Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Thanks for the Memories (with George Ott) | Episode 39

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Thanks for the Memories (with George Ott) | Episode 39 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  George Ott: Somebody came to them and said listen, bob Hope is coming this is in the summer of 79, coming to do a celebrity golf tournament.
• 0:08
  George Ott: And Billy Casper says I think we could really promote family history because Billy was a professional golfer, lived here in Utah.
• 0:16
  George Ott: He says let's do a family history and present it to him while he's here.
• 0:23
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
• 0:31
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:35
  Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:43
  Crista Cowan: When you start exploring your own family history, those stories that live in you just come to life.
• 0:52
  Crista Cowan: You connect with them in a very real way.
• 0:55
  Crista Cowan: But as a professional genealogist or anybody who starts to explore the family history of friends or extended family members, there's a whole new set of stories that starts to become a part of us.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: My guest today is George Ott.
• 1:11
  Crista Cowan: George and I have been colleagues for more than a decade.
• 1:15
  Crista Cowan: I have heard around the Ancestry office the stories that he tells, and he does it in such a beautiful and engaging way.
• 1:24
  Crista Cowan: But what I've learned from my time with George is that when you really just want to hear the story and move into that experience, it can be super emotional.
• 1:37
  Crista Cowan: But there's also something important about having tangible representations of those stories, and I'm curious to hear from you, after you hear from George, what that looks like in your life.
• 1:51
  Crista Cowan: What are the tangible representations of the stories that live in us.
• 1:56
  Crista Cowan: George, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
• 2:00
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for being here.
• 2:01
  George Ott: It's my pleasure, I'm excited.
• 2:03
  Crista Cowan: Good.
• 2:03
  Crista Cowan: Well, I think what I'd like to have people hear from you first is a little bit about how you got into family history.
• 2:09
  Crista Cowan: What was it that was a spark for you to pull you into that?
• 2:13
  George Ott: So I was attending Colorado State University in 19,.
• 2:17
  George Ott: I went there in 1970 as a really young kid I was only just barely turned 17 from I was born and raised in Patterson, new Jersey went out to Colorado State and I, while I was only just barely turned 17.
• 2:25
  George Ott: I was born and raised in Patterson, new Jersey, went out to Colorado State and while I was there, at the end of my freshman year, I joined the LDS church and had my first institute class there, which happened to be family history, and it just I caught the bug right.
• 2:43
  George Ott: And it just I caught the bug right, caught the bug, and so that when I graduated and came to Salt Lake City I couldn't get a job in my field, which was in forestry and wildlife management, but I kept doing genealogy.
• 3:03
  George Ott: And there was a gal in my LDS ward by the name of Miriam Cropper who was an accredited genealogy assistant.
• 3:07
  George Ott: She says you really want to do genealogy professionally, don't you?
• 3:10
  George Ott: I said yeah, and this was in 1975.
• 3:12
  George Ott: And she said there's a new company starting up called Genealogical Services.
• 3:17
  George Ott: Wilma Atkins is looking for people to hire.
• 3:20
  George Ott: And I went down there and May 1st of 1975, she hired me as a professional genealogist and I've been doing it ever since.
• 3:28
  Crista Cowan: Wow, and there are some people who think you can't make a living out of this.
• 3:32
  George Ott: It was tough.
• 3:32
  George Ott: I mean, I've never worked for the LDS Church.
• 3:36
  George Ott: I always either work for Wilma, and then I worked for a very short time which we'll talk about with Research International and then basically was on my own after that.
• 3:47
  George Ott: And it's tough to make a living doing genealogy.
• 3:50
  George Ott: It is tough.
• 3:51
  George Ott: And then finally, the last 12 years before I retired, I went to work for a pro-genealogist at Ancestrycom.
• 3:59
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so tough, but you stuck with it.
• 4:02
  George Ott: And it was important.
• 4:03
  George Ott: It was important and really enjoyed it.
• 4:07
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 4:07
  Crista Cowan: Well, one of the things that I've enjoyed about knowing you over the last few years and hearing about you from our colleagues is what a great storyteller you are.
• 4:16
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 4:17
  George Ott: And I have a lot of them, probably not enough.
