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Alison Nissen: Hello and welcome to another edition of the Florida writer. Podcast with your host.
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Alison Nissen: Alison Nissen. And today I'm so lucky to be with Edward de Genghi. Did I get your name close.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It's Edward Degan, so it's a soft G at the end.
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Alison Nissen: Normally, I'd make a big show of asking. But okay, Edward Deganji, welcome to the Farrider. Podcast.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Thank you so much for the invitation to join you, Alison. I appreciate it.
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Alison Nissen: Could you give us a 60 s elevator pitch about who you are and what you write.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Sure. I am approaching my 70 sixth birthday, and I shudder every time I say that my wife and I, my wife Linda and I have been married for 36 years. We both grew up in the New York City area.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I'll have
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Edward Di Gangi NC: made the rounds we've got from New York City to Houston, Texas, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we're now down here in Hillsborough, North Carolina. All of those moves were precipitated by
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Edward Di Gangi NC: employment. Opportunities. They have a long history as a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: in the executive roles in customer service.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So I am retired now, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: several years ago began to research the the identity of the woman who would place me for adoption at the time of my birth, and I had never, never really delved into that before, and that led me to write a book called The Gift Best Given.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I am now working on a sequel to that book.
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Alison Nissen: Wow! That is an incredible story as to why you started writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It. It is I, you know, in my professional career I did lots and lots of professional writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Some my employees would probably say much of it was creative. I I don't like to think so, but you know it was putting the best spins sometimes on things that were not terribly pleasant.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: but it was. It was very forthright. I had done some
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Edward Di Gangi NC: journal writing. At one time I was very heavily involved with appaloosa horses.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I wrote about a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: horse issues. I similar similarly
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Edward Di Gangi NC: enjoy fly fishing, and I've written some about fly fishing as well. So
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Edward Di Gangi NC: so I've I've had my fingers in a couple of different places, writing-wise.
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Alison Nissen: Alright, but delving into this this memoir, it sounds really interesting. So you were adopted at the time of your birth, yet you waited until you were an adult
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Alison Nissen: to try to find your mom.
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Alison Nissen: So how old were you when you began your search.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, it's you're right. I I was adopted at the time of my birth. I had, I was I. I was blessed with a very, very positive adoption experience.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I was adopted by a couple who
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who could not have loved their natural born child any more than they did me, and I I knew I was adopted. I really had no inclination to go. Looking periodically, I would think she. I wonder
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Edward Di Gangi NC: wonder who my mother was, and in my head. I had the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the stereotypical picture of the High School girl who
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Edward Di Gangi NC: quote unquote, got into trouble, got sent away, had a baby taken from her, and and then went on to yeah, to a career as a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: hostile worker or a 5 and dime sales lady something like that, and virtually never thought about who my father might have been.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I you know I essentially had no terrible, you know, interest in pursuing that, until one day I, as I was approaching my 60 ninth birthday. So that's a long time start to finish.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: My wife and I were in a cemetery up in New Jersey, where the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: family of my adoptive mother what was interred.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and standing over my adoptive mother's parents Graves. So these would have been my grandparents.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It just sort of hit me. There are a couple of things that stirred it, but I said, it'll be interesting to
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Edward Di Gangi NC: to go and look into their background and find out what their history was. I knew they were from Ukraine, that they had come here, probably around the turn of the twentieth century.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and so when we got home to do to North Carolina. I went to the library, got onto ancestry.com
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Edward Di Gangi NC: typed in names and started getting pretty much a wealth of information back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and there was a moment where I was sitting there thinking, if it's this easy.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I said, I bet I could probably find something about the woman who placed me for adoption.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I had a head start on that.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: In that my adoption had been privately arranged.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I knew in a folder of papers of my birth mother, who had been long deceased.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: There was a piece of paper which was actually my adoption decree.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and there was a name on that decreed that I did not recognize the times. I looked at it, and instinctively I knew it had to be my birth mother.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So I took that name. I started plugging that into ancestry. And just you know that that's where the real journey began.
