Congratulations to the nieces!

Speaking at the National Genealogical Society conference today in Las Vegas has relieved The Legal Genealogist from a terrible dilemma: how to be in two places at one time this afternoon.

Because, later today, in two different auditoriums on two different college campuses almost a continent apart, two exceedingly bright and exceedingly dear-to-my-heart young women will be walking across stages and reaching out for those sheepskins that will set them free to go on and try their wings as they fly off to pursue their dreams.

On the east coast, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, my niece Rose St. Clair will receive her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude. Youngest of the four children of my sister Kacy, Rose is on a path that should take her through graduate school to a career in cognitive psychology.

And some 2,000 or so miles to the west, at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, my niece Katya Geissler will receive her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude. Youngest of the four children of my brother Paul, Katya is on a path that should take her through graduate school to a career in medicine and/or biochemistry.

I look back through the pictures in my mind to two very little girls, one dark haired and one blonde, but both with impish smiles and a well-developed sense of the absurd, who learned in about a nanosecond to wrap parents and older siblings (and various assorted relatives like aunts) around their little fingers.

Who stand today proud and tall… and making us so very proud.

Congratulations, Rose and Katya!

The world is waiting, and we can’t wait to see what you do with it.