Last week, our oldest granddaughter, Joy, and her husband Joe, had their second baby boy. Meet Rhett Alexander:
What most people probably wouldn’t realize is that Joy’s great great great grandfather could have been about as dark as her husband.
My dad’s father was Alberto Atanasio, or “Grandpa Berto.” He was Italian and Greek. I love it that my maiden name, the Greek name “Atanasio,” comes from a language with its own alphabet.
Ατάνάσιω
All my life, I believed that Atanacio or Atanasio meant “Thomas” but I can’t find that anywhere -- instead, it is a form of “Athanasius” and it means “immortal” or “without death” (thanatos) or “eternal life.”
So maybe it was a given that one day, with a name like that, I would embrace John 3:16:
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” ~John 3:14-16 (New King James)
I did believe in Him, as soon as I found out about this, and He has never failed me.
The other great thing about Atanacio is that it begins with an alpha (Α) and ends with an omega (ω). These are the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet. You may recognize those two Greek capital letters in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus proclaims that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is truly “without death.”
ΑΩ
If I ever met Grandpa Berto, it was very briefly or I was very young. For the most part, I rely on pictures to tell me what he looked like. From the few pictures I’ve seen of him, Grandpa was fair, with snow white, rather curly hair. But my Uncle Sam has relayed some details about his father, so I’ll tell you what I know.
I’ve already told you he was Italian and Greek. His father’s family migrated from Italy to Sicily, and then from there to Puerto Rico, where no doubt his European ancestors mingled with the local natives, but the timing is not clear. Berto’s father was Emilio Atanasio.
His mother, Eudocia Medina, was blonde and blue-eyed. The name “Medina” is found to be Castilian Spanish (or it can also be Muslim or Moorish, but for now, we’ll assume Spanish, since Eudocia was fair-skinned.) And, of course, he grew up speaking the Spanish language in Puerto Rico.
Grandpa Berto was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and raised in the Catholic Church. Here’s a picture of him, but nobody really knows where this picture came from. I’m told that the robe is a liturgical garment called an “alb” and the black rope belt is a “cincture,” used in religious services (the mass) by members of the Catholic Church. He may have been chosen for some type of service in the Church. Or, maybe he was cast as Gabriel in the Christmas play?
Growing up with seven brothers and sisters, Grandpa Berto got a job cutting sugar cane. When the company that owned the machinery sold it to a company in the Philippines, the cane workers had to find other jobs, so they moved to other places where there was similar work to be had, either to Hawaii or to New Jersey.
But Grandpa moved to Brooklyn instead of New Jersey, where farm labor jobs were not plentiful. That’s where he became bi-lingual. He needed a job, and the factories were all owned by Poles, so he learned Polish. You “do what you gotta do.”
Dad’s mother, Eusebia Ruiz (or “Cheva” for short), was from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Her mother, Maria Valentine, was also blond and blue-eyed, and it is supposed that she was English. But her father, Simplicio Ruiz, was one of the indigenous islanders, who were a friendly and beautiful dark-skinned people, the Tainos, a tribe of Arawaks.
The famous explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus, his expeditions, his discoveries, and his shortcomings, have been notable topics for discussion in 2020. His statues and memorials have been pulled down along with those of others, such as Confederate generals and slaveholders, who all seem to have fallen from grace. But there’s actually a massive monument to Christopher Columbus bigger than the Statue of Liberty in Arecibo called “Birth of the New World,” 360 feet tall. I think that one will stay put for a while.
You may have heard stories about the Spaniards who came with Columbus to the New World and what happened to the natives in the Caribbean under their rule. But as I learned about the Arawaks, and particularly the Tainos, I spied this comment from a descendant of this people group -- curiously, on a Black History Month page:
“I have been doing a lot of research, my brothers and sisters, and the term “black” is a brand the Europeans try to put on us just like “Indians” were put on my forefathers who were Taino aboriginals. Yes, you all have many key points. There were high pigment humans in Northwest Amexem and Southwest Amexem (aka “Americas,”) and also in the islands around them. With this being said, we cannot blame the low pigment. We must love them and understand what happened in the past. We must learn and build our communities and not be separated by black, red, yellow, or white. We are all living beings and we must all love each other. THERE IS ONLY ONE RACE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND THAT IS THE HUMAN RACE. I am a Taino, and I love my ancestors, so we must learn and not hate.”
