Joseph. In 1936, Louie married Mathilda "Tillie" Kassouf and then in 1937 there were again two weddings - in January, Joe married Elizabeth Jacob and in October, Emil married Thelma Assad. Each of the Ganim children had married Lebanese, and the Lebanese family is a patriarchal one. The woman "joins" her husband's family, and so in three years, the Ganims welcomed five wives. Nora, on the other hand, would become a Zarzour, though she and her family would never be far outside the orbital pull of the Ganims.

The gravity was generated not only by their committed life of faith and family, but also by practical matters: business. Joseph Sr. had always sold gas, oil, kerosene and ice from the station, but in the early 1930s he expanded and installed two bays to fix cars. Employing his sons, he renamed the station, "Ganim Bros.". Business was good. Joseph, however, had even bigger plans and in 1936, he partnered with Sohio, which loaned him $22,000.00 to build a "Super Service Station". He built a full body shop in the back and in the front he would begin to sell tires, toys, and ultimately, home appliances. (Take that, Best Buy!) He was marking the trends and maximizing their impact for his family. Their business was growing...they had survived the worst of the Depression.

On July 19, 1936, Joseph and Naza's first grandchild was born to Nora and Happy - a boy, Robert "Bobby" Zarzour. Over the next 26 years, 28 more grandchildren would follow. The glory years for this very American family were about to begin.

THE HEYDAY

1938 - 1962

The Ganim Family, circa 1938

"The older I get and the more troubled families I see, the more I appreciate that in my childhood the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters - were just there. Everyone was in place and my world was utterly secure and safe."

Carole Ganim Nelson, (born 1938)

In 1938, Ardelle Ganim had already led an extraordinary life. She remembers never being rich nor poor, but always as having had "just enough". She had 9 brothers and 2 sisters. She had taken tap dance lessons as a girl and had later danced a solo number at the Palace Theater in downtown Cleveland with the whole family in the audience. In the exact middle of the family and between so many brothers, Ardelle developed an athletic streak. She was an avid sportswoman, excelling at baseball, touch football, bowling and tennis...and was always the first picked for any neighborhood team, ahead of her own brothers. She won second-place in a Myrna Loy look-a-like contest. Ardelle was poised for myriad success. But, in 1933, after Lila was born, Naza went through a period of illness and Ardelle dropped out of school to take charge of the household maintenance: cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing over 40 shirts a week for the working men in the family, as well as tending to her younger brothers and baby sister. Later, after Naza's recovery, Ardelle wanted to pursue a dancing career. She was told no. Still later, when a scout for a professional girls ball team saw Ardelle play and inquired about recruiting her, Joseph said no. There existed in the family very specific ideas about the role of men and women in society, grounded in ancient and proven formulae. Joseph and Naza wanted their children, however, to be successful American citizens, and they could be surprisingly progressive at times. When Ardelle was engaged to Freddie Joseph (her sister-in-law Emily's brother), her family approved, considering it a good match for Ardelle and the family. But later, when Ardelle told her father she really didn't love him, Joseph went on her behalf to the Joseph Family to return the ring and break the engagement. He and Naza had taken the greatest risk of their lives for love and it was the foundation of their family. What was the point in resisting Ardelle's reluctance? Just as Ardelle realized there was no point in resisting her parents' other wishes, for as she says today, "When they said no, it was no. It was that simple."

Joseph and Naza faced a challenge familiar to immigrant families: How to successfully assimilate into American culture without losing the strong sense of values and cultural identity they had brought with them? Particularly for the Ganims as Lebanese: How to instill familial integrity ("Stay Together") while unleashing their children to the rugged terrain of individualism that had defined America? As the United States became engaged in the greatest struggle of the Twentieth Century, the fertility in the family was shifting generations, and the character of the country as well as the Ganims would be forever altered in renewed prosperity.

The Great Depression has had worldwide economic and political impact and many countries have fallen victim to extremist, totalitarian governments and maniacal leadership: Germany to Hitler, Italy to Mussolini and Russia to Stalin. In New York, publisher Salloum Mokarzel laments the demise of his English-language magazine "Syrian World". He worries that the Syrians have yet to carve a national identity in America. 1939 - Over 27.5 million US families have radios in their homes. Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" and "In the Mood" dominate the airwaves.In 1940, Ameen Rihani, who has spent the last 20 years of his life as a speaker and political activist on behalf of Arab Nationalism and the Palestine Question, dies in a bicycle accident in his hometown of Freike, Lebanon. In Europe - France, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark and Romania all fall to the Nazi Regime, already in occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia. The United States waits out the tension on the sidelines until December 7th, 1941, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor draws the US into almost 4 years of World War. 1942 - The last US automobile produced until 1945 rolls off the assembly line at Ford in Detroit (where there is a large Syrian community working in the auto industry), as the manufacturing plants are turned towards military production. Tires and gasoline begin to be rationed - other goods will follow. 1943 - Lebanon is declared a Republic, independent from France. The constitution, in an optimistic recognition of the country's diversity, stipulates that the President be a Christian, the Prime Minister, a Muslim. The landmark Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "Oklahoma!", which will set the template for 30 years of Broadway fare (as well as serve as a boon to the American sense of determination, might and destiny during World War II), opens to wide acclaim in New York City. This most "American" of musicals prominently features a classic Syrian-American character in "Ali Hakim", the pack-peddler in love with Ado Annie. 1944 - June 6th - D-Day. Over 176,000 Allied Forces storm the beaches at Normandy, effectively turning the course of the War in Europe. One year later, Roosevelt will die and Harry Truman will preside over the conflict, ending the War in the Pacific with the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the Middle East, the Arabs struggle to unify and in an act of anticipated cooperation, the League of Arab States is formed. Members include Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen and Lebanon.

St. Maron's Church at 1245 Carnegie Avenue as it appears on the church website, 2008. This building, purchased in 1939, has witnessed almost 70 years of Ganim weddings, christenings, first communions and funerals as well as the Social Hall having served many years as the location of the family Christmas Party.

For over 25 years after Naza and Joseph had passed away, the front entrance doors of the church were adorned with massive icons to their memory. Many, many Cleveland families have contributed to the life of this Maronite parish. Nonetheless, in the life of the Ganims, St. Maron's looms large.

1939 was a banner year for the Ganims. The growing congregation of St. Maron's, 25 years after the inception of the parish, was finally able to buy a church of their own -the structure of the former St. Anthony's at 1245 Carnegie Avenue. The following year, the solemnities of transfer were performed by the Archbishop and there followed a celebration at the Carter Hotel at which the guest speaker was none other than Salloum Mokarzel, who had taken over as Editor of Al-Hoda in New York after the death of his brother Naoum. Joseph and Naza had a longstanding subscription to Al-Hoda, treasuring the beauty of their mother tongue - yet, like Mokarzel, they believed that there was no future for Arabic in America, so they never spoke it to their children (certainly, not until they had learned to speak adequate English, which wouldn't be until Emil and Ardelle). Though Joseph would ultimately provide translation services for the US Government (he could read, write and speak Arabic, colloquial Lebanese, Syriac as the language of the Maronite Rite, as well as some ancient Aramaic), he only spoke English to his children, hence "Pa" and "Ma" and, for the multiplying grandchildren, "Grandpa" and "Grandma".

The grandchildren were coming fast and furiously. After Bobby Zarzour had been born in 1936, George and Emily welcomed a son, Lee, in 1937. In 1938, two girls would come into the family: Carole, who was born to Louie and Tillie - and Barbara, born to Joe and Libby, who got really busy and had son Douglas in 1939. Two days later, son Dennis was born to Emil and Thelma. Al and Anne had their first child in 1941, a son, Alan. Later that same year, Louie and Tillie had a second daughter, Judith. 3 of the previous 4 years had seen double births in the family, yet even that could not compare with the year 1943 - in which 5 of the 8 married children of Joseph and Naza would have children of their own. On February 25, eleven days after their Valentine's Day first wedding anniversary,Art and his new bride Hazel Aboid Ganim had their first son, Gary. On June 26, Cynthia was born to Emil and Thelma. Joe and Libby had their third child, daughter Sharon, on August 30 and George and Emily had their second son, Donald, less than a month later, on September 23. Just after Thanksgiving, on November 28, Paul, the second son to Al and Anne, is born. Thirteen grandchildren in 7 years. It would be another three years before number 14, Ronald, would join his brother Gary in Art and Hazel's home...but, alot would happen in the interim.

Johnny Ganim in France, with the truck he named after his sweetheart back home, "Evelyn", circa 1943.

Art Ganim in 1942, the year he married Hazel Aboid.

Lorry Ganim, circa 1942.Lorry would be among the forces landing at Normandy, D-Day 1. Injured, he lay on the beach for three days before medical attention reached him.

Richard Ganim, on the left, with Army buddies in Cleveland, circa 1943.

