Generations

Samuel MacNair was born in County Donegal, Ireland, in 1699. His father, James MacNair, was driven from Scotland into Ireland during the persecution, in the reign of Charles II of England. Samuel MacNair married Anna Murdock, and with his family and father-in-law, then 80 years of age, came to America in 1732 and landed at Bristol, Pennsylvania. They passed the first winter in an old schoolhouse around which the wolves howled at night.

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Yesterday morning I spent a good chunk of time working on a puzzle magazine, Math Puzzles and Logic Problems. Dell puzzle magazines have been a part of my consciousness as long as I've been out of the womb. My father always had one in hand. I've never been into crossword puzzles that much; that's my dad's gig. But Cross Sums and Logic Problems have been stretching my mind and teaching me to think since I was at least 9 years old. I never had any kind of math anxiety when I was in school. Story problems? I've already done them.

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One of the sons of Samuel MacNair, also named Samuel MacNair, was born September 25, 1739. He married Mary Mann. He died April 20, 1816 and was buried at Abington Cemetery, near Philadelphia. He was survived by six of eight children born to the couple.

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I'm a reader. When I sit down to the dinner table I'm reading; when I have to wait in a doctor's office I bring my own reading material; when I sit on the can... well, you get the idea. I started reading when I was four years old. By second grade I had a sixth grade reading level; by sixth grade I was reading at a college level. I amazed my family when I read Alex Haley's book Roots from front to back in fifth grade. I amazed my friends when I read The World According to Garp five times in my senior year of high school. My shelves are stacked high with books, I have boxes of books in my attic, and I like nothing more than to haunt used bookstores looking for good deals.

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The grandson of Samuel MacNair, Samuel MacNair III, was born October 10, 1772. He married Cornelia Van Artsdalen. He died March 3, 1848, and was buried near Hartsville, Pennsylvania. he and Cornelia had seven children- four boys and three girls.

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I love baseball. Man, do I love baseball. There was a time that I could name every World Series winner back to the first one in 1903. Who is the best player of all time? There's no question- Tyrus Raymond Cobb, the Georgia Peach. A team of .400 hitters will beat a team of 40 home run hitters every time. But I digress. One of the applications for my math ability has been the statistics produced by my baseball simulation leagues. I play Strat-O-Matic, Replay, APBA, and several others, producing schedules, playing games, and compiling the statistics. Back in the days before Truman promised a PC in every home and a chicken in every pot I kept the stats by hand and did the averages on paper. To this day I can add and multiply numbers in my head faster than others can do it on a calculator.

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Samuel MacNair's great-grandson John MacNair was born in 1804. He married Rachel Service. He died in 1893, and is buried at Neshamany Church, Hartsville, Pennsylvania.The couple had eight children.

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Scrabble. Just the mention of the word causes my father's eyes to light up and then dim in disappointment. He is an excellent Scrabble player; so good, in fact, that no one in the family will play a game with him. Are we afraid of losing? I'm sure that's part of it. But Scrabble was never an interest of mine.

In 1993 my father and I road a Greyhound bus from Ohio to California to visit my grandparents and aunts. One of the numerous surprises my grandmother planned was having my Aunt Helen, Grandpa Mac's sister, come up from Los Angeles for a few days. One bright morning, with the sun shining, almond trees blossoming and the birds a'chirping, 73 Preda Street was the gathering place for three generals of the Scrabble wars. My father, grandfather and Aunt Helen played Scrabble for hours. I believe my father won one game and Aunt Helen the other. My grandfather, a preacher with a doctorate and a good command of the English language, didn't win and likely didn't care. He loved his son and his sister. That he did care about.

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Howell MacNair, the great-great-grandson of Samuel MacNair, was born in 1848. At one time he was a tax collector and justice of the peace in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He married Hannah M. Hoover, a distant relation of President Herbert Hoover. Howell and Hannah MacNair had eight children- Marie, Helen, Charles, Arthur Stanley, Adeline, Irvine, and Howell Raymond. Irvine MacNair was a justice of the peace in Bucks County as well, for 63 years. Howell MacNair died in 1912.

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"His real name was Alaistair Roderic Caraigellachie Dalhousie Gowan Donnybristle MacMac, but that took too long to say, so everybody just called him Wee Gillis." Thus began one of my childhood's most beloved experiences- the reading of Wee Gillis to me and my siblings by Dr. Arthur Stanley MacNair, otherwise known as Stan, but known to us kids as Grandpa Mac. Grandpa Mac was a great storyteller- he read slowly and clearly, he used the proper vocal inflection for different characters- but that wasn't the point. I listened attentively to stories by Grandpa Mac because he was Grandpa Mac. He had a book published, people spoke of him with respect, and he gave me dimes for playing the bongos.

Grandpa Mac was a stamp collector. He had bookshelves full of stamp albums that he had collected over the years, and if any of his children or grandchildren had picked up the hobby they would have likely inherited the whole lot. Alas, 'twas not to be. Although I collected stamps for a short time when I was young, it never captured my fancy like it did with Grandpa Mac.

