J.E.P.

I wrote the article "WHAT'S IN A NAME" last year and I mentioned a family where all of the siblings--and their father--had the initials JEP; one of my comments was that I bet the mother had a difficult time finding the middle names starting with "E". Today I was soliciting signatures for a petition and one of the people wrote "Jean E."-- and with the last name starting with "P"--the same as that family. I thought, "This is just too much of a coincidence; she looks old enough to be one of them but I don't remember all of the younger ones' names." I asked, "Did you grow up on Lewis Road?" She looked stunned and said that she had and when I asked if she were a member of the family with all the siblings having JEP as their initials, she asked, in astonishment, "How do you know that?" I told her that I'd gone to school with her brother Jon and that Gerald had gone to school with her sister Jane and my brothers had gone to school with Jim, Jerry, Jackie, Jay and Joey. As I rattled off all those names, she said she couldn't believe that I could remember all of them.

I told her several stories about her family members, including about her brother Joey falling out of a truck and when they took him to the hospital, his head was shaved and after that, his nickname was "Baldy" and about her sister Jackie because she was called "Orange Hair" (yes, her hair was orange!).


I learned that Jean is 18 years younger than I and she told me how delighted she was to know things about her older siblings. She said that she was touched that I would remember and write about them and asked me to give her the article.

This is for you, Jean!

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