Diane Finnegan
def@strauss.udel.edu

I am the third and youngest child to my father, Gerald, and my mother Anna. I am the 23rd of 23 grandchildren on my father's side and the 6th of 7 grandchildren on my mother's side. I am very proud of my family back ground and history. It tells a story a hard work and sheer determination.

My father was the youngest of 6 children, he was born in the South Bronx, N.Y. His parents were immigrants from Ireland in the early 1920's. My grandmother worked as a maid and my grandfather worked as a carpenter-- eventually they were able to move their family to the North Bronx where my father spent his adolesence. My grandparents struggled so that their children and their grand children would never have to experience the poverty they had endured. They lived for their children.

My mother is of English desent and jokes that her family came over on the Mayflower. Her father was a composer and her mother was a school teacher. Sadly, my grandmother was widowed at a very young age and left with two young children to raise, my mother and her older brother. Along with my great grand mother who was also a widow and a teacher, she successfully raised the two children. Eventually she remarried and had another daughter.

Both sides of my family are Roman Catholics and that is how my brother, sister, and I were brought up also. I look back at both sides of my family with pride and I give thanks for all the unselfish hard work they did to help their families. The common bond shared by both my parent's families is a hard work ethic. I was raised to value education, hard work, and most of all family- with out which I would be nothing.