It all began...

It all began here, in Flatbush, which is in Brooklyn, N.Y. There, Mel Kohn (above left) and my mom, Beatrice Spitz, met and dated in the late 1950s.

They hooked up and went out West and ... pop, I was born in late 1959. But by then, my father had headed back East and Mom had gone through the pregnancy living with friends Sheila and Jack Bailey, and then with her sister, my Aunt Sukee and my cousin David Spitz. Later, she and I lived with my Aunt Faye and Uncle Chip Levine and their two daughters, Amy and Stacey.

When I was a little more than a year old we moved back to Brooklyn, to the home of my grandparents Sam and Yetta Spitz. (I learned only recently that I was living about a mile or so from my Aunt Joan Kohn and her two sons, Alan and Jeffery.

But for the next 47 years, I'd hear nothing of my father -- or his new family. I had no idea they existed and they didn't really know I existed except in theory.