Lawler English p.3
09/14/19
My Italian History
I recently interviewed my father, Jon Michelon, and I began by asking him about our origin. I first asked, “where did our ancestors come from?”, he quickly responded with “In a little town in France, where Italian troops stayed during an invasion, called ‘Michélon’” “My Great, Great, Great grandfather, Giovanni, an Italian special forces troop who took orders directly from king Victor Emmanuel II, fell in love with my Great Great Great Grandmother Edah, and legend has it he never went back to Italy.” I found this interesting, My great great great great Grandpa left everything behind in Italy, his family, friends, and his army because he fell in love. He said I thought about the reasons my father left it all behind for a girl, and the best one I could think of is compassion. My brothers, sisters, cousins, and parents all are very compassionate people, and I now see where they got it from. My father also went on to tell me about how our DNA got from Italy, to France to Chicago. He told me that Edah gave birth to her son, Francesco, who eventually migrated to Spain, and then back to Italy. From Italy, my fathers grandpa moved to Montreal Canada, and then moving with my father to Chicago when he was young. I loved to hear this because I now know exactly where my blood has been for the last 110 years. The last topic I talked to my dad about was his grandpa, Alvin Cohen-Michelon. My great grandpa was a hustler, who started working at a coffee bean distribution center when he was 14. After working their for 10 years, he began to understand how the coffee business worked. When he was 25, after just getting married to my great great grandma Loraine Cohen-Michelon, Alvin quit his job and began his own company, calling it “Continental Coffee”. After about 20 years of putting blood, sweat, and tears into the company, he sold it. Today, the company who bought my grandpas company, is valued over 5 billion dollars, my father told my grandpa would always say “I worked 20 years, I made a fair amount of money, but If i waited 10 more years, we would have 5 houses instead of 1.” This got me to understand that my great grandfather was a funny and intelligent man, makes me want to meet him more.This activity was quite intriguing because I got to learn where the morals of my family came from, and learn about how my family got to where we are today.