At the height of America's involvement in the Second World War, Naza Ganim made a promise to God. She had fed the soldiers who had passed through the gas station or whom she had seen at the bus stop across the street. She had sat, days and nights, with mothers who had lost their boys to war. She had four sons of her own in uniform: Johnny, Art, Lorry, and Dick, and now two of them had been sent overseas, to the European Theater of Operations. She was proud and grateful, yet ultimately anxious. Naza promised God that if he would spare her the mother's grief she had already witnessed in so many others, if he would bring her boys home safely to her, that she would endure another pain of her own, that she would walk a mile, on her knees, down an unpaved road of gravel. She was 55 years old.

Art, 23, had been issued a medical deferment and kept stateside while Dick, 18, was never called to active overseas duty. However, Johnny, 25, and Lorry, 21, both left home for the war. Johnny, parlaying the skills he had honed at Ganim Bros., worked as an Army mechanic and was stationed in France. He named his Army truck, "Evelyn" (after the Lebanese sweetheart he was wooing at home) and had her name painted on the driver's side door. His love letters home to her illuminate the caution employed at the time: the blackout pen of the Army Censor.

It was Lorry who witnessed the raw horror of armed engagement, on an unimaginable scale, as a member of the battalions landing at Normany on June 7, 1944, or D-Day 1. The invasion, which included over 5 days of landings, was well underway and being met by spectacular resistance from the German entrenchments above the shore. Shortly after landfall, Lorry was shot, lying on the beach for 3 days before medical personnel were able to reach and attend to him. Those three days, on the beach, while the invasion continued all around him amid the pleas and screams of the injured and dying, those three days would bear a profound impact on Lorry. Later, recuperating in a hospital in England, he heard a soldier in the next bed cry out, "I know you!". Startled, Lorry said, "Who, me?" The soldier replied, "Yes, you! I saw your picture on your mother's piano in Cleveland! I was waiting for the bus to go to boot camp and she called me into the house and fed me a wonderful meal. She made me feel like family, I'll never forget her, your mother is a saint!"

Both Johnny and Lorry did come home, although for some time Lorry would suffer what today might be diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The families of this tribe all lived within blocks of one another and were always together, eating and fighting and loving and laughing. The immediate Ganim Family now numbered over 30 and the house on Glendale, though warm and welcoming, was frequently filled with a raucous cacophony, which would send Lorry out onto the streets, to wander the neighborhood alone, somehow...dazed. The noise, the activity, all the children were somehow more than he could bear. His brothers would be sent to find him and bring hime home, which they always did. Even now, his surviving siblings speak of this period with a tender protectiveness, their own voices softening to match Lorry's more taciturn nature.

Eventually, he "got better" as Ardelle says and he soon met and fell in love with Lillian Louis, whom he married in 1947. His brother Johnny had married Evelyn Kassouf the year before, in 1946. Ardelle herself had been away from home, in California with her husband Labbie, who was in the Navy and stationed at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, north of San Francisco. Ardelle worked in "ship services" - selling candy, cokes, milkshakes, magazines and tobacco and was such a hit, the Navy asked her to run the whole canteen! Ardelle politely declined as Labbie had become ill. He was briefly hospitalized, honorably discharged, then he and Ardelle came home to Cleveland. To this day, Ardelle says she will never forget the sight of sailors returning home after a Pacific tour of duty, barreling down the gangplank, and greeting America by, "...kissing the ground...we were all so proud to be Americans and you could see it in those boys who were so glad to be home."

Now, all of Naza's children were home from the war. On a warm spring day, she walked the mile, on her bare knees, down a rural, gravel road to a local shrine. her arms outstretched in submission to the heavens, her breast unadorned save for her crucifix, her soul in open, active prayer, and she kept her promise to God. Her family would, indeed, stay together.

Ardell Quinn (Aunt Sugar-Doo to the grandchildren, later "Old Auntie" Ardell) with Johnny Ganim, his nephew Alan Ganim and Naza Ganim, circa 1943.

They would begin to branch out in the business world. Louis and then Emil would both operate Uncle Tom's deli for periods of time. Al ran the Colony Bowling Alley and Ganim's Bar. There would follow, in the family tradition, other service stations, tire companies and automobile dealerships. Being active in the community was endemic to the experience of the Ganim Family and the service industries kept them closely allied with their own.

Valiantly serving in the armed forces as well as maintaining commercial and philanthropic ties to the community were two of the ways the Ganims proudly identified as American citizens. As Joseph would say to his grandchildren, "It's important to know where you've been, but it's more important to know where you're going."

Where all of Joseph's children had attained no more than a high school education, (if that, as many of them had dropped out of school at various ages, necessity dictating they work for the family), the majority of his grandchildren would graduate college, boasting varying degrees of university achievement. Alan Ganim remembers Joseph telling him, "If you have an education, the only way they can take it from you is by cutting off your head!" A barbaric wisdom, perhaps, but precise and true. The American dream of great prosperity would come well within the grasp of his grandchildren. They did, indeed, know where they were going. This was the generation to whom much opportunity would be given, who would come of age during America's continued ascendancy and bounty. Publically, the Ganims were entirely American. Privately, they would reap the joys and face down the challenges of being Lebanese.

The grandchildren all remember the huge oven in the basement, where Joseph could be found baking bread, flipping and twirling the thin loaves into the air. What is widely marketed today as "Pita Bread" is an ancient Middle Eastern staple that the Ganims called "Syrian" bread well into the 1940s. Alan remembers the day he asked his grandmother for "Syrian" bread and Naza telling him, "Oh, no honey! It's Lebanese bread now!" They were so proud that Lebanon had finally achieved independence. Many of the grandchildren remember Joseph, (when he wasn't at the station), in that basement baking "Leb bread", sitting in his chair in the living room smoking the narghileh, or playing sheshbesh (backgammon), flinging the dice, moving the pieces across the board with amazing speed, and screaming in Arabic! He might greet them in the Lebanese dialect, "Keefak?" and he could often be found reading his Arabic newspaper or his Bible. The grandchildren saw how he treated his employees with a great deal of respect if they had put in an honest day's work. Doug remembers that Grandpa was not very demonstrative. He would, however, do anything for anyone, although family always came first.They remember a "presence" with Grandpa, a stern, unwavering sense of right and wrong, and they took from him a sense of pride in their name and their Lebanese heritage.

Naza, "Grandma", was always in the kitchen, where there was a huge table. She would greet them with hugs and a "Hi-ya!" and would always be ready to feed them. Food, always, food. All of the grandchildren remember Naza with unbridled warmth and tenderness, but also with admiration at her "Syrian shrewdness". Gary remembered, "Grandma had an uncanny ability to do mathematics in her head. I went to the market with her once and she ordered 3 pounds of this, 5 pounds of that, 3 jars of one thing, 6 packages of another, etc...and she would know the total cost before the clerk finished adding it on his cash register!" Ron remembers that Grandma was ahead of the curve with her list of phone numbers, forgoing the letters and "word" prefixes well before the phone company had - for Naza it was always just the numbers. Carole remembers that Grandpa was the patriarch of the family, the "Boss" and that Grandma was "Mother Earth" personified. Sharon remembers watching Joseph and Naza go behind a curtain in the kitchen - where they would give one another insulin injections - (for the diabetes that would plague the Ganims for generations).

It was a near idyllic time for all of these grandchildren, first cousins who were raised to think of one another more as brothers and sisters, and by 1950 , there were six more of them: Susan was born to Louie and Tillie in January of 1948, then in April of that year, Emil and Thelma welcomed their second son, Robert. 1949 was another "boom" year for grandchildren as three of them were born: daughter Elaine to Al and Anne, daughter Julie to Johnny and Evelyn and son Joseph to Lorry and Lil. In 1950, a third and final son was born to Art and Hazel, Kenneth.

Gary Arthur Ganim, First Communion, 1950.

For all of the comfort and security that the grandchildren enjoyed, there were increasing divisions and discord within the family. Joseph, in particular, could be an exacting patriarch: unyielding in his initial judgments, firm in his beliefs.

When Ardelle had first met Labbie in the early 1940s, Joseph and Naza were soon exposed to a gossipmonger's litany of untruths regarding his Greek Orthodox family, the Georges. Joseph forbade Ardelle from seeing Labbie, believing (erroneously) that his family was "no good". But Ardelle loved Labbie passionately and continued to see him, lying to her father for the only time in her life. Labbie and Ardelle decided to elope and once the news had broken back home, Joseph refused to speak to Ardelle for more than a year (though she was, of course, always welcomed in the family home). Finally, on Christmas Day, 1944, Labbie told Ardelle that if "Pa" didn't speak to her, they were going to leave. Pa didn't speak to her. Brother Emil finally threatened his father that if he didn't speak to Ardelle, he was leaving with her. Joseph relented, kissed Ardelle, and the matter was closed.