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Alison Nissen: So you
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Alison Nissen: decided to
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Alison Nissen: look into ancestry.com you found, I assume you found who your mother was. Did you find out who your father was as well.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, yeah, I found out who my mother was. And that's yeah. There really is the crux of the story. But at the same, actually a little bit before I had started this search, I sent in a DNA sample again to ancestry.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and all I wanted to know from that sample is what my ethnicity was.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I had always identified through my adoptive parents. My adoptive father was Sicilian.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: my adaptive mother was Ukrainian, and I was just curious. What am yeah, what was I? Truly?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So I sent that sample in, and it was not until a couple of months after I'd really delved into the search for my mother
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Edward Di Gangi NC: that I get the results back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I found out I was about 77% Eastern European, and that was divided between Poland and Ukraine, and and actually a pretty good
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Edward Di Gangi NC: chunk of Ashkenazi Jew.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and then a smaller piece of Northern European and Great Britain.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But I also got back the the proverbial list of 2,000 close relatives.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and at the top of that list was a name I didn't recognize, and by that time I I really was very familiar with all of the names in my birth mother's family.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I saw this name, and it was identified as a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I think ancestry's nomenclature is first cousin, close relative.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I think, okay, this guy's my first cousin.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Then through him I can figure out who my birth father is.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and you know you always hear the stories of folks who are are pursuing these
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Edward Di Gangi NC: things through DNA that they'll reach out to somebody and never hear anything back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I reached out to this contact, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: within 10 min he had contacted me back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and in fairly short order.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: short order being, you know, an hour, 2 h we determined that he and I were half brothers.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and he was able to give me a fairly
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Edward Di Gangi NC: good wealth of information about who my, you know who my father was, and really, you know, putting it into the perspective of my mother's life.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: You know, I was the product of a summer romance.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and my guess is, my father never knew I existed.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But yeah, biologically. Now, at least I have. Yeah, I've got that
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Edward Di Gangi NC: that space filled on the family tree. I know about him. I have. Yeah, I've met with my
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Edward Di Gangi NC: with my half brother, and it said, It's quite interesting.
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Alison Nissen: At 1 point he decided that all this would just make a great memoir.
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Alison Nissen: What was that inspiration.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, you know, I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I was doing my research. And I've I've always said, if yeah, if my initial
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Edward Di Gangi NC: thought about my mother was correct that she became the postal clerk or the lady at the 5 and dime there would have been no memoir.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know. I I would have known the story, and I would have known what it was. But what I found out when I started to research was, my mother was not a high school girl.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: She was 23 years old when I was born.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I found out that she was approaching the height of her career as a celebrity performer in the big ice skating spectaculars of the 1940 s, and then the 1950 s.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was, yeah, I was a very, very unplanned interruption to that life.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But yeah, the more I delved into her background.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: both from standpoint of her career, and also how she managed
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Edward Di Gangi NC: her pregnancy virtually totally in secret, and then my, so my subsequent adoption
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Edward Di Gangi NC: that just you know, it kept on
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Edward Di Gangi NC: leading bigger and bigger pieces. And I was. I was. I was taking notes. I was writing chapters.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and somebody, you know, both my wife and another good friend, who
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who is a published author, kept in saying, You really need to make a book out of this.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and the story lent itself to a book because it moved very nice and nicely in linear fashion.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: sort of came to that. So that head where? Yeah, I arrived.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And yeah, then then proceeded from there. And that's that's where the sequel is going.
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Alison Nissen: That is fascinating, that is fascinating. So you have mentioned before that you wrote
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Alison Nissen: many things in your in your life.
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Alison Nissen: What about the writing process for this.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, you know, as I said, Yeah, I I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: or I didn't say I didn't never intended to write a book. I never intended to find a story honestly, but as I started to reveal pieces I started to record the details of those.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and my wife found me a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: a memoir group at one of our local libraries, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: in the end it turned out that it was myself and the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the person facilitating the group, or pretty much the group.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So we would meet periodically, and I would write my piece, and she was a very interesting older woman, who, you know, who would come, and she would. She was writing the same things and talking about it. So that was the start. And then I moved on to another writing group as well, and both of those gave me the discipline to know that I,
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Edward Di Gangi NC: if I was to participate in the group, I knew I had to have something in black and white to take to the group.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But the story was interesting enough, and it was giving enough in that. Every day seemed like a a new discovery that I was just constantly writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and you know I would gather up information. I'd sit down and I would write.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I had a again this other individual who encouraged me to make write the book.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: He and I would probably 3, 4 days a week
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Edward Di Gangi NC: needed a local co-OP market here in town.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and we'd meet about 8 Am. We'd have coffee, and we'd talk for a while. 9 Am. We would go upstairs to the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: to the local public library, and he was working on a book, and I was working on my book, and and we'd probably sit there for a good 3 h, 4 days a week writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and so it was. It was a good discipline.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: He's a very good discipline.