I love the comment and wholeheartedly agree. We cannot blame the low pigment humans! You can read more about “Amexem,” what has been described as "an ancient name for the geographical region," here.
Grandma Cheva had fine, black hair and dark skin, but not as dark as her ancestors. She would be called a Mestizo, a word that means a healthy mix of lighter European and darker native American parents, similar to Rhett. She grew up with four brothers and sisters, some who turned out lighter, and some who turned out darker.
Here’s a picture of my family with her, before we moved to the Philippines. Notice the darker-skinned Taino in her? And if she looks short in the picture, it’s because she really was -- my mother was only five foot two, and I was eight years old. Grandma was “mi abuelita” -- my little grandmother.
Grandma Cheva was also raised in the Catholic Church. Like Grandpa Berto, she also migrated to Brooklyn, where everything is free, of course. It was there they met and married, raising four children, including my dad, who was her number three.
The family didn’t have much, but they got by. The oldest of the four, Aunt Mary, saw the youngest, Israel, being born, and decided against having any children of her own. Israel never married, and Uncle Sam was married later in life with only two children. So most of Berto and Cheva’s descendants are from my dad. In those days, when you believed you had had enough children, the solution was to get two beds.
Sometime after the move to Brooklyn, either before or after they got married, they both moved away from the Catholic Church, and began attending a Spanish Pentecostal church. My uncle says they were converted. In case that is confusing, just think of it this way. In the Catholic Church, thanks to Christopher ("Christ-bearer") Columbus, the people of the island, including my grandparents, were introduced to and taught about Jesus (along with Mary and other saints). But in the Pentecostal church, they went a step further, and learned to know Jesus, and to have a personal relationship with God through the sacrifice of His Son.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” ~Ephesians 2:4-9
And:
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” ~John 1:12-13
Unfortunately, Grandma and Grandpa were legally separated after several years of marriage because they weren’t getting along too well and they didn’t believe in divorce. It’s hard to know how the marriage fell apart for sure. My uncle says the rumors of Grandpa Berto going crazy were not true -- they just had some kind of disagreement -- but we’ll never really know.
In the end, Grandpa Berto was hit by a drunk driver, while riding his bicycle. He died in 1972, after a long hospital stay.
Grandma Cheva passed away when my son David was a baby still -- that would have been in 1996. Uncle Sam really wanted me to come to the funeral, so I brought my nursing baby with me and we met him at the airport. My dad and all his siblings were there.
It didn’t take me long to really regret never having taken Spanish. Indeed, another time, when we had made the trek to New York, my grandmother had asked me, very disappointed indeed, whether Spanish was not taught in my school, and if so, why had I not learned it? It was hard to tell her I had taken French instead. And now, here I was, surrounded by unknown cousins, who had come from various parts of the City, other states, and even from Puerto Rico, some of them with blue eyes and blond hair and some dark-skinned, but all of them speaking Spanish.
It wasn’t till I went back for the funeral that I understood how greatly my grandmother had been loved in her community. In fact, she had to have two funerals because the facility was too small to hold all the people who wanted to be there. I only had to go to one of them, and I tried desperately to understand even a word or two, but because both of the funerals were in Spanish, the tributes and accolades went over my head. I was sad because I wished I knew more.
David made little squeaky baby noises and I tried to keep him quiet, but he would talk. People only looked and smiled, saying he reminded them that even in death, there was Life.
Eternal Life. In Jesus. One song, sung as a solo, made me weep uncontrollably and I didn’t know why because I had no idea what was being sung, but I knew it ministered to my spirit. I found out later it was a hymn I’d never heard before, but was a favorite in the Billy Graham crusades:
Face to face with Christ, my Savior, Face to face what will it be?
When with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ Who died for me?
Chorus:
Face to face I shall behold Him, Far beyond the starry sky
Face to face in all His glory, I shall see Him by and by.
I wish I had been able to communicate with my grandma about the things that mattered. But this song reminded me that she is in the presence of Christ, our Savior, and so I will be too someday. And then … we’ll have a good, long talk!
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