Well, well, well, family secrets will come out sooner or later—in this case, about eighty years later! Are there no secrets anymore? No, there were no murders in my family tree, no spy stories where a family member lived a double life. I am sure there are some juicy escapades that would make for fun reading, but many are forever lost in the musty cellar of history, and they are better not remembered anyway. However …

Dateline: November 3, 1943, St. Cloud Daily Times newspaper, the icon of my childhood memories, veteran of World War I, commander of the Ely American Legion Post, organizer of the National Little League baseball championship in Ely, member of the Ely Athletic Hall of Fame, city maintenance worker, fireman, Harley-Davidson dealer, mink farmer, canoe and outdoor enthusiast, hunter, fisherman, and a man totally dedicated to his grandchildren for two weeks every summer—this man, my grandfather,  had an indiscretion that has gone incognito in our family lore until now. Cursory research on the internet turned up a criminal charge, to which he confessed!

The report was displayed for all to see on page 9, ironically just below a column on war heroes. The headline read, “Sentencing to Be On November 22.” This was at the height of World War II; his son (my father), Jack, Jr., was serving in the army, training for the Normandy invasion now known as D-Day. Jack Gianotti, Sr. (about fifty-three years old at the time) was listed along with two other members of the Ely School Board as having “pleaded guilty to charges of bribery or corrupt practices growing out of school contracts.” My grandpa was a convicted briber!

Well, why expose this dirty secret for everyone to see, especially my genealogical downline? The more we know about history, the more we can learn from others’ experiences—even those that don’t make it into the history books. Piecing together what I know of Gramps personally and from my father’s general characterization of him, the backstory is easy to imaginatively reconstruct. The population of Ely in those days hovered around six thousand (though in recent years, it has dropped to about 3,230). Jack was born and raised there, worked for the city, etc., etc. His daughter-in-law Margaret came from the family of a prominent businessman in town (Joseph Mantel) who was the first Ely resident to own a motorcar (as they were called in those days). Everyone else was still relying on actual horsepower. Word has it that Joseph’s new vehicle was a Model T Ford, one of the first ten thousand produced in 1909. Others speculate that his vehicle may have been from the batch in 1913 that came off the first moving assembly line, which boasted an annual output of 202,667. (But one must be careful with speculation that is totally unfounded, so we will stay with the 1909 date.) The point is that by 1943, Jack, Sr. was well connected.

He was a big fish in a small pond (a whale of a giant in my childhood mind). Anyone acquainted with small-town life knows how things work. There are rules and there are favors. There are over-the-table and under-the-table dealings. Business in those days was often conducted with a handshake or a wink, and the political atmosphere heated up from time to time as people deliberated about who would be elected mayor or board member and get their pet projects passed and paid for.

The article didn’t provide specifics of the crime or what sentence he had to serve. I can imagine any number of scenarios: he was trying to cut through the red tape in board meetings and offered to buy someone dinner or a six-pack, or conveniently leave a load of firewood at an agreed-upon drop-off spot, to get something done. Or maybe he side-stepped school budget restrictions by cutting a deal with a contractor in exchange for a discount at his Harley dealership. I can imagine the courtroom of Judge Edward Freeman, probably a fishing or hunting buddy of Jack’s, seeing the perpetrators standing before him, snickering, “Jack, what’s it this time?” Jack responds, “Ed, you know the proposition would have never passed without a little palm greasing …” “Jack, in this courtroom, you are to refer to me as ‘Your honor.’ ” “OK, Ed, whatever you say.” The issue was probably something everyone knew about (wink, wink), engaged in, and was happy about—thankful that Jack and his buddies broke through the budgetary limitations and pulled the project off. Too bad someone got sore about it and pressed charges. In a small town, it does no good to push the legal details too far, for you all have to live together. I imagine a slap on the hand or a small fine was sufficient to maintain a certain legal decorum.

The above is certainly a hypothesis, particularly as the teller of this story has a hero-image of the man to preserve (Jack was, after all, my grandpa). Maybe this is where another author would make the point that we are all flawed individuals, for who among us hasn’t broken the legal speed limit by a few miles per hour, or offered a milkshake or two to move ahead of the line? Let him without sin cast the first stone!

But what I find notable is how much detail about our lives is in the public domain, even from so many years ago—long, long, long before the internet turned our time period in history into “The Information Age.” How much more now!

Even if some cosmic disaster happens and the World Wide Web self-destructs into a digital black hole, and every bit and byte is lost, the Creator God of the universe still knows and continues to remember everything about us. Nothing is lost on Him! We best keep an open book before Him, with regular honest confession, for we can’t keep any secrets from Him. Faith dares to believe that He sees it all—He knows our deepest, darkest sins and indiscretions—yet He loves us so much that He sent His Son Jesus to die for us. God doesn’t need artificial intelligence to scan the World Wide Web; He already knows everything about you and me.