Rundus: Family reunions wonderful way to reconnect
Raymond J. Rundus
Some years ago, while browsing around in our car near Black Mountain in western North Carolina, I happened to get behind a car bearing license plates from my home state of Kansas. A message on the plate's holder read: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Since the publication in 1900 of L. Frank Baum's fantasy novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,'' and especially after the 1939 appearance of its wonderful film adaptation, my native state has become quite widely known as the "Land of Oz."
Since we have lived for nearly 40 years now in southeastern North Carolina, we have become very aware of the frequency and the significance of both high school and family reunions to the area. It is often still quite important that you know who "your people" are. For instance, I was bemused to find out that one large annual event of this sort invited both "Paits" and "Pates" to attend. I am doubtful if any of the two branches can convince the other to change the spelling of its last name.
More power to them. As of now, only one national (well, really, "international") reunion of the Runduses has been held, but that reunion had led to some very exciting discoveries.
I became at that time fully aware that Australia (both a continent and a nation) was, like L. Frank Baum's imaginary realm, also known as "Oz." Republic County, Kan., and the small town of Munden (very near where my father was born in 1898) were agog with excitement when it was learned, only a month or so before reunion events were to begin, that a previously unknown family of Runduses from Australia were going to be coming!
The children in that community were especially excited when they heard this news. The interpersonal friendship the American and Australian Runduses enjoyed for just a short period of three or four days resulted in some enduring and endearing relationships. We hung out for hours in the evenings, sometimes accompanied by the howling of coyotes, in a part of the motel we began to call "Aussie Corner."
Having made our first contact with one of the Australians via e-mail, I was pleased to find an open, enthusiastic friend in Dianne Groves Rundus, the wife of the elder son of Joseph and Vera Rundus, who were born and raised in the "Old Country" of Czechoslovakia, and the mother of Michael Joseph Rundus and Katherine Rundus. Di at this time was the head of the junior all-girls school of Perth College in Western Australia.
We relished sharing our narratives and descriptions of both the various Rundus limbs on the "family tree" and the customs and traditions of two cultures, cultures which in a sense were separated by the same language.