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Alison Nissen: So did you plot everything out, or or did you just do it by the seat of your pants?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, I I think in this case I was a pancer.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But I think I was gifted with the fact that this was
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Edward Di Gangi NC: kind of a linear story. You know. I I took it from.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know, obviously my search for details.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: but also, as I was discovering my mother's story.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know. She left home in New York City at the age of 17.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: In 1942.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Her parents somehow allowed her to
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Edward Di Gangi NC: get on a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: on a train that was crossing the United States and and going to Vancouver, British Columbia, to pursue her career.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was able to trace everything that she did over the next 5 years to the time that she came back to New York City in secret.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and manage both her pregnancy and my adoption, unknown to anyone but her oldest sister and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and the sister's husband. So that laid out, you know, in very linear fashion.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So she gifted me there with an outline.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, she she had kind of a plot for me.
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Alison Nissen: How did you discover all this information?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, I yeah. I was gifted in that, you know, being in the public eye and the 19 in the 19 forties ice skating was a big thing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It was very big, and so I I was able to pull things from personal items, from ancestry, you know.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: dot com. But newspapers.com. You could go in and plug in
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Edward Di Gangi NC: her name, or you could plug in the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the tour that she was with
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Edward Di Gangi NC: billboard magazine.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I think, has existed since sometime like 1914,
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and they have a remarkable remarkable index to their archives, which are all digitized.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and that took lots and lots of searching. But you could, you could basically go in by week and flip through 80 pages
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Edward Di Gangi NC: of each week. And and yeah, and that that took a lot of work.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But yeah, every now and then I would just glean some. Yeah, some special little piece.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And the other part is, I discovered a number of people still alive.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who knew my mother in one facet of her, her life or not, and they were just ever so.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yes, so generous in sharing. And I've
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the book talks about my encounter with some antique dealers
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who had purchased a carton of my mother's Memorabilia at an auction in Atlanta in 19.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I'm sorry in 2012.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And yeah, and I made contact with them. It was just. It's kind of a very
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Edward Di Gangi NC: serendipitous contact that we that we were able to make at all.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And they had this information.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: this box 5 years later, and they said, Come on down. You need to see it.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and my wife and I travel down there to see it, and they push it across the table and said, We've just been holding this for you. It's yours.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And it had documents from my mother had loads of promotional photographs.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It had one of her first scrapbooks.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and so it was a remarkable treasure trove.
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Alison Nissen: That really is amazing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, not many people are as lucky.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah, I imagine this pub publishing experience for you was really interesting.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It was very much so, you know I I think I I approach the publishing experience very naively.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I went in thinking that well, just write my proposal. Send it off to a publisher. They will send me money, and I will send them manuscript.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and that didn't happen. You're not surprised to hear that I I eventually wary. I believe, 79, or 80 agents.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and as I did that, I think my queries got better and better. I'll ultimately did get some very, very
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Edward Di Gangi NC: brief interest from a couple of them, sent off pieces of the manuscript, and never heard anything again.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was sitting there at my, you know, this is.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It's probably now 70, 71 years old, thinking my life is too short
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Edward Di Gangi NC: to be playing this game. And then, also realizing that.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know, by the time you find an agent
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Edward Di Gangi NC: it will typically be one or 2 years sometimes before they can find a a buyer for the manuscript, and then again, another one or 2 years before that manuscript goes to print.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was learning more and more and more about independent publishing. At that point
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I talked to some small indie presses, some hybrids.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and ultimately I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I said, I'm gonna do this on my own.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I found myself
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Edward Di Gangi NC: someone who I thought was a very good editor.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I believe the book reflects that in the end
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I found a book designer.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was very
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Edward Di Gangi NC: fortunate to have a a friend who pointed me to a graphic artist who said, for $100 and 6 pack of beer, I'll do a cover for you.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and he's got his beer, and he's got us $100, and I have my cover, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and he's actually done a revision to that cover lately, because the book was re was re-released as a large print as a, and a hard copy as well.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I I I went to print with it, and it's
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Edward Di Gangi NC: it was a learning experience, but I think a very positive one.