When Art and Hazel moved with their three boys to the new Cleveland suburb of Parma, an angry Joseph railed that they were, "...breaking up the family!", (eventhough they were less than 15 minutes away), and he refused to visit them in their new home for over two years.

Pride, honor, the good family name, "staying together" were all so very important to Joseph and Naza that the following episode must have caused them great heartache and strain.

Their youngest son, Richard, "Dick" had married Betty Saba in June of 1950. Now, all of their 12 adult children were married and starting families. All except the baby, their youngest, daughter Lila, who remained unwed. Nevertheless, sometime between 1947 and 1951, when Lila was anywhere from 15 to 19 years old...she became pregnant.

Lila had been seeing a local Italian boy, unbeknownst to her parents, and had gotten "in trouble" as the euphemism has it. There was family in St. Louis, as well as a nunnery where such events could be endured in secret, so before Lila's condition became physically evident, she was sent away, under the guise of "visiting relatives". Lila had her baby and gave it up for adoption.

The Ganim Family, circa 1949

She returned to Cleveland and the family, and though the ruse was successful and the secret was safe, she would never be quite the same. Lila's life would remain a troubled one, rife with health challenges and personal problems. She would never marry and she would be the first of her siblings to die, of kidney failure at the age of 42.

Why did Naza and Joseph send her away and give up the child? Was it simply the stigma of the times? Would it have been different if the boy had been Lebanese? Might they then have been encouraged to get married? How could a family so very tightly woven so readily and completely abandon one of their own?

It is a point of interest as well as inquiry within this documentary that, among Lila's contemporaries there yet exists a veil of secrecy and shame around the event, while later generations of the family exhibit curiosity, great empathy and a desire to locate the "lost Ganim grandchild."

1947 - A group of Arab-American veterans from all branches of the Armed Forces petition a charter to the American Legion and it is granted one year later. This new Arabic post begins present its "Americanism Award". 1948 - As the British Mandate over Palestine expires, the State of Israel is proclaimed, having displaced over half a million indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their homes. 1949 - U.S. auto production reaches 5.1 million, finally catching up with the record set twenty years earlier. "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir is published, it will become a bible of the women's liberation movement. In America, the National Association of Syrian-Lebanese Federations organizes an international convention in Syria and Lebanon. The U.S. State Department sees an opportunity to strengthen relations in the Arab World. Three years later, seven Arab-American members of the convention meet with Harry Truman at the White House to share their recommendations on U.S. policy in the Middle East. "Death of a Salesman" plays Broadway. Entertainer Danny Thomas founds ALSAC, (the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities), asking Arab-Americans to help build and support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Both organizations continue to this day. 1950 - More than 100 television stations operate in 38 states and sales figures show over 8 million sets in use. In Los Angeles, Attorney George Kasem, of Lebanese parentage, becomes the first Arab-American U.S. Congressman, representing the 25th District. 1951 - the U.S, population has doubled since 1900 and is now at 153 million, behind only China, India, and the USSR. Transcontinental television begins with a speech by President Truman. "I Love Lucy" debuts on CBS. Blue jeans and saddle shoes gain in popularity as do crew cuts for guys and pony tails for girls. Bell Telephone introduces long distance "direct dial" service. The volume of calls is such that without it, over half the adult population in the U.S. would be required to operate the switchboards. 1952 - The Republican Presidential ticket of former General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Congressman Richard Milhous Nixon wins 55 percent of the popular vote and 442 of the 531 electoral votes. "American Bandstand" with Dick Clark debuts in January. 1953 - "Playboy" magazine is founded and the New York Yankees win their 5th consecutive World Series Title. Television sets in American homes have more than doubled in only 2 years. Thanks to the success of the "GI Bill" and a booming economy, the U.S. enjoys a period of unbounded prosperity.

The Ganim Family - 1953 - in the 50th Anniversary Year of their immigration and marriage, Joseph and Naza with their children, the entire first generation of American-born Ganims and their spouses.

In the Lebanese tradition, a hafli is a party. Perhaps more than that, a hafli is an event. a "super-party" which may last an evening, a few days, or even an entire week! A hafli is an occasion for everyone to participate in eating, drinking, singing and dancing the dabke. The dabke, an ancient line dance indigenous to the Levant, is characterized by rhythmic and repetitive "stomping" of the ground, symbolizing a reverence for and sacred attachment to the earth, one's country, biladi, "my homeland". A simple six-step progression is then adorned with more intricate footwork and complicated combinations, yet all the while the dabke maintains an insistent swaying and rocking rhythm. The dabke is euphoric and intoxicating and is danced by everyone: men, women, and children. The dancing of the dabke is a defining element of being Lebanese.

Another distinguishing and particularly Levantine component of a hafli is zajal. Zajal is poetry, half-spoken and half-sung, improvised on the spot to the delight of the audience. It is usually performed in a competitive spirit, with either two "poets" facing off, or two teams who battle to "outdo" one another in matters of ingenuity, surprise and wit. "Arab" identity may be unique in global history, in that it is defined by language as opposed to geography or ethnicity. One is considered an Arab if one's mother tongue is Arabic and the reverence for the language itself may be unparalleled elsewhere on the globe. Arabic is a complex language, capable of great intricacy and enchanting rhyming schemes and eloquence as well as facility and invention with the language is highly admired and is the mark of a great man. The Lebanese dialect is one of the most "charming" dialects in Arabic, with softer endings and quaint turns of phrase that are endearing to the Arab ear. Zajal is an ecstatic event during a hafli, transporting the listeners to sheer delight as the poets battle to top one another singing the praises of a bride and groom, or an esteemed guest of honor, or simply the joys of well-prepared food.

The food! Lebanese food started to gain some notoriety during the health-food craze of the 1970s and it is certainly ubiquitous today - we find hummus, taboule, and "pita" bread in practically every neighborhood grocery store. The food, of course, has been a staple in Lebanon for thousands of years and is a bedrock of the history of the Ganim Family. Alan vividly remembers "The Feast", a full-course meal that his "Grandma" could prepare in no time. It might consist of any or all of the following: Hummus, a puree of chickpeas and tahini paste with garlic and lemon; Labne, a thickened yogurt; Lift, pickled turnips; Jibne, homemade cheese; Sfeeha, triangular pies filled with meat or spinach; Salata, a tossed salad dressed with lemon and mint; Taboule, a salad of chopped parsley, tomatoes and bulgur wheat; Warak 'aynab, grape leaves stuffed with a mixture of ground lamb, rice, and spices; Baba Ghannouj, a puree similar to hummus, made with roasted eggplant; Kabees and Zaytuun, pickled vegetables and cured olives; M'jaddara, a simple yet legendary dish of stewed lentils and onions over rice, dear to the hearts of the Lebanese; or Kibbi, nearly everyone's favorite in all its incarnations. Kibbi is ground lamb mixed with bulgur wheat, onions, pine nuts and spices. Kibbi may be baked in a pan and cut into diamonds, it may be formed into individual balls and baked or fried. However, the most delicate manifestation of kibbi, a rarefied ecstasy of taste and texture guaranteed to send a Lebanese over the moon in gustatory delight is Kibbi Nayee, the kibbi mixture worked together until it reaches a silky consistency and served raw, (like a steak tartare) with either raw or sauteed onions.

All of these delicacies and more (we haven't even begun to discuss the pastries!) can be found at a hafli, where you're certain to hear the "Bon Appetit" of the Lebanese: Sahtein!

A traditional Lebanese "mezze" - assortment of many dishes, featuring Warak 'aynab, hummus, taboule, sfeeha, falafel and kibbi.

Kibbi Nayee - kibbi served raw, a Lebanese delicacy.

Naza and Joseph dancing at the "hafli" for their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

In 1953, the Ganim Family organized a stupendous hafli to celebrate the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Naza and Joseph as well as the 50th Anniversary of their immigration to America and the beginning of their very American brood. The evening was a gala affair, with everyone dressed in their finest attire and the bulk of the Lebanese-Syrian community of Cleveland in attendance. The family remembers that Naza danced as though she were a young bride on her wedding day and that Joseph was so very proud. The entire family was there, including Naza's sister Ardell Quinn and Joseph's brother Tom and his wife, "Auntie" Ganim. There were, of course, even more grandchildren by this time. 1951 had been another "boom" year for the family as three little girls were born: daughter Janis to Emil and Thelma in February, daughter Nancy to Al and Ann in April and then in May, Dick and Betty welcomed their first child, daughter Debbie. In 1952, Lorry and Lil had second son, Lawrence, and in 1953 second daughter Rachel was born to Dick and Betty while son Bruce was born to Johnny and Evelyn. What had begun in Lebanon as a love between two had grown into an immediate family of fifty-one. The family was now too large to continue celebrating Christmas at home and they had long since moved the family holiday gathering to the Social Hall at St. Maron's Church. The Ganim Christmas Party became a sacred tradition within the family and would continue for many years after Joseph and Naza had died.

