Diane Finds She's a True Kentucky Woman

Brave and Stubborn

There's bravery, but also another trait both sides share: stubborness.

Smolenyak found documents showing one brother disinheriting the other.

"In fact, he even takes pains to say, 'If James shows up with his kids, no one gets anything,'" she said.

And she found fierce passion in my family lineage, too. My great-grandfather James, age 11, carried a 2-year-old girl onto a ship bound for America. Years later, he went in search of her, and eventually found and married his grown-up true love.

So here's to my grandparents -- farmers, the children of farmers, fighters and mountain pioneers -- who did what they could to make sure their children were educated in a rough and beautiful land.

Here's to the perceptive reader Nettie Sawyer, the wry storyteller and politician Pappy Jim, my big-hearted and tireless Grandma Nora, and the scrappy force of nature, Foxie Dunagan.

I am in every way their daughter, like the sons of Italian and Irish immigrants, Chris and Sam, and Robin, the daughter of trailblazing men and women who saw a bold new future.

The four of us are a kind of family, too, who get to say "good morning, America," and everyday know what America means.