User:Sammy Terrin's kid

Sammy Terrin, "The Fighting Tailor" was my father. As near as we have been able to discover, he was born May 18, 1898 in the Ukraine, in a small town near Kiev. His real (American) name was Samuel Harry Taran. My mother, Diane Lomberg, was born in Chicago on May 25, 1913. My parents were second cousins once removed, as my father's grandmother and my mother's great grandmother were sisters.

By the time he married my mother and started a family he was long past his boxing days. He had become a successful businessman, had learned to fly his own airplane, and the story I heard was that he took my mother from her home in Chicago to meet the family in St. Paul, where he lived. At that time he still needed a pilot, and he instructed the pilot to pretend to do a roll over until my mother agreed to kiss him. They were married soon afterward. That was 1933.

Just over a year after my parents' June 4, 1933 wedding, I was born (Geraldyne Lois Taran, June 26, 1934). We lived at 2131 Juliet Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was followed into the world by my brothers Barry Lee Taran, born December 11, 1936, and died in a plane crash on March 13, 1971 and Robert Sherman Taran, born September 25, 1939, and died of a heart attack on December 11, 1999. In the ensuing years I have driven by that house where we lived once or twice just to look at it and reminisce.