For Joseph and Naza, their 50th Anniversary hafli was cause for great celebration. They had braved a terrifying journey across an ocean, leaving everything and everyone they knew behind. They had built a family, a church, and a thriving business. They had endured the lean years of the Depression and had watched their sons go off to war and gratefully welcomed them home again. They had seen the promise of tomorrow in the eyes of their grandchildren, who now had opportunities their own children had forsaken - an education and a real shot at the American Dream. Although, on this night, surrounded by their family and friends, dancing the dabke, serenaded by zajal, laughter ringing in the air, what else could this night be called but a dream...a very American dream? On this night, as they had so many times before and as they would so many times yet to come, Joseph and Naza, ever the lovestruck bride and groom, stood and implored their family..."Stay Together".

1955 - "Rock Around the Clock" becomes the first worldwide #1 Rock Hit. Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama and the Civil Rights Movement is kick-started in the public consciousness. 1956 - Elvis Presley appears on the Ed Sullivan Show. During this decade, the urban population in America will increase by only 1.4 percent while the suburban population increases by over 44 percent. Also in 1956, President Eisenhower signs the Federal Highway Act and work begins on the complex system of Interstates that traverse the entire country. America will never be the same. Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe dominate the Hollywood landscape. 1957 - two landmark American works are published: "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac and "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Lebanese singer Paul Anka scales the top of the charts with hits "Diana", "Put Your Head On My Shoulder:, and "Puppy Love". Danny Thomas appears on television weekly in "Make Room for Daddy" - a show which features a Lebanese character, "Uncle Tannous". 1958 - U.S. satellite "Explorer I" orbits the earth. U.S. military forces are sent into Lebanon to keep the peace as sectarian tensions rise. Lebanese Muslims want the country to join the newly created "United Arab Republic" with Egypt and Syria while Christians prefer to keep the government aligned with Western powers. 1959 - Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th states of the United States of America.

"The Derbecki Ensemble" - circa 1958. Labbie George, (Ardelle Ganim's husband) is at the far left with his "derbecki", the classic drum of the Middle East.

Ever present at haflis all over Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan was a Lebanese band, "The Derbecki Ensemble", which had been founded in the early 1940s by Ardelle's husband, Labbie George. (As a matter of fact, Labbie and Ardelle first met at a hafli!) Labbie played the namesake instrument of the band, the derbecki, a goblet-shaped drum, open at the smaller end, positioned on the lap and played with the hands. "The Derbecki Ensemble" played traditional Lebanese music, "folk" music as well as the semi-improvised dabke music for which Labbie and his derbecki provided the seductive backbone. The band was not only a treasure at family and community functions, but it began to achieve a larger fame, recording a number of albums as well as playing at numerous ALSAC functions with Danny Thomas (who ate at Naza's kitchen table when in Cleveland).

It was during this period and well into the 1960s that the grandchildren began to grow into young adults and continue to carve an identity as "Lebanese-Americans", many of them working for ALSAC (the American Lebanese-Syrian Associated Charities) to raise money for Thomas' St. Jude's Childrens Research Hospital. It was a point of great pride within the Lebanese community and ALSAC provided a venue of identity, solidarity and purpose.

In the meantime - yet another grandchild had arrived. In November of 1955, Elizabeth (Betsy) Ganim was born to Dick and Betty, making three girls for them...so far! And in May of 1958, Joseph and Naza's very first grandchild, Nora and Happy Zarzour's son Bobby, was married to Rosalie Ezzie. The grandchildren now ranged in age from toddlerhood to the twenties and many of the older ones recall Naza admonishing them, whenever they were dating someone, "Remember, honey, no hunkey munkey!" Naza wanted all of her grandchildren to marry Lebanese, no matter how American they had become.

Bobby Zarzour's wedding would be the only one at which Naza would live to dance, sadly. Nearly sixty years after she had emigrated to America, after a lifetime of building a family and a church, after daily service to her beloved Lebanese community, leading by example and endurance, Naza Bojde Ganim prepared to go home to her Lord. In the spring of 1960, debilitated by the lifelong diabetes and an incipient cancer, she was taken from the house on Glendale to the hospital, driven by her youngest son, Dick. As they pulled away, she waved goodbye to the house, to the gas station, to the street...she knew she would not be coming back. On the 20th of May, 1960, she slipped peacefully from this earth, leaving behind a grief-stricken family.

Joseph gathered his 9 sons at the house and was silent for a while. Then, he barked his orders, his wishes for his wife. His sons, heads bowed, could only repeat "Yes, sir" after every command. When he was through, Joseph retreated back into his sad, silent shell. He would remain in a similar state for the rest of his life.

The funeral for Naza Ganim was immense, the likes of which Cleveland had rarely, if ever seen. Her wake was a constant stream of people, many of whom the family were meeting for the first time. These were the people towards whom Naza had shown a particular kindness or whom she had silently helped...and they had come to pay their respects to this woman who had, in certain instances, literally altered the course of their lives. The woman who had been caught trying to steal from the family, over 30 years before, had come and approached the boys, to tell them how very much their mother had meant to her, then and over the ensuing years. Apart from the new and unknown faces in the throngs waiting to see her, there was, of course, the Lebanese community and the parish congregation of St. Maron's as well as local politicians and civic dignitaries, including the Mayor of Cleveland himself. The funeral procession of over 150 vehicles snarled and then halted traffic in the city for an entire afternoon. Her pallbearers were the eldest among her grandsons: Bobby, Dennis, Doug, Alan, Gary and others. For many of them it was their first funeral. Gary remembered his Aunt Lila screaming at them to "Hold her level!", which tickled them and Alan remembers the guys would all try to break each other up. Their Grandma had instilled in her family a reverence for the Lord, but also a great love of life and very often, tears and laughter go hand in hand.

Monsignor Joseph Feghali, the pastor of St. Maron's considered Naza to have been a saint and had decided to contact Rome to inquire as to what miracles could be attributed to her. As beloved as she had been in her life, it was only in her death that the enormity of her impact could be assessed. For now, though, she was simply gone...and the family struggled to move on. It was most difficult, of course, for Joseph.

Naza Ganim with other Lebanese women, the morning of a wedding - 1950s

Joseph Ganim in 1961 - the year before his death.

Joseph had made a promise to Naza that he would outlive her...and he had already survived numerous heart attacks to keep that promise. Now, the grief and loneliness he endured took its toll on a body already weakened by struggle as well as the diabetes he and Naza had shared.

Their family continued to grow. Just 8 days before Naza died, grandaughter Patty was born to Dick and Betty and later that year, in August of 1960, their very first great-grandchild was born to Bobby and Rosalie, a son they named Robert. Other grandchildren were graduating high school and heading off to college, which pleased Joseph immensely. Grandson Lee was headed for a seminary in Lebanon, to begin his studies on the road to Maronite priesthood and granddaughter Carole would soon enter a convent, both of which made Joseph very proud.

In the spring of 1962, Joseph had been staying at Joe and Libby's home, where they had set up a bed for him in the dining room, looking out the front bay window. He would spend much of his time in that bed, in that window, reading his Arabic Bible. On the afternoon of April 9th, grandson Gary came to sit with him. Joseph put his hand on Gary's shoulder and said,

"I am here today, but I will be gone tomorrow. The part of me that will live on is my name and the reputation that goes with it. Always respect and protect your name. It is the most important thing that I have given you."

The next afternoon, his Bible on his chest, Joseph Ganim, aged 82, died.

The following morning, his last grandchild, Ricky, was born to Dick and Betty, their first son.

The Ganim Family would endure...but not as Joseph and Naza had envisioned.

Perhaps, it was inevitable. Joseph and Naza were the progenitors and the linchpin of their family. Joseph was the Boss and Naza was the Sainted Mother. So long as they were alive, the family would indeed "stay together". The two of them provided the fulcrum upon which this massive family had balanced their variances. Now that they were gone, perhaps it was inevitable that the bonds they had built would slowly begin to shred.

Perhaps, it was inevitable. The country would radically alter over the coming decade and everything that had been serene and solid in the American psyche would be shattered in a succession of political and civil upheavals. A counterculture would rise against the establishment, a new kind of warfare would be engaged (at home and abroad), race relations would come to a searing climax, we would soar into the heavens to land on the moon, and beloved, potent American voices would be stilled forever. In a climate of such change, perhaps the seeds of change that were sown within the family were absolutely organic...and inevitable.