• 4:20
  George Ott: It's too many for this one show.
• 4:23
  Crista Cowan: Well, maybe we'll have to have you back again.
• 4:24
  Crista Cowan: So I would just love to hear you have a couple of stories about some celebrities that you've done some research for Right, and the impact of family history on them Exactly.
• 4:35
  Crista Cowan: So let's start with Mr Bob Hope.
• 4:37
  George Ott: Yeah, so Genealogical Services went out of business.
• 4:42
  George Ott: I think the beginning of 79.
• 4:44
  George Ott: And in 79, I went to work for Research International.
• 4:47
  George Ott: Research International was run by Kendall Williams and Sue McKean and they were really into thinking that celebrity research was a way to go and to build family history Roots.
• 5:04
  George Ott: The TV show had happened and Family History started to really blow up, okay, and there was a lot of interest and so they had made friends with Maury Amsterdam who was on the Dick Van Dyke show, and through them, through him, they started working with a lot with celebrities or trying to work with celebrities.
• 5:27
  George Ott: And hearing about this, somebody came to them and said listen, bob Hope is coming this is in the summer of 79, coming to do a celebrity golf tournament.
• 5:38
  George Ott: And Billy Casper says I think we could really promote family history because Billy was a professional golfer, lived here in Utah.
• 5:46
  George Ott: He says let's do a family history and present it to him while he's here.
• 5:51
  George Ott: He's going to be that evening of the tournament having a banquet at the Hotel Utah and we can present it to him.
• 6:00
  George Ott: So there was a group of us that took parts of the lines and they had a friend called Robert Hesenthaler who made these beautiful heirloom wood boxes, ingrained boxes that you opened up and then there were rings inside for the pages and he did one that said thanks for the memories because that was his theme song, right, and we did the research and found some incredible stuff and in fact there's one thing, his maternal grandmother.
• 6:34
  George Ott: It's kind of interesting.
• 6:36
  George Ott: She was allegedly raised by this family in Wales and supposedly she had a very super wealthy real father.
• 6:46
  George Ott: You know she was adopted into this family and love to do the DNA now on that and figure out who she's related to.
• 6:53
  George Ott: But anyway, we got this work done, went to the banquet and there was a very tall dais and there was probably 800 people there or whatever, and dinner started.
• 7:10
  George Ott: No, bob, they said he's not feeling well.
• 7:11
  George Ott: He's hoping to come down, but we hope he joins us and we're all nervous, like we have this done.
• 7:18
  George Ott: Finally, at time for about dessert, bob comes in and everybody and he sits down and there's some discussions and everything.
• 7:28
  George Ott: And then Billy Casper gets up and says Bob, I'd like you to come over here.
• 7:33
  George Ott: I have something to present to you.
• 7:34
  George Ott: He pulls out the Heslenthaler heirloom box, puts it on the DS and Bob opens it up and he's going through the pages.
• 7:44
  Crista Cowan: In front of everybody, in front of everybody.
• 7:46
  George Ott: In front of everybody.
• 7:47
  George Ott: Yeah, and all of a sudden he had tears starting to run down his face and you could hear a pin drop in that place.
• 7:55
  George Ott: People were just really taken back Because, you know, and he says, I usually have a joke for everything, but I can't, I don't have a joke right now.
• 8:04
  George Ott: He says this is absolutely amazing because we had photographs and maps, and photographs he probably hadn't seen since he was a kid, because we got some connections.
• 8:16
  George Ott: And he says you know, I have been given so many things by over the years.
• 8:25
  George Ott: You know, think about all the things after World War II and all the things he did for countries.
• 8:31
  George Ott: Right, he says I have a warehouse full of memorabilia and awards and different things.
• 8:37
  George Ott: He says this does not go into the warehouse, this sits in my living room.
• 8:42
  George Ott: He says this means so much to me.
• 8:44
  George Ott: He says this is amazing and people I mean everybody was crying in that room because he was crying and it just shows you the power of family history, it shows you how it touches people's lives, you know.
• 8:59
  George Ott: And so he says who did this?
• 9:01
  George Ott: I want to meet him.
