I never saw Dad's cousin again. He died in 1998. The following year his name was inscribed in the USAF Special Operations Force Hall of Fame at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. He had been in Burma, not that I'd doubted it and not that he'd boasted about it.

Typical Yank.

His wife Carol, a school teacher for almost 50 years, died only last month, aged 95. Her obituary in The Salem News reported that at one time she'd taught in Arlington, Virginia. And there was this: "All her life, she had a knack for hobnobbing with the famous, and while in Virginia often played golf with Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel … She also introduced many of her students to Robert's brother, president John F. Kennedy, when he was still a senator representing Massachusetts."

Typical Yanks, my distant relatives. Descendants of migrants, community-minded, ordinary, decent, totally unremarkable.

And they'd "hobnobbed" with the Kennedys, the grandchildren of migrants, including one who became president when the idea of a Catholic in the White House was almost as unthinkable as, well, an African-American in the White House.

(Below an image Aussies Surely don't Want)