Patient Zero AKA The First Post

 All diseases start somewhere, and the genealogy bug is no exception. I’m Kira Dawn Foltz, and you can think of me as Patient Zero. I’m here to help spread this disorder to the masses (or at least through the branches of my own tree)!

And what better way to start the infection, than a history in how I caught the illness. My origin story.

The year was 1993. I was 8 years old and in the 4th grade at Calvary Baptist School in Gardena, California, where my father had also attended elementary school (later Calvary Christian Academy, and now home to CrossRoad SouthBay). Mrs. Henken was my teacher. She was also my piano tutor’s wife and a very sweet lady to boot. If only she could have spotted the symptoms back then, who knows in what condition I’d be today! Mrs. Henken assigned us an oral presentation about one of our ancestors. My dad helped me reach out to my Aunt Sandra, the family historian, for information on where we came from. I received a letter from her with a fabulous tale of our immigrant ancestor from England, William Wilcox.

Sandra Lea (Foltz) Vallo, Chardon, Ohio, letter to niece Kira Dawn Foltz, 7 January 1993, Gardena, California, held in private collection by researcher.

That letter was the beginning of my foray into genealogy.

Of course, my storytelling days must have already begun, as I managed to twist this account into a fabrication of lies and unfounded facts of my royal British lineage! I will blame this on my 4th grade imagination. In any case, I nailed the project, which included creating a paper doll of my queen ancestor (yes, even the gender changed) for show & tell with a brilliant emerald fabric gown, gold trim, and a blown up image of my own face as hers. Only recently did I purge this paper doll from my collection, as I was ashamed of its utter nonsense and inaccuracies, though it certainly would have made for a nice addition to this article.

For several years, the disease laid dormant. Much like herpes, it wouldn’t strike again until 2002, a year before high school graduation when I was seeking out scholarship avenues for college (for the record, if it must be noted, only genealogy struck again, not herpes). That’s when I began contemplating joining the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) who offered grants to some of their members. I knew my great grandmother and great aunt, Ethel (Hinman) Eggenberger and Vera (Eggenberger) Wicke, respectively, had joined long, long, long before I was born, and I had learned that becoming a member myself would be rather easy as they had already proved our lineage to a patriot; I would only need to prove lineage to one of them.

You would think that would be a no brainer, but alas, I was a high schooler. Procrastination and laziness might as well have been my middle names. They had far longer lasting symptoms than genealogy, and they won out. While I did attend a few afternoon teas with my local chapter, my interest quickly waned, probably due in part to the severe age gap between myself and other attendees. I didn’t move beyond filling out the initial short-form application, and I didn’t muster up the energy to gather vital record documents for myself, parents, and grandparents. (It is now 17 years later, and I have just restarted this process!)

Once again, the disease took a backseat. It managed to rear its ugly head in 2006 after I transferred from junior college to a four-year university and decided on a future in filmmaking. Filmmakers are storytellers at heart, and I knew that in order to tell authentic stories, I’d need to know mine. I’d need to know where my people came from, where they traveled to, what they were passionate about, how they talked, what they wore, what they struggled with, who they loved, and who they lost. I’d need to know EVERYTHING.

That is when the disease took hold. That is when I officially became infected. That is my origin story.