A Part of the Memorial to Rifaat K Dagher, MD of Majdalouna , Chouf, Lebanon. Please add your own.

     A Work in Progress 

As a baby I lived with my Mom, aunts and uncles and grandparents. We all grew up in Westfield. Until I was 2 I hadn't met my father; he came home from World War 2 in 1946. My best friends were my aunts and uncles, Pudgie, Dido, Jim and Buddy.

We then moved to Quincy and Braintree. to Independence Avenue (just like the John Quincy Adamses) in a 2 story house with the Gormans upstairs. He was a train engineer and I used to visit them and drink carrot juice there, his health secret. We moved upstairs and the Brookses came to live downstairs. The Roys and my beloved Monique were next door. We put on musicals and skied and sledded and had tremendous snowball fights. Maybe Monique and I are related! We must be, later I confirm that we are related..

When I was in the 6th grade we moved to Westfield and lived again with my grandparents, the O'Connor family. After my Dad earned his engineering degree we moved to Connecticut.

Upon entering 11th grade, we moved to Quincy and lived with Grandmother Lyons in her glorious house. Who of the family did not love that house. Well it was cold, but it had a brook running through the basement. . My Dad was a school teacher and Mom a bookkeeper. Emmanuel College was my dream school, I was accepted, and I had a wonderful college experience there.

Didn't date much, there were Frankie and Danny, boy friends. Frankie has since died, married and had two kids, not in that order. Then I met Rifaat Khalil Dagher, MD at Harvard Medical School. He was staying with Dr. Jean Rebeiz and I was working with Jean as his histologist studying muscle. I also worked on the genetic mapping of the mouse gene HY2 hydrocephalus while at Harvard. 

For a year we were all just good friends visiting with Father George in Lawrence, going fishing, Mount Wachuset, to the beach and playing basketball. We often visited his family in Canada, Rafik Dagher, son of Wadih, abou Riyad. Off Rifaat went to the University of Michigan to get his degree in Urology. During our long separation I realized that he was the only man I would ever marry. Then he invited me to meet him in Lebanon. My whole world changed, I was soooo happy.

I married Rifaat in Lebanon and there is a sad story that my Grandmother Anna Gertrude Lyons came to Lebanon for the wedding and died in the ancient setting of Byblos. I will try to add it to her profile. The setting is the essence of history, a medieval castle surrounded by burial grounds of the Greek and Roman periods. Artifacts have been found at Jebeil from the bronze age and every age, and she is a part of that. My thanks to Sami who held her hand.

We lived in Ann Arbor, where Fauz was born. Rifaat had a very successful career at Harvard and recived a degree in Immunology. A paper he had written on immunosuppression, won an award and was published in the Journal. After Rifaat finished his residency in Urology, we moved to Lebanon. I was to live in the Middle East for 14 years, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Greece. I loved my extended family, Teta set the tone by learning English in a little yellow book, and teaching me how to prepare Lebanese dishes. She was a great cook and had a fabulous memory. She always knew exactly where everything was.

The Lebanese were so gracious. and I enjoyed every minute of life in Lebanon. My heartfelt prayers are with them and the people of Syria, because they can't stop assassinating their leaders or people and causing chaos over there.

My husband was wonderful doctor and a wealth of information about history and the Bible. He was also very active in student affairs at the campus of AUB. I learned to appreciate life and enjoy the simple things, like stepping back about 100 years in time. We studied nature and gardening, science and the Bible, especially Bible history and the Middle East experience. He had a special gift of healing and saved lives sometimes in a miraculous way. His standing was very high in Lebanese society and also in medical circles in the US and Canada because of his hard work and accomplishments. he came from utter poverty. We enjoyed a privileged life unlike any other.

I have just edited his profile, just after baby Lily was born. He died of prostate cancer, in the very field in which he had so successfully worked all his life. And we are all suffering from the loss and coping in our own ways. I feel I have lost more than just my beloved husband but his family as well.

Several months after his death I realized that my life would go on and I could do more than just grieve. I don't do well on my own, I need people and there were absolutely NO people in the backwoods of Plympton. Gina had stayed by my side but had to get back to work and her life. All had gone on with their busy lives. To this very day I really have no friends, don't know how or why I lost them but loss is more extensive than can be anticipated.

Grief would always be the main part of my life, but I met a nice man, Ross, who works in genealogy and loves singing and traveling.

He is kind to give me a home where I can pursue life and the new interests I have come to appreciate. He loves the study of nature, and the company of family and friends. Especially cousins. 

He has shown me that I can actually do music so well that I can join a top rate show chorus. I actually became a singing star. Many of my Facebook friends are from the musical period of my life. i still help Ross put on a show in September.

I found my long lost relatives through his help in genealogy. We kayak almost every  day.  I learned well enough how to deal with being next to an alligator in a leaky kayak on a visit to Florida. Lots of adventures we somehow survived. We have visited all of Canada, some of Ireland and the south of England.

He is a Sindabad when it comes to travel, Alaska and cross country America and Canada. Banff and Jasper. Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and Acadia where my relatives lived and from where they were expelled. I never realized I was related to Evangeline even tho I had cried at the story of the Acadians. My life mirrored theirs when I left Beirut and the rockets behind, and the folks i love so deeply. .Now Ross and I are no longer together, I am living with my mother now and caregiving.

Please study their stories. And add to them yourself. That is the point of this exercise. Your story and your family should be memorialized on these pages. . This is a cumulative project. There are many other sites that have our trees too. I received my Masters degree in teaching Science and in the process, qualified for Mensa. Who knew? I speak French and Arabic, a working bit of German and Greek and like all Emmanuel girls of my era, Latin and Middle English. I received the best of a Liberal Arts education so that I feel comfortable in most academic fields.