• 9:02
  George Ott: So we had a chance afterwards to sit and talk with him and he was very gracious, and what's really interesting is about five or six years ago, when I was working at ProGenealogist, his daughter.
• 9:13
  George Ott: He didn't have any children, they were all adopted.
• 9:17
  George Ott: And his adopted daughter got in touch with ProGenealogist about doing some more work and she had mentioned that they still had the box.
• 9:26
  George Ott: So that's pretty cool.
• 9:27
  George Ott: It became a family heirloom it became a family heirloom and that's what family history is all about.
• 9:31
  George Ott: Right, it's family heirlooms and there's a place in everybody's heart that touches.
• 9:38
  George Ott: So the LDS Church had heard about this, you know and what was done and contacted Research International and said Jimmy Stewart is coming to Salt Lake City to shoot in 1980 in the spring, a show called Mr Kruger's Christmas.
• 10:00
  George Ott: That was done for the LDS Church and it was going to be viewed at Christmas and they were shooting in April and into May and at the last day of shooting the indoor shots were done at the ZCMI warehouse on the west side of town.
• 10:16
  George Ott: They wanted to make the same type of presentation with a Hesenthaler heirloom box.
• 10:21
  George Ott: So there was four of us.
• 10:24
  George Ott: I took the Stewart line, each of us took a Cranparent line and we put together this incredible box, this incredible history.
• 10:30
  George Ott: We found pictures of him when he was at like a Hollywood hostel where young actors stayed and he was playing ping pong with Henry Fonda.
• 10:43
  George Ott: We have pictures of that he hadn't seen for a long time.
• 10:45
  George Ott: We found a lot of great stuff.
• 10:48
  George Ott: So on the last day of shooting they had a lot of the press there and one of the first presidency, n Eldon Tanner, was presenting him with the box, and I stood in the back with the others and President Tanner put the box in front of him on a little table and he opened up.
• 11:07
  George Ott: He started going through it.
• 11:08
  George Ott: You know what?
• 11:10
  George Ott: The same he started to cry and he just said this is absolutely amazing.
• 11:19
  George Ott: He says you know.
• 11:20
  George Ott: He says you know, this means so much to me and he just I mean he was just so overwhelmed with emotion, you know, and tears running down his face.
• 11:33
  George Ott: He says who worked on this?
• 11:35
  George Ott: I want to meet with them.
• 11:35
  George Ott: So he came after the press conference, he got up and the four of us and a couple of other people from Research International.
• 11:43
  George Ott: He said I want you to come with me.
• 11:46
  George Ott: He says okay, there's a scene in Mr Kruger's Christmas where he walks up, you know, because he dreams.
• 11:52
  George Ott: He has dreams right, of all these different occurrences in his life, like he's conducting the Tabernacle, choir and everything.
• 11:59
  George Ott: But he has a dream that he goes to see the baby Jesus and he's standing before the manger and he's talking to the baby Jesus about how much he loved him.
• 12:08
  George Ott: And I don't know if he—I don't think he picked him up, I just think he stood there and looked at the baby and told him how, you know how, when his wife died, how much he—Jesus helped him and it was really a sweet scene, right.
• 12:25
  George Ott: And so he said to us we went in there and there's the manger and the scene and everything.
• 12:30
  George Ott: And he says I shot a, I shot part of the film in here, talking to baby Jesus.
• 12:36
  George Ott: He says I told them I hope they got it the first time because he did ad lib.
• 12:41
  George Ott: So, basically, what he's doing is he was giving his feelings about Jesus right out of his heart.
• 12:50
  George Ott: And he says I told them I hope you got that first shot, because I couldn't.
• 12:54
  George Ott: I don't know if I could do that again.
• 12:55
  George Ott: Right, he says he looked at it and says you know what, though, because I don't know if I could do that again.
• 13:00
  George Ott: Right, he says he looked at it and says you know what, though?
• 13:01
  George Ott: I want you to know that the feelings that I had in here was not much different than the feelings I had when I was going through that box.
• 13:07
  George Ott: He says I just had.
• 13:09
  George Ott: He said I was just overcome with emotion, and so he talked about how much family history meant to him.