It would not all happen suddenly, of course, and in many ways the family retained its singular solidarity for many years to come. The Christmas Party continued in full force as the major and mandatory Ganim Family event, though the location would be moved from the Social Hall at St. Maron's to Sherwin's Party Center on Carnegie Avenue and then later still to local hotels with banquet facilities... for the family kept growing! The women in the family no longer cooked for the feast, the party was now a catered affair. "Santa" would always be certain to arrive just in time to hand out presents to the little ones and there would be singing and dancing and the most simple and moving spirit of togetherness, identity, belonging. For the children growing up in this generation, that was the most precious gift: the sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself, a family, a name to live up to. Though there was comfort and pride in the Ganim Family, there was also a sense of responsibility to the group, an expectation to "be good". In this, Joseph and Naza had lived on and were indelible presences within the family throughout this period.

The Christmas Party was, of course, the event at which attendance was mandatory. However, the family maintained for years the close-knit bonds that had defined them for so long. Many of the grandchildren found jobs through the family, just as their fathers had, whether at Ganim Brothers in particular, restaurants, or in other enterprises (Putt Putt courses, telephone dialing systems, or other investment opportunities.) The times were changing and the legendary "Syrian shrewdness" was adapting to new technologies and shifting priorities. Additionally, more of the grandchildren had graduated college and were prepared with greater expertise to apply in more specialized fields than had their fathers. The impact of higher education within the family would be seen to an even greater degree in the decades to come.

A tradition within the family began to attract the attention of the local press as the annual "Father/Son Softball Game" entered its fourth consecutive year. There were, of course, nine brothers in the family: Al, Joe, George, Louie, Emil, John, Art, Lorry and Dick. With brothers-in-law Labbie as the pitcher and Happy Zarzour as the umpire, every spring they took on their sons in a classic generational rivalry. The fathers won five years running, and "The Game" entered family lore as a treasured and intrinsically "Ganim" event.

THE FRACTURE

1963 - 1998

"The one thing I remember the most, whenever we were at family gatherings...Grandpa and Grandma would stand up and both say the same thing, always - 'Stay Together' -When I was young I used to think - 'What's the big deal? Why wouldn't we all stay together?' "

Barbara Ganim Simone, (born 1938)

In as many ways as the Ganim Family remained close and continued to forge their distinct legacy...changes began to occur within the ranks, many of them simple and organic to the times. The Eisenhower Highway project had "opened up" the country to faster travel and American families began to migrate; driven by economic opportunity, geographic attraction or new family bonds. For each of these reasons, there were now branches of the family in California, Montana, New York City and Buffalo, New York. When Ardelle and Labbie had built a new home in Parma in 1960, Joseph, Sr. had remarked that he had to pack a lunch to travel to their house, "...you're living in Atamoon!" What would he think of the nationwide spread of his family now?

25 years earlier, the maiden names of the women marrying into the family as well as the names of the husbands who married the Ganim daughters, were all Lebanese: Zlaket, George, Aboid, Kassouf, Louis, Assad, Zarzour, Joseph, Saba, Jacob. Now, (no matter Naza's charming admonition of "No hunkey munkey!") of the 11 marriages that took place during the 1960s, only two of them were Lebanese. The family began to incorporate the bloodlines of the other strong immigrant communities in Cleveland: the Germans, the Italians, the Slovaks and the Czechs and welcomed names such as Simone, Bird, Kubishke, Chonko, Krieger, Kline, Puzder, Koeth and Mitchell into the brood. Ironically, by marrying outside their own ethnicity, the Ganims were achieving what Joseph and Naza had always desired; they were fully assimilating into American culture, ensuring even greater success for their children.

For, during the racial struggles of the 1960s, more than one of the full-blooded Lebanese endured discrimination at the hands of American prejudice. None of them would ever speak much about it, out of respect for the African-American experience and those who truly suffered, but more than one of the Ganims was forced to sit in the back of a bus, refused service in a restaurant, or thrown out of someone's home. More often than they may presently admit, many of the Ganims were taken for "Black"...and they simply acquiesced, silently and respectfully. Naza's wish for her grandchildren to marry Lebanese notwithstanding, and though it may be taken for a contradiction, this family was raised to respect all people, (until given a reason not to). Prejudice of any kind was not tolerated in a Ganim household. Ron remembers, in his youth, casually employing the most incendiary racial epithet of the time and being clobbered by his father. In his words, "...before the 'r' in the word was out of my mouth, I was flat on the floor." Gary remembered visiting a diner with a large group of his fraternity brothers. He placed an order with the waitress and later, when everyone else's food had come and his had not, one of his frat brothers asked if it would be coming soon. The answer was curt, "We don't serve his kind in here."

For the Lebanese, the Syrian, the Arab-American, assimilation had come at some cost: the loss of public identity. It didn't occur to that waitress or any random bus driver that these individuals might not be "Black" but, rather, Arabs. (Not to diminish the heinous nature of any racism, simply to focus on the experience of the Arab-American.) By working as hard as he had to become part of American society, the Arab had lost an individuality. For as much as 19th century Americans had been fascinated with the Middle East, for all of the sociological studies of the early 20th century that attested to the "model citizenry" of the Syrian immigrant, even with the celebrity factor of a Danny Thomas and his Uncle Tannous, the Arab-American as reality didn't exist for the average American. Shockingly, by the early 1970s, in nearly every major study of immigration currently in print, there was no mention at all of the Arab-American, no inclusion of the great wave from Lebanon/Syria at the turn of the century, nor of the wave that accompanied Al-Nakba, (the Catastrophe) in Palestine in 1948 before and during the creation of the State of Israel, nor of the Muslim wave during and after the Six-Day War in 1967. The Arab as American did not exist.

This, of course, would prove challenging in the decade to come, for the 3rd generation of Ganims born on American soil, the great-grandchildren of Joseph and Naza.

Ronald Ganim was a graduate student at Kent State University during that May of 1970. He had met his wife, Joan, a few years earlier on campus and they had been married in November of 1969. That decade had begun with the birth of the first Ganim great-grandchild, Robert "Hap" Zarzour on the 14th of August, 1960. By the time of Ron and Joan's wedding, there were 18 great-grandchildren in the Ganim Family. (Sadly, the second, Jennifer Mitchell, born to Louis and Tillie's daughter Judith, had died in a car accident at the age of three. In a family as large as this one, birthdays are bound to repeat and Jennifer shared her birthday, July 19th, with first grandson Bobby Zarzour as well as with her cousin, great-grandchild Peter Ganim, born to Gary and Marla in 1967.) By the end of the 1970s, there would be 12 more weddings, 25 great-grandchildren born into the family and 3 more adopted into the family. There was no doubt that the Ganims were growing...but the foundation was shifting and change was afoot.

1960 - OPEC, The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is founded in Baghdad, Iraq. In that same year, in America, of the 85,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Yemenis living in Detroit, over 15,000 of them work in the auto industry. 1963 - Touch Tone telephones hit the market. 1964 - The Beatles hit the United States. This decade sees the impact of the post-war "Baby Boom" as there are now over 70 million teenagers in the country. Cultural icons "Barbie" and "G.I. Joe" soar in popularity as the Sexual Revolution gains momentum and unisex dressing becomes a trend. A "counterculture" of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll; peace, love and understanding, is rapidly rising against the "establishment". 1965 - Dr. Michael DeBakey, the son of Lebanese immigrants (family name Dabaghi) is featured on the cover of Time Magazine for his pioneering work in the field of cardiovascular surgery. The same year, 31-year old Ralph Nader, son of Lebanese immigrants and a consumer safety advocate, publishes "Unsafe at Any Speed", an indictment of the automobile industry which leads to the passage, in 1966, of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. 1967- Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian forces begin to amass near Israel's borders. On June 5, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike, instigating the "Six-Day War" in which Israel expands her territorial conquest in the region, framing the argument and the violence for the next 40 years. 1969 - the first humans, the crew of Apollo 11, land on the moon. When the astronauts relay a message to the "King" - they are referring to Arab-American geologist Dr. Farouk El-Baz.

Pop Culture continues to stereotype and marginalize the Arab: as barbaric and helpless without the enlightened aid of the West in "Lawrence of Arabia", or as lusty, lewd, subservient and silly on television's "I Dream of Jeannie".

Though great strides had been made in the fight for Civil Rights in the United States, including the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the decade was incessantly marred by violence. African-American leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated, in 1965 and 1968, respectively. Two brothers, a President and a Senator, had been assassinated, JFK in 1963 and RFK in 1968. American troops had been in Vietnam since 1959 and military activity had been elevated in 1963. Anti-war protests on college campuses had become increasingly frequent and the simmering tensions in America's fragile psyche, the very character of the past decade, were nowhere in greater evidence than at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. National Guard troops, fearing a protest against Nixon's "incursion" into Cambodia may escalate into violence, open fire into a group of students. John Filo's photograph of a young woman screaming over the body of a slain student is seared into the national consciousness and wins a Pulitzer Prize. America had killed its most promising leaders and now its own children. Everything was different.

