WEBVTT - This Didn’t Have to Be a Secret 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:10.280 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.640 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.079 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:28.880 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.360 is Dina Gashman, journalist and author of the recent essay 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:38.000 collection So Sorry for Your Loss. Dina's is a story 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:41.360 of the long reach of a buried family secret through 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.960 the generations, and the desire of one tenacious woman to 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.839 understand what really happened and how to make it right, 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.559 or at least as right as possible. 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:58.880 I was born in Fort Arts, Texas. We live to 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:03.280 Euston when I was in third grade, and my parents 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.319 were high school sweethearts, so my family goes back in Texas, 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:10.800 you know, generation. So my childhood was actually pretty wonderful. 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:15.000 I was outside all the time. This was pre technology, 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:17.800 so you know, my sisters and I were all was 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:21.280 outside making mud pies. And I had very loving parents, 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:24.120 and I was close with my both sets of grandparents, 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:27.000 and we were all pretty physically close together, so I 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:28.319 was spending the night with them all the time. But 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:33.399 it was it was actually very happy and wonderful, and 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.920 I don't think. There wasn't much that I knew about 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.400 my grandparents except that they were just wonderful people. I 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.160 didn't really, obviously as a kid, pay attention to their stories. 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.400 And you were the oldest of four yes, yeah, oldest 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.360 four girls. So growing up in the first the Fort 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:57.040 Worth area and then the Houston area, what were the 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:00.720 expectations of the kind of prison supposed to grow up 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:00.920 to be? 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.120 I think the expectations were I'd be a cheerleader beyond 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.360 the drill team, you know, a very kind of Texas 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:09.960 view of the world, and I was not going in 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.320 that direction at all. I was very creative, wanted to 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:15.240 be a writer. You know, I always loved school, but 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.519 I just rebelled by you know, wearing combat boots and 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.359 all that kind of stuff. But I think the expectations were, 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.440 you get married, you have a family. And my parents 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.080 knew pretty quickly that I was probably going to go 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.360 in a different director, maybe even leave Texas, and they 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:31.720 they didn't discourage me from that. But I think in 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.080 general it was more just like, you get married, you 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:38.560 have children. Women didn't necessarily work that much. Honestly. My 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.400 mom was a stay at home mom, so that was 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:43.040 kind of the world that I was brought up in, 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:45.919 and I think I rebelled against a probably around junior high. 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.200 And you know, even though you adored your mom, you 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.040 also had that adolescent rebellion feeling was I don't want 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:54.560 to grow up and have your life. 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.720 At the time, yes, I very much saw my mom 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.240 as this woman who who had never really left Texas 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.000 and who had kind of I viewed, I guess her 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:07.360 life is small, and I feel terrible saying that, but 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.760 as a teenager I did. I just thought, I want 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:11.160 to go to Paris, I want to go to New York. 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:13.560 I want to, you know, have this big life. And 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:16.920 I remember getting in a fight with her when I 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.040 was in high school and I said, you know, you're 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:23.360 just a housewife. And I apologized for that probably literally 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:26.079 until her dying day, and she would always laugh it off. 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:28.160 But I felt horrible. But at the time I meant 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.960 I was very much steering myself away from being like, 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:35.640 quote unquote just a housewife and living in the suburbs 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.640 like that seems horrible to me, so I definitely rebelled 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:39.120 against it. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:46.440 Hovering Over Dina's childhood was a story, well not exactly 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:51.200 a story more like family law or a legend something 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:55.840 about a fire. Though the details were super hazy, it 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.600 was always there in the background, part of the music 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.040 of her life. As a teenager, some of the details 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:03.600 began to emerge. 