• 13:17
  George Ott: And so he talked about how much family history meant to him One, because so many of the people that were part of his life had died previously and we kind of brought them back to him and so he really became friends with the leaders of the LDS Church, with Spencer W Kimball, and basically when he died in the late 80s or 90s I think he died in 90s.
• 13:45
  George Ott: Yeah, he died in 90s, I think he died in the 90s.
• 13:47
  George Ott: He left his movie memorabilia to Brigham Young University and so I thought it was quite interesting university and so I thought it was quite interesting.
• 14:05
  George Ott: The feelings that people have when it comes to family history, I thought man the situation with Bob Hope and the situation with Jimmy Stewart.
• 14:12
  George Ott: The same feelings are there.
• 14:15
  Crista Cowan: It's pretty amazing and almost instantly like opening the box, flipping through a few pages, like not even really time to process that information Right, and already that emotion is there, exactly.
• 14:26
  George Ott: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:27
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing and I experienced that.
• 14:29
  Crista Cowan: I experienced that in my own family history, like the first time you view a record that has somebody's name on it, or see their signature on a card, or like that, that connection, that instant, very visceral emotional connection.
• 14:41
  Crista Cowan: And I don't understand always why that happens, but but to have seen it repeatedly and to see it in people who who schooling their emotions as part of their profession.
• 14:53
  George Ott: That's true.
• 14:53
  George Ott: Right, that's really true.
• 14:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and so you've done this celebrity research over time and it's interesting because you know, ancestry, sponsored, who Do you Think you Are, and Finding your Roots.
• 15:05
  Crista Cowan: We do the DNA for that, and celebrity is just a hook for us, right.
• 15:09
  Crista Cowan: It's a way for us to say, hey, like here's somebody that you're interested in, watch a family history story about them, right.
• 15:17
  Crista Cowan: And hopefully then you can have the same experience for yourself, exactly.
• 15:20
  Crista Cowan: But they're people too, with families and connections, and they have those emotions as well, which I think you beautifully illustrated.
• 15:29
  George Ott: And the thing is that anybody who really gets into family history, everybody will find a story or a person probably you're going to really connect to and it's going to touch you in your heart.
• 15:42
  George Ott: Yeah, because think about in history all of the people that made us who we are, people who how many times I've worked on research where people have lost a leg or an arm in a civil war, right, and they still go on with life, you know they still are successful people.
• 16:00
  George Ott: These are people that we need to recognize and have our children and grandchildren appreciate, because there's a lot of people who sacrificed and had horrible situations.
• 16:09
  George Ott: I mean, how many people in our histories had 10 children and they lost eight in infancy?
• 16:14
  George Ott: And yet they pick themselves up and they go on.
• 16:19
  George Ott: Yeah, you know.
• 16:20
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and it's sometimes the connection to that story.
• 16:23
  Crista Cowan: I think that speaks to our hearts, and sometimes it's just the example that they set.
• 16:28
  Crista Cowan: Like you said, Right yeah.
• 16:34
  George Ott: So I have a story who contacted me and said you know, I have this sampler and it really means.
• 16:44
  George Ott: And she explained to me the name Because you know what a sampler is Explain the sampler.
• 16:48
  Crista Cowan: It's a cross stitch right.
• 16:50
  George Ott: Usually it has ABC to EFG and then the numbers and then the name of the.
• 16:53
  George Ott: Usually girls do them when they're 10, 11, 12, 13 years old had the name of the gal and the year she was born and where she was in New Jersey.
• 17:06
  George Ott: She says I really want you to research this and find out how we're related to her.
• 17:11
  George Ott: And I says okay, so I did it and I had found that it went through, that the sampler went through all succeeding female generations down to her and so I explained to her how the line goes.
• 17:31
  George Ott: She goes ha-ha, exactly.
• 17:33
  George Ott: She says let me tell you.
• 17:35
  George Ott: She says I have a brother who said, sis, you know that sampler that you have.
• 17:43
  George Ott: He goes yeah.
• 17:44
  George Ott: He says can I have it for a while so my kids can enjoy it and everything.
• 17:49
  George Ott: And she said sure, so you know, she wasn't too concerned.
