I grew up with author Mark Hester. We lived on the same street in Bremerton Washington. It was a wonderful place to be a child, and all the neighborhood kids had the best time together…like something right out of The Wonder Years. So today I am happy to present my book review A Sterling Life by Mark Hester my childhood friend.

Before DNA

Long time readers of this blog might remember when I posted about my own family finding out we had a brother who we had never known (see it here). Well before DNA testing it was much easier to keep these kinds of secrets. And A Sterling Life is a book about how my friend Mark discovered all kinds of hidden secrets about his own genetics through DNA and ancestry research.

Genealogy

Hester, like many people, had been researching family history for years before DNA testing became available. But when he did take a DNA test he found some astonishing results that had never come up before. Mark was 25% Jewish. There must be a mistake…no one in his family had ever talked about being Jewish. It was this discovery, and a further decade of wondering and digging that brought Mark to realize who his real grandfather was.

John Danz

If you grew up in the Pacific Northwest like I did, the name John Danz was synonymous with movie theaters. The Sterling Recreation Organization, known as SRO was a common moniker when you went to a movie theater, drive-in or even associated with radio stations. I never thought much about it growing up, and I doubt Mark Hester did either. But Mark discovered that John Danz was his grandfather.

Born Israel Danowsky in Czarist Russian, Danz immigrated to Seattle with his family as a youth. He would grow to be one of the richest and most influential men in Seattle creating a theater empire. His focused and sometimes controversial business savvy would create the very successful Sterling Recreation Organization and help it survive two world wars, the Great Depression and the years long Seattle Amusement Trade strike.

Mark’s maternal grandmother Hazel, is the connecting piece to this puzzle. Although married at the time, Hazel apparently had a relationship with John Danz while working at one of his theaters in 1920. The result of that relationship was Mark’s mother Maxine. It’s unknown if Maxine, or even Hazel knew who the father was…but one can certainly speculate that Hazel knew. She took the secret to her grave.

Family Secrets

We all have family secrets, and none of us should be ashamed of things that happened long before we were born. In fact isn’t it cool how in today’s world we have access to such wonderful technology that brings to light lovely stories like this one. In Mark’s book he also mentions so many names and places familiar to me from my childhood and my years working in Seattle in the 1980’s and 90’s. It was a great story and a great walk down memory lane. Thanks Mark. And thanks to all for reading my book review A Sterling Life by Mark Hester.

See last week’s book review A Wolff in the Family by Francine Falk-Allen. We love it when you pin, comment and share about our book reviews. Thank you.