1972- The Nixon Administration institutes "Operation Boulder", designed to combat terrorism in the United States. The targets of the operation are "ethnic Arabs" defined on the basis of a person's parentage. The Arab-American community launches a legal campaign of resistance to the policy. American crime rates and inner-city poverty levels continue to rise. Divorce laws in the United States are eased, leading to new family structures and the "nuclear family" begins to lose prominence in the culture.Collaterally,the role of women undergoes a shift. The National Organization of Women, NOW, organized in 1966, begins to broaden the perspectives of American women, encouraging them to get out of the home and into the workplace, promoting the "career woman". The "second-wave" of feminism, or Women's Liberation, is well under way. In 1973, the Supreme Court decides the case of "Roe vs. Wade" which legalizes abortion.

Every one of the "Original 12" stayed married to his or her spouse until death did them part (save Lila, who never married.) Now, however, concurrent with the trend in the country, divorce enters the story of the Ganims. Of the 20 first marriages amongst the grandchildren, 25% of them end in divorce before 1980. The anti-traditional dynamic worked otherwise as well. Father Lee left the priesthood to marry his love Roseann McGrath in 1974 and Carole had left the convent to pursue her doctoral studies. She married Jerald Nelson in 1976.

A decade earlier, the family lost Joseph and Naza...now, they began to lose their children. In 1974, within the span of six months, the Ganim siblings lost their oldest and youngest sisters. In January, Nora Ganim Zarzour (whose husband Happy had died of a heart attack in 1968) passed away at the age of 67. In July, after many years of health problems, Lila Joy Ganim died of kidney failure. At her wake, the Italian man whom she had known so many years before came to pay his final respects. Lila's brothers refused to let him see her and chased him away from the funeral home.

1973 - Peter Maron Ganim on his 6th birthday as his brother, Jason Paul (born 1970), looks on adoringly.

1973 - A delegation of the National Association of Arab-Americans (including Minor George of Cleveland) meets in Washington with Secretary of State William P. Rogers to inquire when the US will draw the line against further Israeli incursions into the Arab World. The US does nothing. Later that year, in the "Yom Kippur" war, the Arabs make great gains and, in concert with OPEC, exact penance on countries who supported Israel, including the US, by halting export of oil. The Arab Oil Embargo drives gas prices skyward and gas rationing is ultimately implemented in the US, in a decade distinguished as the worst, economically, since the Great Depression. The years of mood rings, lava lamps, and disco also see the most serious rate of inflation the US has ever known. 1975 - the United Nations declares the "International Year of the Woman", while in Lebanon, tensions between Muslim and Christian factions explode into a Civil War that will last the next twenty years.

The family began to branch out even more in the worlds of business. There were now Ganims working in the fields of insurance and finance. Dennis Ganim and Robert Ganim, as well as Barbara's husband Joe Simone and Sharon's husband Eli Bird, were in the record business. Gary started in radio sales, moved into incentive motivation and by the early eighties had finessed those skills into a career in the travel industry. Paul was the National President of the Catholic Youth Organization. Carole had completed her PhD. Ron and Joan, (who had been a champion gymnast at Kent State), put a twist on the community-based service-oriented businesses in which the Ganims had excelled and in 1975 opened Gymnastics World...just in time to capitalize on the wild success of Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Olympics. This generation, education intact and degrees in hand, followed the opportunities laid out before them, opportunities Joseph and Naza could not have imagined. These opportunities of course, professional and personal, were not always in Cleveland...and the family began to branch out geographically even more than they already had.

The Birds and the Simones had been in California (the record business, remember?) for a while. Art and Hazel had moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan for a few years to follow an economic opportunity, although they were back in Ohio by 1977, returning just south of Cleveland to the town of Medina. Dennis was living in New York City, conducting his record industry affairs from Manhattan. On Christmas Day, 1975, Alan Ganim drove his brother Paul to the airport. Paul was moving to San Francisco, to begin a life in the Castro neighborhood, a mecca for gay men. In 1977, Gary and Marla, following economic lures, moved their family of three boys to Chicago, Illinois. Many of these "offshoots" continued to come home for Christmas, summer school breaks, and other events, but with decreasing frequency over the years. The difficult economy was a factor, of course, but these branches of the Ganim tree were also building new lives within the communities they inhabited, just as their parents had. Even in Cleveland, the family was no longer situated mere blocks from one another, but were scattered throughout the city, East Side, West Side and increasingly, the more rural communities outlying Cleveland proper where a better life could be built for less. The commute to "come home", even for the locals, could stretch from 30 minutes to 2 hours...and visits grew ever more infrequent. The proximities of the family having shifted, it was becoming harder to "stay together".

Where their parents had suffered discrimination in the 1960s, victims of a harsh racial ignorance, the great-grandchildren were now being exposed to a newer form of intolerance. Xenophobic in nature, it was fueled by the cultural portrayal of Arabs as shifty, lascivious and untrustworthy. The "oil sheiks" of OPEC had been lampooned and characterized throughout the decade as dangerous, oversexed, undeserving of their wealth, and usually portrayed as hook-nosed, unkempt and dirty. In 1980, FBI agents, looking to entrap corrupt government officials, dressed as Arab sheiks and tried to bribe them, in the ABSCAM scandal. Former US Senator James Abourezk stated, "The fact that the FBI chose 'Arabs' rather than another ethnic group, such as Jews or Italians or Irish, or others, is simply because Arab-Americans are the last ethnic group in America who can be demeaned and stereotyped without a public outcry." Throughout this decade and later, the great-grandchildren with darker complexions, or even those who were simply forthright and outspoken about their ethnicity, endured some form of intolerance and aggression. During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, Peter Ganim remembers being harassed and bullied in the schoolyard, taunted as an "Iranian" and a traitor. He says "I would yell at them, often through tears, 'I'm Lebanese! I'm not Iranian!'...but, of course, they had no idea there was any difference and neither did many of their parents." As alarming as this ignorance is, it persists in many forms to this day, aggravating the apathy towards the region and tacitly promoting the violence there and at home in America. As for the Ganims, particularly as the branches of the tree continued to splinter and the family were living further away from one another, in many instances the Ganim great-grandchildren may have been the only Lebanese children in their school or neighborhood. Not only would this have accentuated their "otherness", it also leaves them little opportunity for solidarity or refuge, save for with one's own siblings. The old Lebanese adage reoccurs, "I against my brothers, my brothers and I against my cousins, my cousins and I against the world." At this point in time, for many of the Ganims, only two-thirds of the equation applied.

The energy crises of the 1970s bring into sharp focus the limits of technological development and concurrently give rise to the ecological awareness movement. 1976 - the current edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary contains the following synonyms, among others, for the word "Arab" : vagrant, hobo, tramp, drifter, huckster, higgler and vagabond. The Arab-American community strongly protests to the publisher. 1978 - Israel invades Lebanon to push PLO forces north of the Litani River. 1979 -Saddam Hussein assumes the Presidency of Iraq, capping a campaign to "modernize" the country. In Iran, the pro-Western monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is overthrown in favor of an Islamic theocracy led by cleric Ayatollah Khomeini. In November, Iranian militant students seize the US embassy in Tehran along with 66 hostages. The tense standoff will go on for 444 days.

January 30, 1982, St. Petersburg, Florida - The last photo of Art and Hazel Ganim with their sons.

(L to R) Ronald, Kenneth, Art, Hazel, and Gary. Two days later, Art died of complications from myelofibrosis at the age of 60.

As the decade rolled over for the eighth time in the century, the Ganim Family held a summertime reunion at a park in Lyndhurst, Ohio. After so many years of "just being there", it was startling and odd that the family had to organize to see one another for just one day, but so many branches had moved away and the exigencies of modern life had left so little time for "togetherness". It would be the last time all of the brothers would be together. It would also be the last reunion for twenty years.

In January of 1981, the first son, Al, died at the age of 76, from heart failure. (His wife, Anne, had passed away in 1976.) The following year, brother Art, aged 60 years, died in St. Petersburg, Florida. His immune system, weakened by years of blood transfusions to combat his myelofibrosis, forced him to spend the winters in a warmer clime. Many of his siblings had made the long trek south to be with him in his final days. In 1984, within the span of two months, the family lost two more beloved members. Brother George, 72 years old, died of complications from diabetes in May and then in June, Naza's sister, Ardell Quinn, "Aunt Sugar-Doo", "Old Auntie Ardell", who had become the de facto matriarch of the family, died at the age of 85. Time was progressing, Nature was following her chaotic and organic course, these changes were inevitable. The progenitors of the family were gone and now, the "Original Twelve" had been reduced by almost half. Though there would be 7 weddings in the 1980s and 13 more great-grandchildren would be born, the family were ever more scattered and out of touch.

