Giovanni Gianotti, my great-grandfather, left Italy as a young man. Since he would have been twenty-nine years old when his first child was born (Tracy on January 9, 1888), he was probably in his early or mid-twenties when he arrived in northern Minnesota (possibly 1880-1886). The town was Ely, in an area called the Iron Range, not far from the Canadian border. Perhaps the lure was the abundance of mining jobs, but such manual labor did not suit him, as he went into a different line of work soon after arriving. (We know nothing of his father’s line of work back in Turin.) As it turned out, that old mining town became the place he called home for the rest of his life and where he raised his children, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (now affectionately known by its acronym, the BWCA). This fortuitous decision to move to a relatively obscure town in the vast country of the United States was providential for my life, for Ely holds a mystical place in my mind from some of my earliest childhood memories. This is where Grandpa’s farm was, where we spent many summer vacations growing up.

For historical context, Giovanni moved to Ely fifteen to twenty years after the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in the same year. Things would have settled down somewhat by the time Giovanni was old enough to leave Italy on his own, and America was once again an inviting place for immigrants. Upon arrival, he likely would have encountered many who lived during and fought in that war.

But as it turns out, I too lived at a time when there were still Civil War veterans around—well, at least one, and he would have been pretty old. How can that be, you ask? I’ll explain. According to Wikipedia, “Between 250,000 and 420,000 males under 18 were involved in the American Civil War, for the Union and the Confederacy combined. It is estimated that 100,000 Union soldiers were 15 years or younger.” In fact, one boy, named Albert Henry Woolson, who served between the ages of eleven and fifteen, was the last verified surviving Union veteran. He was born in 1850 and died in 1956. I, who am writing this story, was born in 1950; that means I was born while Woolson was still alive—we overlapped by about six years. He lived out his days in Minnesota, so maybe he was a friend of Giovanni, or my grandfather Jack or my father Jack (junior)!

Well, back to Giovanni. At some point, he wandered across the northern US border, where he met a girl from London, Ontario—a full-blooded Irish woman, five years younger than him, by the name of Elizabeth Warrick—whom he married. How they met, we don’t know, but being a young man, he was probably on the lookout. But it begs the question: Why a Canadian-Irish girl, not an American-Italian? Spurred on by the American Homestead Act and the formation in 1867 of the Minnesota Board of Immigration, there were plenty of fellow Italian immigrants to Minnesota, as well as Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, and Germans. And there were Irish immigrants also. Further, given the respect and fondness that his son, Jack, later had for the Ojibwe native peoples in Minnesota, there may have been an opportunity for Giovanni to find a suitable life partner among them. So there were probably plenty of young women to choose from in Minnesota.

Why then cross the border to marry an Irish-Canadian lass? Here you have a full-blooded Italian marrying a full-blooded Irish woman, making their children half and half! (So I am, derivatively, one-eighth Irish and one-eighth Italian, in case the reader is interested in where my Italian last name “Gianotti” comes from—if not interested, you have permission to go back and skip this sentence). Unfortunately, we have no surviving love letters from which to draw. But Elizabeth must have been quite the beauty to draw Giovanni across ethnic, cultural, and national borders to find his perfect mate. A jet-black-haired young man coupled with a flaming red-haired gal must have made for a dynamic matchup! It certainly would explain their oldest boy’s lively and colorful temperament. An additional benefit of this international affair was the dual citizenship status of the children (which helped Jack enlist in the Canadian army for World War I).

Family lore about Giovanni was shrouded for years because of a seldom-mentioned dark secret. A colorful commentary on him would certainly be fascinating, beyond the standard, boring genealogical stuff, but we only had a few things to go on until modern medicine allowed the family to bring the “secret” to the light, without shame. You see, Giovanni (my great-grandfather) died at the age of 54 with a diagnosis of cirrhosis of the liver. His primary occupation was owning a saloon in Ely. He was not known to be an over-drinker, but the evidence at the time led to only one inescapable conclusion: he was a closet alcoholic. No amount of protest from the family could deny the facts. The family knew it could not be true, but the evidence was irrefutable; the facts were the facts. Shame descended on the family.

No family enjoys the reputation of having a father die of alcoholism. The Gianotti family had to live with that, and through the following generations, it was not talked about openly. That is, until my father was hospitalized in danger of dying and diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in—in his early 50s, the same as Giovanni. Dad’s skin had turned bronze, and his body was bloating. The doctors concluded he was an alcoholic. We all knew that couldn’t be true; it was impossible. We knew our dad. No.

Dad’s family physician believed him and began the arduous task of searching for an answer. He uncovered a journal article by a liver specialist discussing a rare condition that showed similar scarring (or cirrhosis) of the liver but included the very same other symptoms Dad had, like an enormous overload of iron in the body. It was a “disease” called hemochromatosis, and there were only four known cases in the world at that time. Fortunately, that specialist happened to be visiting our area and agreed to examine my dad. He concluded that this condition, not alcohol abuse, was the cause of the symptoms.

Public service announcement: The CDC describes the condition this way: “Hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is a genetic disease that alters the body’s ability to regulate iron absorption. If correctly diagnosed, HH is easily and effectively treated, but if untreated, it can lead to severe organ damage. Caucasians of northern European descent are at highest risk. An estimated one million people in the United States have hereditary hemochromatosis.” The CDC says that many people who have this condition don’t know they have it, but if left untreated, it can lead to severe organ damage.

My father almost died of the same thing as my great-grandfather Giovanni. And it had nothing to do with alcohol! Unfortunately, this medical knowledge was not available when Giovanni lived. Incidentally, there is another positive side to this story. The typical treatment for HH (as it is abbreviated) is to have periodic phlebotomies (removing a unit of blood)—and in many places, this can be done through regular blood donations to the Red Cross! A win-win situation.

So we can now bring the dark family secret out of the closet and neutralize the shame. Giovanni was not an alcoholic, as his immediate family insisted. He had hemochromatosis! No more dark secret to hide!

This story reminds me of Mary of Nazareth, who lived her entire life with people thinking she had been unfaithful to her fiancé Joseph. He wasn’t the earthly father of Jesus, and everyone knew that; she couldn’t deny it. They lived with what seemed like an openly dark secret and the inevitable innuendoes from harsh critics. But she may have gotten special meaning from what her son Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). She already knew the truth of her pregnancy, but she was set free from the control of what others thought of her.

Of course, Jesus was talking about the spiritual truth that includes being free from the lies and destructiveness of sin. We can be freed from the shame that so easily controls us, whether genuine, deserved shame or pseudo-shame imposed by others to control or judge us. When we lay everything openly before God, no more shame can control us. He forgives even the darkest things in our lives. The only catch is that we must come to the cross. Adam and Eve tried to cover their shame with fig leaves, but God replaced those with the skin of animals, which required a death. God covers our shame with the death of Jesus Christ on the cross so that we would be covered with His love and acceptance.

Lord, I bring all my shame to the foot of the cross. Thank You that I have no more fear of being exposed before You, for You have already taken it away!