• 17:53
  George Ott: Six months, a year, went by.
• 17:55
  George Ott: She says, hey, can I get the sampler back?
• 17:56
  George Ott: She goes no.
• 17:57
  George Ott: He says mother meant me to have the sampler and I'm keeping it for my family.
• 18:05
  George Ott: And she said no, it was supposed to.
• 18:08
  George Ott: I have it goes.
• 18:10
  George Ott: So she says no, it's supposed to be with the females.
• 18:14
  George Ott: The oldest female, the oldest female of each generation, had it and I had it in my research.
• 18:20
  George Ott: And so basically, she says I've had it.
• 18:24
  George Ott: She says we're going to court and I would like you to bring your research and present it to the court so I can get the sampler back.
• 18:34
  Crista Cowan: I says really.
• 18:34
  George Ott: She says, yeah, I'll pay you to come to New Jersey and I'm from New Jersey, right.
• 18:38
  George Ott: And so I says, okay, I'll fly into Newark, I'll stay with my brother in Patterson.
• 18:43
  George Ott: And then this was at a courthouse down in Camden and it was right in the middle of winter, lousy weather, drive from Patterson down to New Jersey turnpike, to Camden, go to this courthouse.
• 18:55
  George Ott: And I could hear the attorneys his attorneys and her attorneys kind of haggling out in the foyer while I'm waiting and she said you know, they didn't seem to come.
• 19:08
  George Ott: And then she says George, come here.
• 19:10
  George Ott: She says we're going in there and we're going to win this thing.
• 19:13
  George Ott: George is here, he's got the proof, we're going to go in there and win this thing.
• 19:18
  George Ott: And I felt like thinking, oh man, ladies, just leave me alone, I don't want to be a part of this.
• 19:23
  George Ott: So I go into this courtroom and there's this African-American, very stately African-American judge walks in and I'm in the back of the courtroom and I was the first one to present my and I had this huge, genuine pedigree chart and I'm pointing things out and explaining everything and the judge is watching and I thought that the defense attorney or his attorney was going to rip me up because I wasn't an accredited general.
• 19:50
  George Ott: I just started in the days where you just went in.
• 19:54
  George Ott: He just asked me why I was just done at Salt Lake City and I just said, well, there's the Family Store Library, and how long have you been doing professional research?
• 20:02
  George Ott: And I said, you know, I don't know.
• 20:04
  George Ott: At that point it was almost 30 years, you know.
• 20:06
  George Ott: And he goes okay.
• 20:08
  George Ott: So then an aunt gets up.
• 20:10
  George Ott: She starts really ripping into this guy her nephew talking, and then she started bringing all this scurrilous and scandalous things about him, how he was sleeping with this person and that person, you know, and I had given him something and he didn't give it back and she was just really going to town and I could see the judge just going, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 20:33
  George Ott: Finally he slaps his gavel and says I've had it with this.
• 20:36
  George Ott: He says I'm going back to my chambers and I think these attorneys need to really figure something out, and so I'm going oh good this is going to be over.
• 20:49
  George Ott: So I'm sitting there and all of a sudden the bailiff gets up and says the judge would like to see Mr Ott in his chambers.
• 20:55
  George Ott: Okay, I go, okay, and I'm kind of walking, looking back at people, and I walk in there.
• 21:02
  George Ott: He's hanging up his cloak and he said this is really sad, isn't it?
• 21:10
  George Ott: People are fighting over something like this.
• 21:12
  George Ott: I says yeah, he said and you did pretty amazing family history work.
• 21:19
  George Ott: I said yeah, he says you think you could do work for me?
• 21:26
  George Ott: So we got talking about family history.
• 21:28
  George Ott: He graduated from Temple University and we got talking about Temple University and the people he knew and everything.
• 21:34
  George Ott: And we started talking about his family history and everything.
• 21:36
  George Ott: And he says give me a card.
• 21:39
  George Ott: He says I'm really interested in maybe following up with you.
• 21:43
  George Ott: He said do you want to know what my verdict is or what I'm going to do?
• 21:49
  George Ott: I go yeah, sure, I'm in the inside right.