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:06.920 At some point. I think in high school, I heard 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:11.680 the story of the fire and it just took shape 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.840 in my imagination. And I never asked about it. But 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.200 I had heard the story of a fire that happened 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:20.760 on my mom's side, and I knew a woman had 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:25.520 committed arson, but I didn't inquire any further. And also 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:27.400 at that time, when I was in high school, I 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:29.440 remember my mom telling me that my great ants on 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.159 her side had traced our lineage and this is before 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:33.720 twenty three and me, this is you know. So it 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:37.159 was literally typewritten pages that she handed me, and I 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.160 was so excited because I was sure in the pages, 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:41.320 I was like, you know what, there's going to be 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.320 some woman that like fought in the front lines with 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:46.840 battle dressed as a man, or like marched for women's 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.279 rights in the twenties, or I just was so sure 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.880 that as opposed to the housewife that I didn't want 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:53.520 to become, that there'd be some woman that I could 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.320 maybe like hinge my identity on. And so I got 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.440 the papers and there wasn't anything. There wasn't anything. It 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:00.680 was very basic stuff. 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:04.760 And this would have been in the. 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:05.799 Nineties, yeah, early nineties. 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.839 So those pages just sort of sat around for a 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:10.359 long time. 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.080 It was a dead end, yes, and I actually still 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:15.560 have them. I somehow held on to them through all 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.440 moves all over the country, and but it was it 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:19.839 was a dead end. And at that time, I don't 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:21.680 I think I was just looking for some kind of 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.160 heroin and it just was you know, your family goes 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:25.839 back to the Mayflower and you know that kind of stuff, 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:27.960 and so but I held on to them for whatever reason. 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.600 What do you think that was about the feeling of 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:35.279 you know, wanting, hoping, you know, needing for there to 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:39.359 be a role model in a way sort of within 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:43.799 your family tree, someone that would maybe help make sense 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:45.159 to you of you. 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:47.680 I think a lot of it maybe was just that 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:50.440 I did feel very different where I grew up, because 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.680 when we moved to Euston, it was all about the 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:57.560 status quo, very homogeneous, like everyone has the same person everyone, 0:05:57.600 --> 0:05:59.599 you know, it just felt like everyone had to follow 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.360 in this Why that just felt so wrong to me. 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.200 I couldn't even imagine doing that, and I and I 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.440 wanted to push against it, because I could very easily 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.120 fall into that right. And so I think it may 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:14.320 have been about like, if maybe if I can find 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.919 someone you did something different, then it'll free me up 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.520 a little bit. Maybe it would help me understand myself. 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:22.560 And you know, my other sisters went in with cheerleading 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:24.280 and did all that kind of stuff, and maybe it 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.520 would help me understand, like why was I the one 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.839 that was like I want the arts and something bigger 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.560 and something wilder, And maybe it would have made me 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.640 understand myself in that way. 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.559 It's so interesting the way that I think so often 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:44.160 we feel the need to place ourselves within a narrative, 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:48.680 you know, as opposed to just doing sometimes what you 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.039 know we have to do, which is just make the narrative, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.400 forge the narrative, start the narrative. But just that feeling 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:57.360 of sort of already being part of a story that 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:58.400 has begun before. 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.839 Yeah, I wanted out of Texas, the South, so I 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.000 left for UCLA and I loved it, and I thought 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:07.160 I would never leave, and I certainly thought i'd never 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:11.480 come back to Texas. That was not even an faint idea. 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.760 So I went to school, I studied English, stayed in 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.400 California for many years. I had, you know, all kinds 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.560 of jobs that would hopefully get me to that writing 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.840 life that I always wanted and so waited tables, had 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.640 temp jobs, but always wrote. It was always kind of 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.920 part of what I was doing. And then I lived 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.360 in New York for a little bit, back to LA. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:34.680 And all of those years when you moved around, you 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:39.520 moved across country, you kept with you those pages, the 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:45.680 you know, typewritten pages of family history, genealogy. They never 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.280 got lost. They were important enough to pull on to. 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.760 Did that story also sort of reside in you somewhere, 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.040 just as like this sense of this mystery that you 0:07:57.080 --> 0:07:59.080 hadn't been able to solve it? Did? 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.920 I mean that story of the fire? I loved how 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:04.880 it was in my imagination, honestly, And I've asked myself 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:06.800 all the time, like why did I not ask my mom, 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.720 you know, I had plenty of time, or my grandmother? 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:11.320 Why did I not sit them down and say, okay, 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:13.440 what happened? Right? Because I knew that there was this 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.400 story of a fire. But I'm my only answer, I 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:18.000 guess is that I just I liked the way it 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:20.360 was in my mind, but I did. I carried that 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.840 with me for years, and every once in a while 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.320 I would kind of think about it and imagine. I 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.880 think when I was in college, actually I saw Terrence 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:33.720 Malick's film bad Lands, which in that film, there's this 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:38.959 very cinematic, operatic fire scene, and it's you know, the 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.840 main character's father is horrible, so she burns down the house. 