Published: May 25, 2008 01:47 am            

DRINKWALTER: So who’s your daddy?

It seems as if lately the politicians and movie stars are playing one-upmanship when it comes to family heritage. It’s beyond the Bacon number. You know, the person’s number of degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that if a person is one step away from each person he or she knows and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people he or she knows, then everyone is an average of six “steps” away from each person on Earth. Thus, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game was developed by three college students from Albright College.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is based on a variation of the concept of the small world phenomenon and states that any actor can be linked through their film roles to actor Kevin Bacon. The game requires a group of players to try to connect any film actor in history to Kevin Bacon as quickly as possible and in as few links as possible.

Now let’s take this degree thing one step further. Everyone in politics and Hollywood seems to be related to one another by one degree or another. We find out that Barack Obama is a distant cousin of Brad Pitt and Hillary Clinton is related to Angelina Jolie. Hillary lamented in her best selling book, “It Takes a Village,” that it takes a village to raise a child and Angelina seems to be in the process of creating or adopting a village of her own. (What’s up with that?)

Stay with me now. Angelina Jolie played in “Life or Something Like It” with Melissa Errico who played in “Lover Boy” with Kevin Bacon. That’s 2 degrees of separation between Angelina and Kevin.

Still with me, Barack Obama is a distant cousin, on his mother’s side, to both President George W. and H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Gerald Ford and Robert E. Lee, to name a few. Susan Sarandon played with Brad Pitt in “Thelma and Louise” and Brad Pitt played with Kevin Bacon in “Sleeper.” That’s 3 degrees of separation between Brad and Kevin. I have no idea how many degrees of separation there are between Hillary or Obama and Kevin Bacon but I’m pretty sure Obama will be the Democratic nominee.

My husband’s family can play the one-upmanship game too. In fact, when our daughter was in elementary school, the children were given an assignment to trace their family tree. Her teacher was surprised by the information our daughter sent back. We wrote that her grandpa was related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Delano side and her grandma was a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” on the Beecher side. Yep, true story!

All the women on her grandma’s side of the family are able to trace their family roots back to someone that fought in the American Revolution. So, they meet the criteria to be part of the Daughter’s of the American Revolution (DAR). My mother-in-law is member. I read that DAR chapters are involved in raising funds for local scholarships and educational awards, preserving historical properties and artifacts and promoting patriotism within their communities.

If families take the time to shake a few branches through their family tree, we find out that to one degree or another we are all part of the same family. We can also trace our genealogy to someone that has fought for something they believed in, in one way or another, so let’s take a moment to remember those who died serving our country tomorrow on Memorial Day.

Deb Drinkwalter is a Lockport resident. Her column appears every Sunday. Send comments to d.drinkwalter@yahoo.com.

        

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