• 21:53
  George Ott: He goes I'm going to go out there and if they don't come up with a way to figure this out, I'm going to say to them I want the sampler turned over to the court.
• 22:05
  George Ott: I'm going to cut it in half and I'm going to give half to one, half to the other.
• 22:10
  George Ott: Okay, solomon.
• 22:11
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, he's done the same.
• 22:12
  Crista Cowan: He even said I'm going to do the Solomon routine.
• 22:15
  George Ott: And so I says okay, ok, so I go back out in the court and basically he told him that and the attorneys discussed and he says OK, you know he will give the sampler back to her if she will return this or this or that.
• 22:36
  George Ott: And they had, they had this very, very, very, very crazy thing that they came up with to settle this thing.
• 22:41
  George Ott: And so two or three months later I call her back, asked her how it's going.
• 22:45
  George Ott: She says he's never returned a sampler.
• 22:47
  George Ott: I think we're going back to court.
• 22:49
  Crista Cowan: But you know Wow.
• 22:52
  George Ott: Family drama, family drama.
• 22:54
  George Ott: But I'm saying is that you know, this is something that family has really had a meaning to this person.
• 23:00
  George Ott: You know and and it went overboard right.
• 23:06
  Crista Cowan: Of all the things to survive, though.
• 23:08
  Crista Cowan: Right Like it's so interesting, because family heirlooms get passed down and and sometimes there is a really clear path for how those things get inherited and sometimes it's just a matter of who wants it more or who cares, but when you have multiple people in a family who care for all sorts of reasons, the fact that something as simpler as a piece of cloth could divide a family is really like that's.
• 23:32
  Crista Cowan: That's heartbreaking.
• 23:33
  George Ott: It is really heartbreaking.
• 23:34
  George Ott: Do you have time for another story?
• 23:35
  George Ott: In 1990, I got contacted by a gal by name of Pauline Gilliland.
• 23:40
  George Ott: She was older, she was in her 70s, and she said to me you're a professional genealogist.
• 23:47
  George Ott: Yes, I want to hire you, because I was adopted out of this home in Los Angeles and when I turned 21, they gave me the file about my, my past, and basically I learned that my mother was a woman who was working in an orange packing plant down Orange County.
• 24:11
  George Ott: I want to know if I have any half brothers or sisters, and it would mean a lot to me.
• 24:16
  George Ott: And so I did the research and found out that she was part of a huge family.
• 24:22
  George Ott: She had like eight or seven or eight siblings, and was able to figure out and trace her forward, found that she had one son who was killed in a about 20 years earlier in an automobile accident, but she had a daughter, and so I was able to figure out where the daughter was and got all of it put together.
• 24:43
  George Ott: So I said, okay, pauline, you have a half-sister.
• 24:46
  George Ott: I think you should really go about this slow because you don't want to blow this gal out of the water.
• 24:53
  George Ott: You know, and here's the information.
• 25:01
  George Ott: And literally two days later, I get a call from this woman who was the half-sister her son, who was an attorney, and this is the way he started out.
• 25:11
  George Ott: On the phone he goes you're the genealogist that worked on this thing for Pauline Gilliland.
• 25:17
  George Ott: I said.
• 25:17
  George Ott: He says what the hell's going on?
• 25:18
  George Ott: I says whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 25:20
  George Ott: Guy, hold on, now, you know, calm down.
• 25:22
  George Ott: He says who's this woman?
• 25:24
  George Ott: Why is she bothering my mother?
• 25:26
  George Ott: What's the?
• 25:26
  George Ott: Why is the story?
• 25:27
  George Ott: I says listen, Pauline's just an older woman.
• 25:30
  George Ott: She wanted to find out if she had any family.
• 25:32
  George Ott: She has no ill intent and you know, your mother is definitely her half-sister.
• 25:41
  George Ott: He says well, I don't know about that.
• 25:43
  George Ott: He goes we'll have to prove it for ourselves.
• 25:45
  George Ott: If this is true, we're Christian people and we will accept her.
• 25:49
  George Ott: He says but we have to check this out.
• 25:52
  George Ott: I says you know what I'm not going to give you.