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.280 And somehow that scene in that movie, which I loved, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.320 became part of this family bore in my imagination. So 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.480 I told myself that it was my grandmother that did it, 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.679 and she burned her childhood house down to save her 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.520 and her sisters and her mother because my great grandfather 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:01.760 was an acol what she was, but I don't know 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:02.959 if he was a bad guy. I just knew he 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:05.640 was an alcoholic. So I just created this thing of 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.760 it's kind of like bad Lands, and it's this big 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:12.160 operatic fire and my grandmother did it and no one 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:14.360 was hurt, but you know that she was the rebel. 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.120 And so I just kind of let it sit there 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.560 in my mind for years, but I thought about it often, 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:21.800 and I thought about writing about it Auten, but I 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:22.240 never did. 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:26.520 When you saw bad Lands, did it fit together with 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.360 the vision of the fire that you had already been 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.080 carrying around with you? Was it already sort of this 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:35.840 in your imagination in your inner life. Was it this 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:40.000 big operatic thing or did it sort of supplant that 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:40.640 in some way? 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.360 I think when I saw the film, that's what it became. 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.040 It just gave me a visual that I could cling onto. 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:51.160 And Terrence Malick is from Texas. Like there were, you know, 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.439 sort of things that overlapped that felt like I could 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:57.319 kind of hold onto it, and they just blended together 0:09:57.360 --> 0:09:59.480 in my mind. But I do think the film probably 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:00.960 influenced what was going on in my head. 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.040 Eventually, Dina does find herself back in Texas. Her grandmother 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.800 passes away, followed by her great aunts and then her mother. 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.679 It's during this period of grief and loss that Dina 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:21.640 feels a pull to return to Texas. The irony is 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.880 not lost on her. She has become the very thing 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:29.960 she had judged and run away from a suburban Texas mom. 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.760 In taking on this role, Dina rethinks her own mother's 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.160 life also. She misses her terribly. 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:41.360 You know, my mom died in twenty eighteen, and that 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.600 really was, you know, the poll for me to come back, 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.000 and I really needed my roots. But I think losing 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.560 my mom, and I think most people that have lost 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:51.160 someone they deeply love, one of the things that's really 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:53.840 hard for me is realizing that when you lose someone, 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:56.199 then you lose their stories, right. You can't ask them 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.600 ever again, and that's just hard to live with. And 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.560 I know I never asked my mom, I never asked 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.640 my grandmother about this story, and I just think to myself, 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:08.520 like why didn't I, Like, now, if they were here, 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.880 I would sit them down and just say tell me everything. 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:14.200 So I think losing my mom really pushed me to 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:17.320 look at this story closer and say, like, let me 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:19.319 just figure this out because I can't ask her anymore 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.120 of that. The stories are gone. Like basically, I'm the 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.600 oldest female on that side now, I think, which is 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.640 a strange thing to realize, but they're all gone, that 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.240 whole line of women, And so I think that really 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:32.839 kind of kicked me into gear to say, like, Okay, 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.559 maybe I need to ask the question. Finally. You know, 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:39.560 I asked my dad first, because he knew my mom 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.320 and her family since he was a teenager, so I 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.000 figured he'd be reliable. But his you know, his response was, 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.959 I'm pretty sure it happened. And he was like, I 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:48.720 think it was your great aunt. I knows, but that's 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:49.920 kind of all I got from here. 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:13.240 We'll be right back. With few details from her father, 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:16.600 Dina starts to dig. She gets in touch with all 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:20.679 sorts of family members, determined to get information about her 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:25.800 great aunt Ana's. In her excavation, she finds out about something, 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:31.319 or rather someone she hadn't known existed. Aunt Anas had 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:33.120 a son, Steve. 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.240 Oh Man. Well, you know, first I'd ask my cousin, 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.520 and you know, nobody knew anything. My cousin didn't know anything, 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:43.240 my uncle didn't know anything. Some distant relative in Arkansas 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:46.520 that I called didn't know anything. And then when I 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:49.800 found out about Anas's son, and I thought, after all 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.679 of these years and then all of this time digging, 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:55.160 I thought, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get his number 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.000 and when it makes sense to just call him immediately. 