The migrations had continued. The Ganim Family now had a long-term presence in more states of the Union, including Georgia, Kentucky, and Florida. Ken Ganim, with his new wife Shirley, moved to Florida permanently after the death of his father, Art. Don and Maryann Ganim had moved to Florida with their three girls in tow, joining Don's brother Lee, his wife Roseann and their 4 boys. Gary and Marla had been living in Atlanta, Georgia since 1980, having relocated from Chicago, Illinois.

There would be occasions to be together, of course. Ron and Joan visited Florida every summer with their three children and there would be the layover in Atlanta to visit with Gary and Marla, as there would be for many others passing through. And, many of the "out-of-towners" would come back to Cleveland intermittently and individually for various family occasions, weddings, anniversaries, graduations.

Nevertheless, by 1985, the Ganim Family (as Joseph and Naza had built it), was splintered and broken.

It is here that the saga of the Ganim Family ceases to be the story of one group and becomes, instead, concurrent strands of narrative about separate "tribes". The Ganims had, in many ways, become very much like Lebanon itself, united here and divided there, split along lines of tension as well as solidarity and affection. Within the "tribes", the great Lebanese spirit of love and honor and pride in family continued unabated...but the family was losing its larger identity - "I against my brothers, my brothers and I against my cousins, my cousins and I against the world." Many people have misinterpreted this adage as being contentious and combative as it hinges on the word "against". It is, rather, if read inversely, about strength and solidarity, about belonging. The ills and the woes and the challenges of the "world" will inevitably come, as will the joys and the successes and the celebrations. The Lebanese ideal is one in which all of those events, tragic and triumphant, are met within the strength of an identity larger than oneself, even as individuality is encouraged.

"Always respect and protect your name. It is the most important thing I have given you."

"Stay together"

"The part of me that will live on is my name..."

The Ganim Family had lost its compass. This is not to say, however, that they had lost their individual strength, potential nor power. Individually, the tribes grew in startling and amazing manifestations. The family could now count members studying or practicing in the fields of medicine, law, higher education, politics, sports and entertainment. Dreams were being realized and the Ganim name was being carried into American arenas that Joseph and Naza could never have imagined. Ganims were traveling the globe, claiming international sporting championships, working within the competitive entertainment industry (in Los Angeles, New York, and Paris), dominating the academic landscape and conquering the business world and even, in one instance, meeting a former President. The dream of America, for which Joseph and Naza had fought so hard and for which they had sacrificed much, was manifest in the lives of many of their descendants and still within the grasp of many of the others. The seeming prosperity of the 1980s and 1990s had yet to turn and much of the family was riding high.

In Cleveland, for the more disparate tribes of the family, the Christmas party (which had been scheduled intermittently throughout the 1980s) had ceased completely by 1993. By this time, the family had lost another 3 brothers as well as two irreplaceable and beloved aunts. Brother George's wife Emily had passed away in 1988. In 1990, again in the space of two months, brothers Joseph, Jr. and Emil died; Joe in January, Emil in February. The following year, in September, brother Johnny died. Then in July of 1992, Mathilda Kassouf Ganim, "Aunt Tillie", died. Even as time marched on and the family lost their beloved, the hope of the future continued as the very first great-great-grandchild was born into the family. In 1991, "Hap" Zarzour, (the first great-grandchild, son of Bobby Zarzour, the first grandchild) and his wife Kathryn, welcomed son William. There would be 21 more great-great grandchildren to follow in the 1990s alone, as well as 7 more great-grandchildren, as the generations of this legendary family continued to overlap.

Even as the organic wheel of time churned away, there would be shocking losses as well. In 1994, Paul Ganim, who had moved to San Francisco nearly twenty years earlier, passed away in Florida of pneumonia, brought on by complications from AIDS. It began to appear that there was not one strand of experience, not one dynamic of the 20th century that would not resonate somehow within this family of Arab-Americans.Yet, there was even more to come, tragic as well as triumphant. Paul Ganim, second son of Al and Ann, was the first of the closely-knit group of 29 grandhildren to die. In 1998, the very first of that generation, Bobby Zarzour, would succumb to complications of diabetes and pass away just 9 days before Christmas. There were, at this point, members of Paul and Bobby's family who could not conjure their faces, nor remember their voices, nor tell you anything about either of them. In the springtime of 1999, for all of their tribal solidarities, the Ganim Family could not have been further apart.

THE TRAGEDY AND THE TRIUMPH

1999 - 2008

"I remember Greg Ganim coming up to me and saying 'Aunt Rachel, I want to help, but...I don't know what Brian looks like.' After I had a moment in which I felt so ashamed and guilty that I had moved away to Columbus and that my sons had not grown up with their cousins, it dawned on me... and I said, 'Greg, honey...he's a Ganim. He looks just like you.' "

Rachel Ganim Muha, (born 1953)

On the morning of May 31, 1999, Rachel Ganim Muha, daughter of Dick and Betty, walked into the kitchen of her home in Columbus, Ohio. There, on the counter, was a bouquet of white roses from her youngest son, Brian, a student at Franciscan University in Steubenville. Brian had returned to college just the day before to begin a summer semester of study and the note that accompanied the roses read, "Just wanted to say hi, eventhough I'm away. Love, Brian". Not 10 hours later, Rachel received a phone call from a detective with the Steubenville police department, "Mrs. Muha, your son Brian is missing."

After learning that there was blood in the house that Brian shared with a roommate, Aaron Land, Rachel and her eldest son Chris, Brian's brother, raced to Steubenville to search for Brian and Aaron. The call went out to the Ganim Family in Cleveland (as well as some Ganims that had also relocated to the economically booming city of Columbus). The call went out that one of their own was missing and within a day over 35 members of the family were amassed in Steubenville, Ohio to search for Brian Muha, a cousin, a nephew that many of them had never even met. With one jolt, the Ganim Family had been woken from its splintered slumber, called to action, and resurrected in its purpose and power. Michael Ganim, in an interview conducted in 2007, recalled, "...I was in a search party with my brother, Matt, and a few other cousins. It was horribly hot, we were all exhausted and sweating, walking down alleyways, searching abandoned warehouses...and, I hate to say this, but I just had a feeling, 'We're not gonna find him...not alive'...but, I didn't dare complain. My father had already warned me, 'You're gonna do whatever the hell your Aunt Rachel asks you to do and for as long as she asks you to do it'...we just all knew that if it had been us, we would have wanted that whole damn family out looking for us, too."

Not a day after the abductions, two suspects were arrested, two African-American youths, after they were spotted driving Brian's missing automobile. It would be yet another 3 days before the bodies of Brian and Aaron would be found, on a hill in a remote area off U.S. Route 22 in Pennsylvania. They had been badly beaten, abused, and finally, shot to death. At the time, the possible motives for the abduction and killing ranged from simply the acquisition of Brian's automobile,(a Chevy Blazer), to a possible gang-related incident. In the end, it was revealed to have been an entirely random event. The tragedy of Brian's death is horrific in so many ways; he was a bright, kind, and loving young man studying to become a doctor so that he might help others. He had been raised in a family of great faith, a family which had known its own share of struggle and had weathered its own encounters with prejudice. If Brian's abductors had only known that he was more like them than he was different, that his heart held the capacity of empathy and great love, his destiny as well as their own may have taken a different course.

As it stands, it was left to Brian's family - his mother, Rachel and his brother Chris, as well as his aunts, uncles, and cousins to find a way to turn this tragedy into action and healing. Rachel had led the way. Mere hours after their arrest, Rachel, drawing on her immense reserve of faith, forgave Brian's abductors. She recognized that it was their own great pain that had led them to such drastic, random actions. Brian's abductors had not been raised with the benefit of love, of family, of responsibility and accountability. She forgave them and asked them to turn to God.

Rachel went even further. She took out a second mortgage on her own home so that she might purchase the house from which Brian and Aaron had been abducted and "rescue" it from the evil that had been committed there. She cleaned and painted it and has offered the first floor apartment as housing for low-income priests studying at Franciscan University, so that the house will be a haven of prayer and a beacon of hope in the depressed and socially-challenged neighborhoods of Steubenville.

Brian Muha, great-grandson of Joseph and Naza Ganim.

In the autumn of 1999, the year that she lost her son, Rachel Ganim Muha created the Brian Muha Memorial Foundation, dedicated to helping underprivileged students in the cities of Columbus, Steubenville, as well as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (the hometown of one of Brian's abductors). The following year, in the summer of 2000, the Foundation organized the first of what would become its annual fundraiser, the Brian Muha Memorial Foundation Golf Outing. The Organizing Committee for this eminently successful venture is chaired by Brian's cousin Doug Ganim, Jr. and includes Richard Ganim, Sr., Doug Ganim, Sr., David Ganim, Richard Ganim, Jr., Ron Ganim and Brian's brother, Chris Muha. As Rachel had taken her grief and loss and transformed it into forgiveness, into action, and into healing...somehow the Ganim Family as a whole began to heal as well. In that summer of 2000, concurrently with that first golf weekend for the Foundation, the Ganim Family held their first Reunion in over twenty years.