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Alison Nissen: Wow! That's fantastic. Well.
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Alison Nissen: Edward, get okay. I'm gonna get this wrong, Edward Degan.
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Alison Nissen: How'd I do.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: You did fine.
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Alison Nissen: How can people get in touch with you? How can they discover more about your journey and your book?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, the book is available through any bookseller, so it's widely available. Any brick and mortar store, or an online retailer. I also sell the book directly from my website, it'd be happy to
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Edward Di Gangi NC: personalize it and autograph it and send it out. Typically goes out. The same day I received the order. And my website is WWW. Gangji, author Com.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And there's more information about myself and the book there.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And yet the book is also available in ebook format and in many libraries as well on Upla and in Libby.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So if you don't care to purchase the book.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: yeah, it's typically available through your library in ebook, format.
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Alison Nissen: Well, that's fantastic. Are you ready to switch to our rapid fire questions.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I'll take a chance.
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Alison Nissen: If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Historical figure sort of narrows it down. And I've I've thought about this a lot. I would like to have dinner with Pete Seeger, the late folks singer.
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Alison Nissen: Alright! That would be a fun one. I'd like to be a fly on that wall.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, yeah, he was. He was a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: quite the interesting person. Yeah, he he tolerated the Mccarthy era. He fought in the Spanish American war, and he saw an awful lot of things be during the course of his life. He's he's quite a great man.
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Alison Nissen: Do you play a musical instrument.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: again, you're yeah. I do play in this. I'm I play guitar. I have not played very much in recent years, but I I used to play quite a bit. As a matter of fact, at one time this goes back to the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: late 1960 S. Which was the the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: era of of folk, music and protest music. I I even had a song published in the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: in a magazine called Broadside, and they were very democratic, and they would list all of the people whose songs were listed above in that magazine, and I appeared above Bob Dylan's name.
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Alison Nissen: Wow! If you could. Time, travel.
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Alison Nissen: present, future, I guess we're already present. There's no need to travel there. Where would you go? And why.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, that's an interesting question.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, I've had the Priv, yeah, that's 76 is a is a privilege, you know, because you've seen so much. And I I think I'd be very interested to see what? Yeah, the turn of the century in the United States looked like. So that period right around, you know, 1899, going into the 19 hundreds. I think they're just such remarkable progress at that point.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know, people who had never seen cars, people who had never seen electric lights.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I'd like to see the look on people's faces.
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Alison Nissen: Edward da Ganji. Thank you so much for stopping by.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, I appreciate the invitation. Thank you for having me here.
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Alison Nissen: You have been listening to another edition of the Florida writer, podcast with your host, Alison, Nissen
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Alison Nissen: allison out.
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Alison Nissen: we're all done.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, well, thank you.
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Alison Nissen: Edward Degani is a retired customer service executive, who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
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Alison Nissen: with his wife Linda.
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Alison Nissen: Edward Daganji was adopted at the time of his birth and his first book.
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Alison Nissen: The Gift best given, a memoir recounts his late adulthood search for the identity of his birth, mother, and the unexpected discoveries he made during the course of this journey
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Alison Nissen: for more information about
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Alison Nissen: Edward, visit him on the web
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Alison Nissen: at Daganji. author.com
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Alison Nissen: for more information about the Florida Writers Association. Visit us at Florida. writers.org
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Alison Nissen: until next time.
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Alison Nissen: Hello and welcome to another edition of the Florida writer. Podcast with your host.
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Alison Nissen: Alison Nissen. And today I'm so lucky to be with Edward de Genghi. Did I get your name close.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It's Edward Degan, so it's a soft G at the end.
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Alison Nissen: Normally, I'd make a big show of asking. But okay, Edward Deganji, welcome to the Farrider. Podcast.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Thank you so much for the invitation to join you, Alison. I appreciate it.