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.520 But I got the number and I just kind of 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:01.360 froze and I put it in my desk and it 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:03.200 took me about two weeks to make the call. I 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:07.600 was very nervous because I didn't know the guy, and 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.320 to call somebody up and say, hey, you know, did 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.079 your mom commit Arsen? It's extremely awkward. And as a 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.080 journalist I ask questions all the time, but with the 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.760 hard questions, I have to really get myself into that zone. 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.080 So I sat on it for about two weeks and 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:24.880 it was scary. I mean, my heart was racing that 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.160 he was so sweet and so gracious, but you know, 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.280 I said, I heard this story that your mom maybe 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:33.320 committed arson. Did you know anything about that? And he 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.240 had no clue. And he told me that he didn't 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:38.760 even know that his mom had been married before his 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.679 father until he was eighteen and they told him. So 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.600 that just shows you that even her being married before 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.120 was a secret. Yeah, a secret. And so you know, 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:49.920 I asked his permission. I said, are you okay if 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:52.920 I kind of dig further into this. It was a 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:55.120 scary thing to ask and kind of surprising that you 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.680 wouldn't know about this huge thing in his mom's past. 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.760 So he did give me permission to kind of dig deeper, 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:02.959 which I appreciated. 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.560 You know, I'm interested to in making the distinction between 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:10.440 like Yes, you're a journalist and you're used to asking 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:12.520 hard questions and you have to kind of gear yourself 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:15.680 up to ask them in the line of work. But 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:20.080 I would imagine that it would have felt different to 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.600 be asking these questions when you're dealing with something that 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:28.480 is as personal as a family story. 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:32.200 Yes, it adds a whole other layer of For one thing, 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.240 I don't want to bring something up for this guy 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:36.760 that I don't even know, you know, this guy in 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.840 North Texas who, yes, he's related to me, but you know, 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:41.960 it's I don't want to call him and then just 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:44.880 dig up things that maybe he doesn't want to think 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.480 about or what you know, doesn't want to have in 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:49.200 his life. I guess I had to feel like it 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.800 was worth it to even go there. And I think 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:54.440 that's when my dad, who had told me he thought 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:55.840 it was I know, is when I told my dad this, 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:58.480 he said, maybe you should just kind of leave this alone. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:14:59.760 But I just couldn't. 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.240 I you know, I had his permission, and was your 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:07.320 dad's feeling let sleeping dogs lie kind of why stir 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.480 up something that is ancient history kind of feeling? 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:12.640 I think it's that and then just be you know, 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:14.480 my dad's a pretty sensitive person, so I think he 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:16.840 was probably thinking of and as his son and just 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:19.440 you know, maybe, yeah, maybe you don't want to do 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.880 this to somebody that is not asking these questions, and 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:25.360 that that is the hard thing about finding out a 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.560 secret or being a journalist or you know, trying to 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.280 look into these stories as you almost have to think like, okay, 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.640 well is this my story to tell? And I did 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:36.520 grapple with that. When my dad said, you know, maybe 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:39.720 you should leave it alone, I thought, okay, is this 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:42.080 my story to tell? This is this other guy's mother. 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.480 It's not my mom. But I just felt like, you know, 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:46.560 these are the women in my family that eventually came 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:48.720 to the conclusion that it is it is my story 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:49.080 to tell. 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:51.440 Yeah, that makes a lot of That makes a lot 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:53.600 of sense to me. I mean, both the grappling with 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:56.600 it and the questions and it sort of fell on you. 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.600 He just simply didn't know. But that didn't make the 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:04.040 story not a true story. It didn't erase the story. 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:05.120 Right. 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.360 Dina is at this point a working mom with a 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.720 young kid. She's living a rich and busy life in Austin. 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.760 Still she doesn't lose her drive to solve the mystery, 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.960 to close the chapter, to understand what happened the night 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.240 of the fire and in its aftermath. 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.120 The other thing that really pushed me is that I 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.200 pitched this to some editors at Mother Tongue magazine. I 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:33.640 had never met them, and we just had one of 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.720 those meet and greet kind of zooms, and they asked, 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:38.800 you know, the question, is there anything you've been burning 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.520 to write? So it was just the perfect. 