Peter Ganim, David Ganim and "Uncle Labbie" George, with his derbecki,

The Ganim Family Reunion, 2000

For one entire weekend, the Ganim Family was together again...though not in its entirety. There were, however, members present from every branch of the "Original Twelve" and it was an emboldening experience for the generations who could remember the Christmas parties and the family events and the awesome power that togetherness brings. For the younger generations, it was an eye-opening experience. Many of them had no idea they had so many aunts and uncles and cousins and people who wanted to kiss them and hug them and tease them and feed them. Everyone wore name tags delineating to which branch they belonged and the genealogical order, for there were so many Ganims who had never even met one another. There were trays and trays of Lebanese food, much laughter and singing, some surprising, humbling tears and, of course, the dabke. Uncle Labbie had brought his derbecki and on the lawn of David Ganim's home, near the tents that had been erected for the weekend's festivities, the Ganims danced together once more. The tragic loss of one of their own, one whom many of them had never even known, had brought this family slowly, hesitantly back towards one another and on a weekend in July 2000, the Ganims held a hafli and began to rediscover themselves in the present tense.

Technology had altered everything about Americans' lives. For years, the "tribes" in the family who lived apart could communicate by long-distance telephone. The rates, however, could get out of hand, so many of the family had a system, as had many Americans: a 10-minute "check-in" on Sunday mornings. 10 minutes and no more, for the rate increased after that. By 2000, however, many people had cellphones with unlimited minutes and they could speak ever more frequently with one another and without incurring astronomical rates.

Additionally, much of the family now had computer access and Rachel began a "Ganim Family Webpage" through which the family could "virtually" stay together. Family updates, notes, pictures all were posted to the webpage. Technology was allowing the Ganims to rediscover one another, keep in touch, and build a future for the children of the family no matter where they lived. It may not have been ideal, nor the dynamic Joseph and Naza had envisioned, but it was working, the family were growing closer once more.

There were, of course, continuing losses to endure. In May of 1998, "Aunt Libby", Elizabeth Jacob Ganim, died of heart failure. Thelma Assad Ganim, Emil's wife, had passed away from complications following a stroke at the age of 83 in November of 1999, just eight months before the Reunion. Hazel Aboid Ganim had known Thelma Assad since they were girls, before either of them had known they would marry brothers. In December of 2001, a month shy of her 82nd birthday, Hazel succumbed to heart failure, having lived the last 14 years of her life debilitated by a stroke, her body broken, her spirit strong. In October 2002, "Uncle Labbie" George passed away at the age of 88 due to heart failure and 5 months later Lillian Louis, Lorry's wife, "Aunt Lil" passed away at the age of 76. That summer, in 2003, the Ganims held another Reunion.

The members of what the Ganims would consider "immediate family"

...and this isn't all of them! - Reunion, 2003

In the midst of all of this renewed family activity and awareness, of course, are the events of September 11, 2001. The Ganims had been in America for nearly a century by that time and the family reflected the diversity of American life - politically, financially, socially. There are Ganims of many and varying income levels, there are staunch Republicans and very liberal Democrats, there are serious conservatives and laidback bohemians. The Ganim Family, though Lebanese in heritage, looks very much like America does in the 21st century and their responses to 9/11 and the heightened awareness of the Arab-American experience vary greatly. There are those who identify less as "Arab" and more as Lebanese, or even, Syrian. There are those whose "Arab"-ness isn't manifested in their contemporary identity very much at all. Then, there are those, many of them the great-grandchildren, who identify wholly as Americans and are rabidly curious about their Arab heritage, who are anxious to learn Arabic, who have even pursued study in Lebanon as a result of this curious pride they feel in being Arab-Americans. If there is one prevailing or unifying characteristic among Ganims at this point, however, it is one of acceptance, joy, respect and great love. They are, even amongst their glorious differences, continuing to redefine this family for the century to come.

Alan, Doug, Gary, Ken, and Ron Ganim on Gary's last golf trip, May 2006

In the summer of 2004, the Ganims celebrated a milestone with the occasion of Louis Ganim's 90th birthday. No Ganim had ever lived as long as "Uncle Louie" and he continues to hold the record, as he will turn 94 in 2008, the year in which his sister Ardelle turns 90. Lorry Ganim will be 85 and youngest brother Dick will be 82.

Though the four remaining "originals" are setting records for longevity, in a family this large there are inevitably those who leave earlier than anyone would wish. Such is the case with Gary. His cousins Paul and Bobby had been the first two of the second generation of Ganims to pass away. In April 2006, Gary was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. By September of that year, he was gone. What transpired in those 5 months was a marvel of the love and renewed sense of spirit in the Ganim Family. Gary, though the odds were stacked against him, had chosen a protocol of treatment in Atlanta to extend his potential survival. He began documenting his chemotherapy sessions in essays and emails and sharing them with the family through the webpage. Different members of the family had amassed holy relics and talismans, tokens dear to the family, and Gary had them all in what he termed his "Miracle Bag", which he constantly wore around his neck. One of the items was a small bag of dirt from the site of Brian Muha's murder, a balm that had already worked a minor miracle in dissolving a tumor in the neck of Mary Beth Ganim, Doug Ganim Jr.'s wife. "Aunt Betty" Ganim, through email, organized a nightly prayer ritual for Gary, every evening at 7pm. Gary remarked that he could literally "feel" the prayers. The family was rallying around Gary in every way they could muster long-distance. Even miles apart, they were "together", if only every night at 7pm. Some of the cousins did spend time together and with Gary in those last months. There was a visit in Cleveland, a golf trip in May, a cousins' trip to Las Vegas in July and more visits in August when Gary had become physically debilitated.

No matter the prayers, no matter the talismans in the "Miracle Bag", Gary Ganim died on September 17th, 2006. There were services in Atlanta for friends and professional acquaintances and then Gary came home to Cleveland. His funeral was held at St. Maron's, where he and Marla had been married 40 years before. As Marla stated, "St. Maron's is where we began and St. Maron's would be where we would end."

For all the sadness at the loss, there was a sense that the family had grown closer through Gary's illness. Rachel Muha remarked that during Gary's funeral she felt as though all of the Ganims, those living and those in spirit, were together again, for the first time in a long time. Peter Ganim, Gary's son, has remarked, "To me, the greatest thing about being a part of the Ganim Family is that eventhough I lost my Dad...I feel as though I have many others. Of course, no one can replace my father, in all his singular glory! But, my Dad's brothers and cousins, the men I remember growing up with: Ron, Ken, Alan, Doug, Lee, Don and Dennis...they have each, in their own way, let me know that they are there for my brothers and me, for anything we might need. I miss my father enormously...but, I know I am not alone and if I have ever wanted to feel just a little bit closer to him than I already do, I have picked up the phone and called any of those men. This family is a great gift and I hope to pass along that sense of love, of security and stability, of constancy and belonging, I hope to pass that along to my nephews' generation."

Ardelle Ganim George (born 1918) with her great-nephew Adam Louis Ganim (born 1972) - 2007

As the Ganims plan to celebrate their fourth summer reunion in 2008, they continue to carve a uniquely Arab-American profile as a family. As each "tribe" builds a future, all across the country, they are now more committed than ever to "coming home". As the younger generations become better acquainted with one another, they are exploiting the technology of the day, (cellphones, email, texting) to strengthen their bonds of family. There is now even a nascent "Facebook" page dedicated to "the Ganim cousins". Industrious in their private lives, the Ganims continue to be a charitable group and sincerely dedicated to community. The Brian Muha Memorial Foundation is nearing a decade's worth of service to students and underprivileged urban youth and the Foundation is merely the highest profile venture of the Ganims. All across America, the family are giving back to the community, in time and experience as well as in financial contribution. In this time of military conflict, there are no less than three members of the family on active duty in the armed forces, having served tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

At a moment in the American national consciousness in which the simple truth is often difficult to discern, in which violence erupting amongst our troubled youth seems to be ever more random and frequent, in which fundamental American values of community have been tossed aside in favor of individual pursuit and immediate gain, at a time in which we seem to be more divided as Americans than we are united and in which we hunger for solidarity and a solid footing as a people...a story such as the Ganims' story comes along at just the right time. It is a story told in its complete complexity. It is not hagiography nor hero worship. It is a clear-eyed rendering of a century's worth of struggle and sacrifice, of aspiration and achievement. It is a story of hard work and honor, of responsibility and respect, of a legacy left to all who are yet to come. In the story of the Ganims, in their immigration, their assimilation, their roaring success and bitter defeat, in their fractured years of loss and their ultimate redemption and homecoming, we find the very story of America itself. A story America didn't know she had: a story told with an Arabic-speaking tongue, a shrewd Syrian eye, and a Lebanese heart that is boundless in its capacity for laughter and love.