• 25:53
  George Ott: I'm going to give you exactly what I started with.
• 25:56
  George Ott: He says well, my brother's a detective for the LA police force.
• 25:59
  George Ott: He says he could do this research.
• 26:02
  George Ott: I says, then, I'm going to give you what I started with.
• 26:04
  George Ott: I'm not going to help you.
• 26:05
  George Ott: And so he calls me back a week later he says I can't believe this.
• 26:10
  George Ott: He says my brother did the research and came up with the same answer how did you find my mother?
• 26:18
  George Ott: How did you do this?
• 26:19
  George Ott: I says well, genealogists are really no different than detectives, right?
• 26:23
  George Ott: He goes this is amazing.
• 26:25
  George Ott: He says we're going to work something out here.
• 26:28
  George Ott: He says but, thank you for your work and everything.
• 26:32
  George Ott: So I get a call about a week or two later from Pauline.
• 26:35
  George Ott: She says I got an invite to a hotel down in Newport Beach and she says I'm really nervous.
• 26:44
  George Ott: I'm going to meet my sister and her family.
• 26:48
  George Ott: And I says I'm really nervous about how this is going to go.
• 26:51
  George Ott: I says well, let me know.
• 26:53
  George Ott: Well, she let me know, because she called me midnight of the night, that she had it.
• 26:59
  George Ott: She says George, you're not going to believe this.
• 27:01
  George Ott: What happened?
• 27:01
  George Ott: I go, okay.
• 27:02
  George Ott: She says I got to the hotel, met my sister and her two sons and their families out in the lobby and they said follow me.
• 27:10
  George Ott: She followed them down the hall into this meeting room and there was literally somewhere about 150 to 200 people in there who were all the descendants of these, all these you know, and they had a dinner and they had a this is your life type presentation.
• 27:30
  George Ott: Her mother had just died 10 years before, at the age of 94, whatever, and they had, they presented.
• 27:36
  George Ott: They presented her with photographs and pictures.
• 27:52
  George Ott: And then they said you know, mom, this makes sense to us now because Mom volunteered for adoption groups.
• 27:55
  George Ott: She kind of hinted at different things, you know, and really this kind of closes the loop and mom makes sense.
• 28:03
  George Ott: And it turns out that her and her sister went monthly for lunches.
• 28:06
  George Ott: After that the two brothers and her kids did things together and it really brought a family together.
• 28:13
  George Ott: And she was calling me.
• 28:14
  George Ott: She called me at midnight and was telling me all this she's crying.
• 28:18
  George Ott: I'm sitting there laying there in bed crying.
• 28:21
  George Ott: You know, I was so happy for Pauline.
• 28:24
  George Ott: Tell me all this, she's crying.
• 28:27
  George Ott: I'm sitting there laying there in bed crying.
• 28:29
  George Ott: I was so happy for Pauline, and it just shows you the power of family.
• 28:32
  George Ott: You know, I've worked over the years on lots of these type of things, bringing families together, and I was lucky.
• 28:39
  George Ott: I never had anything that was super negative.
• 28:42
  George Ott: You know, most of these went really well.
• 28:43
  George Ott: You know, people were really happy that they met a new family member, you know, and it's really heartwarming.
• 28:53
  Crista Cowan: It's interesting because sometimes the heirloom that we receive is another person, not just a box of things.
• 28:58
  Crista Cowan: Exactly Right.
• 28:59
  George Ott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
• 29:00
  George Ott: Yeah, I had a of things, exactly Right.
• 29:01
  George Ott: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
• 29:02
  George Ott: Yeah, I had a.
• 29:03
  George Ott: Do I have time to tell another one.
• 29:05
  George Ott: So I was working in the library, and when I worked at the family library I was there every day.
• 29:13
  George Ott: People could kind of tell if you were a professional or just a hobbyist, right?
• 29:19
  George Ott: So this guy walks up to me and says you're a professional genealogist, aren't you?
• 29:24
  George Ott: Because you can't advertise it or promote yourself in the family's library.
• 29:30
  George Ott: It's a church, the LDS church runs it.
• 29:33
  George Ott: And so I go yeah, he says I really need some help.