There is a picture floating around the family of my brother and myself, probably five or six years old, wearing Oakland A's jerseys and helmets. The Oakland A's of the early 70's were a colorful bunch, both literally and figuratively. They won three World Series in a row with characters such as Vida Blue, Dick Green and Blue Moon Odom. One of my earliest memories, which I have talked about in past entries, is sitting in cavernous Oakland Coliseum with my brother, father and grandfather, watching the game and shelling peanuts. My grandfather was an Oakland A's fan, and he may have been a Philadelphia Athletics fan as well.

The last time I saw him alive was in the aforementioned Greyhound trip of 1993. An enduring memory of that trip involved my grandfather sitting in his chair, me sitting in a chair opposite him, everyone else in bed, and us talking. We talked theology, church history, you name it; and at no time did he speak above me, as a man of letters. Neither did he dumb it down, as if I couldn't keep pace. Rather, we just conversed. He respected my opinions, and he respected me. And I have always loved and respected him.

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Arthur Stanley MacNair was the great-great-great-grandson of Samuel MacNair, born September 28, 1881. He married Sue Green on November 3, 1911 and had two children- Arthur Stanley MacNair, Jr., and Helen Elizabeth MacNair.

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"Four generations of the MacNair family gathered in San Leandro (in September of 1971) to hold a double celebration. Honor guests were five year old Sean MacNair and his great-grandfather, Arthur S. MacNair. The A. Stanley MacNair home of Preda Street was the scene of the family party. Dr. MacNair's father, Arthur S. MacNair of Los Angeles, celebrated his 90th birthday.

"Arthur MacNair visits his son and daughter-in-law twice a year for a week's time. He is well known in the neighborhood as he whistles gaily while taking his regular 20 block walk each day. Grandfather MacNair passes out his favorite wrapped candy to any child that smiles at him."

My father became a great-grandfather last year. Not many people get to meet their great-grandparents- they are usually long since gone from the scene by the time people realize they have great-grandparents. Although my memories are dim, I did get to meet my great-grandfather. That was extremely cool to my young mind. I got plenty of his favorite wrapped candy. As he got older he suffered from senile dementia, now known as Alzheimers. I was hoping he would make it to 100, but he didn't; he died at the age of 98.

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Arthur Stanley MacNair, Jr., the great-great-great-great-grandson of Samuel MacNair, was born on August 7th, 1913. He married Marjorie Dawn Morgan on February 24, 1939. The MacNairs had three children, Richard Stanley, Barbra Eleanor and Evelyn Jean. He died on March 13, 1996.

Richard Stanley MacNair, the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Samuel MacNair, was born on February 7, 1943. He married Mary Louise Finch on July 24, 1965 in Mancelona, Michigan. They had four children. They currently reside in Mancelona, Michigan.

Sean Lawrence MacNair is the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Samuel MacNair. He married Laura Louise Hall Rose on August 8, 1998.

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And the ninth generation removed from Samuel MacNair, Samuel's great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson, made his appearance on February 2nd, 2000. And barring some miracle or major advances in the healing of autism, Matthew Stanley MacNair may be the end of the line.

I'm a father, just as Richard is my father and A. Stanley was his and Arthur was his and Howell was his, all the way back to the first generation to come to America, Samuel. Samuel had a father, and it goes all the way back to the beginning, to the day when God created Scrapple and shoo fly pie and saw that they were good. And regardless of popular opinion, fathers are important. I might not have an ability with math if my father hadn't encouraged his kids to do the puzzle magazines. He might not have a good grasp of words if his father hadn't have been a learned man. A. Stanley was a minister, Arthur was a salesman; Howell was a justice of the peace, Irvine was too. Things get passed on between father and son that have an effect on the next generation.

The struggle for that next generation becomes finding their place while respecting what has gone on before. Scrabble isn't my thing. My father the career military man begot a son who has no desire for the military. My grandfather the Baptist begot my father the eventual Catholic. And so on and so on.

Matthew Stanley MacNair is my son, and Rebecca Evelyn MacNair is my daughter. With both of them having autism spectrum disorder, I wonder sometimes how they will grow up. Will they get married? Will they have children of their own? Will either of them like double anchovy pizzas, or will they be a traitor to their genes and like beets and liver? Will they be baseball fans and readers and lovers of good music?

That has yet to be decided. Fatherhood is alternately a responsibility and a crapshoot. You take in all the advice, but ultimately you just roll the dice and hope they land well. I try my best, my father tried his best, and his father before him. It's not as easy as it looks. Fatherhood may be a profanity to some, but it's something I take very seriously.

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In the eight generations that Sean’s ancestors (that’s what he calls us all) have lived in this country he can lay claim to 256 grand-parents. Blood lines and genes of 250 people are a part of his makeup. His features are half MacNair, half Finch, but along what pathway came each of those attributes? Why is he interested in spelling and his brother Marc all wrapped up in dinosaurs? Rhinos I could understand, but why the allosaurus? Something of all that mob of progenitors continues in my grandchildren, and I have no way of knowing who contributed what. But I do know my grandson. He is Sean Lawrence and there is not another like him anywhere. He has, as do you and I, a sense of self as utterly differentiated from any other self.---Arthur Stanley MacNair, Jr., late 70’s