Reunions help preserve family heritage

This September, more than 150 family members and friends will gather at my grandmother’s home in Muscadine to celebrate her 90th birthday.
   
Granny Bernice’s birthday has been an annual event for my family for more than 40 years, and for as long as I remember, it has been a day that my brothers, sister, cousins and I anticipated with great excitement.
   
For our family and for many other families around Alabama, reunions are an important and joyful part of family life. They are a time to share food, games, songs and stories, and they bring families together in a way that no other event can.
   
In its mission statement, The Family Reunion Institute at Temple University describes the family reunion as “a catalyst for carrying out critical extended family functions such as providing a sense of belonging and concern, transmitting a sense of identity and direction and strengthening values.”
   
And according to a recent survey by Reunions Magazine, the most common reason family members gave for participating in reunions is to “keep in touch and pass on [their] family heritage to their children.”
Carrie Odom Gee of Birmingham knows the importance of passing on the family heritage.
   
In the 1960s, her father coordinated his family’s first reunion because he was tired of seeing his family “only at funerals.”
   
“Our reunion started out in the back yard of one of the uncles, and it has moved around to different locations since then,” said Gee, who inherited the unofficial title of reunion chairperson when her father died in 1997.
   
What started out more than 40 years ago as a small gathering in Monroe County has grown to an event that has been held across the country and brings more than 100 members of the family together each year for a time of celebration and fellowship.
   
Gee, a member of Sardis Baptist Church,  Birmingham, said the Montgomery reunion, like all reunions, is a time of fun but also a time of teaching. 
   
“Our reunion gives us a place where we can pass what we know about the family along to our children so they’ll know their heritage and get a chance to meet their kin,” Gee said.
   
For many of us, family gatherings provide us not only with an opportunity to meet new relatives but to renew relationships with distant family members as well.
   
“Family is important,” said Pat Brown McElroy of Muscadine, who coordinates the planning for her mother’s birthday party each year.
  
“My mother is the only living person who everyone in our family came from. It’s great to honor her on her birthday to celebrate her life.”
   
McElroy, a member of Beulah Baptist Church, Muscadine, plans her mother’s birthday party with the help of her six sisters-in-law, which is absolutely necessary to the event’s success.
   
“We always have at least 100 people here, and there’s no way that one person can plan and prepare for that many people,” McElroy said. The planning is important, however, to ensure that everyone has a good day.
   
McElroy said she tries to think about people from all age categories as she makes plans because she wants everyone, especially the children, to have good memories of the event.
   
“I like to do something a little different each year,” McElroy said. “I don’t want it to be boring, especially for the children.
   
“Every year I try to have something so they don’t feel like they just have to sit around and look at each other.”
   
Her favorite part of the day, she said, is seeing the smiles and hearing the laughter of her brothers, their children, and their children.
   
She also wants people to have a good time so they will want to continue the tradition.
   
McElroy hopes that even when her mother is gone, family members will continue to gather on her birthday for a day of fun and remembering.
   
“The thought that the grandchildren and their children will not get together once we’re all gone is sad, so I hope we are setting a foundation for the future right now,” McElroy said.