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.480 Timing, interesting choice of words, too right. 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.240 Exactly, And you know, editors don't often ask that, so 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.360 it's a magical question to get as a writer. And 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:52.320 I hadn't prepared a pitch. I just started going off 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.760 about my great aunt and saying like, this is what's 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.840 going on. And I always thought about it, and I 0:16:57.880 --> 0:16:59.200 don't know what the outcome is going to be. I 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.560 don't know if I'm gonna really find any true evidence, but 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:03.200 I need to go on a road trip. And they 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.400 were like, go for it, and so then I sort 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.399 of had. Then I had to do it, and you know, 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:12.639 from that on it became extremely important. And I you know, 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:16.520 I've never really done investigative work before, so I mean 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:19.280 I had like a little bored with pictures up and 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:21.919 things like that. So it became a huge part of 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:22.879 my days for sure. 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:29.760 And you brought in a genealogist slash genealogical detective in 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:31.840 a way, right, I had. 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:35.400 Yeah, So I had looked on you know, ancestry dot com, 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.200 which you don't really find that much there. And I 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.320 talked to a lot of small town historians because I 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.440 knew that I had lived in Fort Worth and then 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:45.960 also in which it's a falls, which is North Texas, 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.360 and so I talked to small town historians up there 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:51.359 who were very helpful as far as census records and 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.600 marriage records and things like that. So they were sending 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.200 me those kinds of things. But I just we weren't 0:17:57.240 --> 0:17:59.680 finding any a news story or anything about a fire, 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:03.119 and so I was about to give up. And I 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.679 remember there's this group called the Texas Genealogical Society. They 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:10.040 do a conference every year, and so I just thought, Okay, 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.119 let me find somebody on their board who's in North Texas, 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:14.719 and let me just give it one last shot. I mean, 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:16.640 I was about to be write the article and say 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:19.400 I didn't find out anything. But it was a great try, 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:20.840 you know, and that was going to not be a 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:23.719 great article. So I emailed this woman in North Texas 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:25.480 and I just sent her everything I had. I said, 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.159 here's marriagereckers, here's social security, here's an address that she 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.960 lived in. And I sent it off one night, just thinking, okay, 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:34.280 this is this is kind of my last shot, right, 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:35.760 this is kind of my hail Mary. I don't know 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:37.960 what else to do. And then I woke up in 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.320 the morning to like six emails from this woman. The 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:44.040 subject lines were like found it, She's guilty, she did it. 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.960 I mean, it was crazy. And so I opened these 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.760 emails and it was news clippings that she had found 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:55.119 from nineteen forty six with the most film noir kind 0:18:55.160 --> 0:19:00.840 of headlines like Brunette burns out, Blondet rival bibles house. 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:02.720 So they were basically framing my great Anna as this 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.439 like Brunette fe fatale, and there it was. It was crazy. 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:07.800 It was right in front of my I mean, I 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.159 still get chill's thinking about it, that this thing that 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:15.160 had lived in my mind for decades, it was right 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.879 in front of my face in the newspaper that she 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:19.720 had burned down a house. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.119 And until that moment, were you sure that it was true? 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.720 And Were you sure that it was her? Because my 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.800 sense is that there was some question in your mind 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.120 from early on when you first heard word of this, 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.360 the lore of this fire, of really just not even 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.000 being sure A that had happened, and B who said 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.639 it if it did? So that moment, what was that like? 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:46.679 I was not sure at all until that moment. I 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:48.760 thought it was one of those things, you know, because 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.480 sometimes we just create stories in our minds, you know, 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:53.960 I think whilst people do this where you have like 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.080 a memory and you're like, did that actually happens? I 0:19:57.040 --> 0:19:59.679 make that up? And so I really didn't know. I 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:01.280 didn't know it was her. I didn't know if a 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:03.760 fire happened or if this was just some family legend 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:08.280 that somehow, you know, just endured over these years. So 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.400 it really wasn't until that moment that I thought, Wow, 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:14.280 this actually is part of my family story and part 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.000 of my story. And you know, it was several clippings, 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.400 and you know, the more I dug in it was 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.240 that there was so much more to it. I mean, 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:25.359