• 29:37
  George Ott: I've been here for a day or two and I've been watching you and I'm not getting anywhere.
• 29:40
  George Ott: I says okay, and so we made arrangements, you know, for the financial arrangements and everything and he says here's this thing.
• 29:48
  George Ott: He says I was adopted, I know who my mother was and I really want to find if I have any half siblings.
• 29:58
  George Ott: I says okay.
• 29:59
  George Ott: So I worked with him and everything and, to make the long story short, we figured out that he had a sister.
• 30:07
  George Ott: She was in, I think, around Lake Tahoe somewhere and he contacted her.
• 30:12
  George Ott: And here's the deal she was like 10 years old, 8 or 10 years old when he was born.
• 30:21
  George Ott: Her mother was divorced and was kind of in the middle of life and had him and brought him home for about a month trying to figure out whether she should keep him or adopt him out.
• 30:34
  George Ott: And this girl, little girl, would hold him.
• 30:38
  George Ott: You know what I mean.
• 30:39
  George Ott: And so when she found his sister, she was so excited that she found her little brother that she cuddled right and held and then was put off for adoption and he was a very successful.
• 30:54
  George Ott: He had a lot of florist shops and was really successful.
• 30:57
  George Ott: She was really quite destitute, struggling health-wise and everything, and he really helped her and they had a beautiful relationship.
• 31:05
  George Ott: But here is a case where, you know, she held him and now she was able to get reunited with him.
• 31:16
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 31:17
  George Ott: You know what I mean.
• 31:17
  George Ott: And so there's a lot of stories out there like that, where people need that connection to come back.
• 31:24
  George Ott: Get those connections back together.
• 31:27
  George Ott: Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 31:28
  Crista Cowan: Absolutely Thank you.
• 31:29
  Crista Cowan: George, I could sit and listen to you tell stories all day.
• 31:33
  Crista Cowan: I got plenty more.
• 31:34
  Crista Cowan: Like I said, we may need to have you come back again, but before we wrap up today, I mean, you've had this very long career.
• 31:42
  Crista Cowan: You're now officially retired, but I hear you're still keeping your finger in it.
• 31:46
  George Ott: Oh yeah, I'm doing contract work and client work and so, yeah, I'm keeping busy.
• 31:51
  George Ott: Good, who could ever give it up, right For?
• 31:55
  George Ott: Sure it's, a bug that you have in your bloodstream for the rest of your life, right.
• 31:59
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, for some of us absolutely so.
• 32:01
  Crista Cowan: As you kind of look to the future, what is your hope for the future of family history, of your career, as you continue to dabble in things?
• 32:10
  George Ott: Any ideas.
• 32:10
  George Ott: What I'm hoping is that people will really.
• 32:14
  George Ott: You know, one of the things right now is this world and this country is so divided.
• 32:21
  George Ott: There's so many different ways we can bring people together right, and I think family history is one.
• 32:27
  George Ott: There's a whole other story I could tell you about.
• 32:30
  George Ott: I helped put together a display, a huge display at the Wiesenthal Museum in LA.
• 32:38
  George Ott: The Museum of Tolerance displayed the Wiesenthal Museum in LA, the Museum of Tolerance specifically to bring people together for top people, for being tolerant with family history, and I did that with Billy Crystal.
• 32:49
  George Ott: And that's a whole other story we could talk about.
• 32:53
  George Ott: But what I'm just saying is it just shows you that family history right can really soothe the savage beast and bring people together right, and I really think that I'd love to see family history grow in that area and help bring like a divided country together.
• 33:11
  George Ott: I think it could do it.
• 33:13
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, If it can bring Bob Hope to tears and have him not able to crack a joke and if it can have Jimmy Stewart reflecting on how family history makes him feel the same way.
• 33:22
  Crista Cowan: A discussion with the baby Jesus makes him feel like there is power.
• 33:26
  Crista Cowan: There's power.
• 33:27
  George Ott: There's power there.
• 33:27
  George Ott: There really is.
• 33:28
  Crista Cowan: Well, George, thank you so much for being here.
• 33:30
  George Ott: Oh, this has been a lot of fun.