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Alison Nissen: Could you give us a 60 s elevator pitch about who you are and what you write.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Sure. I am approaching my 70 sixth birthday, and I shudder every time I say that my wife and I, my wife Linda and I have been married for 36 years. We both grew up in the New York City area.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I'll have
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Edward Di Gangi NC: made the rounds we've got from New York City to Houston, Texas, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we're now down here in Hillsborough, North Carolina. All of those moves were precipitated by
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Edward Di Gangi NC: employment. Opportunities. They have a long history as a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: in the executive roles in customer service.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So I am retired now, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: several years ago began to research the the identity of the woman who would place me for adoption at the time of my birth, and I had never, never really delved into that before, and that led me to write a book called The Gift Best Given.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I am now working on a sequel to that book.
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Alison Nissen: Wow! That is an incredible story as to why you started writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It. It is I, you know, in my professional career I did lots and lots of professional writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Some my employees would probably say much of it was creative. I I don't like to think so, but you know it was putting the best spins sometimes on things that were not terribly pleasant.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: but it was. It was very forthright. I had done some
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Edward Di Gangi NC: journal writing. At one time I was very heavily involved with appaloosa horses.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I wrote about a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: horse issues. I similar similarly
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Edward Di Gangi NC: enjoy fly fishing, and I've written some about fly fishing as well. So
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Edward Di Gangi NC: so I've I've had my fingers in a couple of different places, writing-wise.
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Alison Nissen: Alright, but delving into this this memoir, it sounds really interesting. So you were adopted at the time of your birth, yet you waited until you were an adult
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Alison Nissen: to try to find your mom.
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Alison Nissen: So how old were you when you began your search.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, it's you're right. I I was adopted at the time of my birth. I had, I was I. I was blessed with a very, very positive adoption experience.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I was adopted by a couple who
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who could not have loved their natural born child any more than they did me, and I I knew I was adopted. I really had no inclination to go. Looking periodically, I would think she. I wonder
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Edward Di Gangi NC: wonder who my mother was, and in my head. I had the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the stereotypical picture of the High School girl who
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Edward Di Gangi NC: quote unquote, got into trouble, got sent away, had a baby taken from her, and and then went on to yeah, to a career as a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: hostile worker or a 5 and dime sales lady something like that, and virtually never thought about who my father might have been.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I you know I essentially had no terrible, you know, interest in pursuing that, until one day I, as I was approaching my 60 ninth birthday. So that's a long time start to finish.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: My wife and I were in a cemetery up in New Jersey, where the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: family of my adoptive mother what was interred.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and standing over my adoptive mother's parents Graves. So these would have been my grandparents.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It just sort of hit me. There are a couple of things that stirred it, but I said, it'll be interesting to
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Edward Di Gangi NC: to go and look into their background and find out what their history was. I knew they were from Ukraine, that they had come here, probably around the turn of the twentieth century.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and so when we got home to do to North Carolina. I went to the library, got onto ancestry.com
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Edward Di Gangi NC: typed in names and started getting pretty much a wealth of information back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and there was a moment where I was sitting there thinking, if it's this easy.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I said, I bet I could probably find something about the woman who placed me for adoption.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I had a head start on that.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: In that my adoption had been privately arranged.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I knew in a folder of papers of my birth mother, who had been long deceased.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: There was a piece of paper which was actually my adoption decree.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and there was a name on that decreed that I did not recognize the times. I looked at it, and instinctively I knew it had to be my birth mother.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So I took that name. I started plugging that into ancestry. And just you know that that's where the real journey began.
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Alison Nissen: So you
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Alison Nissen: decided to
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Alison Nissen: look into ancestry.com you found, I assume you found who your mother was. Did you find out who your father was as well.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, yeah, I found out who my mother was. And that's yeah. There really is the crux of the story. But at the same, actually a little bit before I had started this search, I sent in a DNA sample again to ancestry.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and all I wanted to know from that sample is what my ethnicity was.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I had always identified through my adoptive parents. My adoptive father was Sicilian.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: my adaptive mother was Ukrainian, and I was just curious. What am yeah, what was I? Truly?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So I sent that sample in, and it was not until a couple of months after I'd really delved into the search for my mother
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Edward Di Gangi NC: that I get the results back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I found out I was about 77% Eastern European, and that was divided between Poland and Ukraine, and and actually a pretty good
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Edward Di Gangi NC: chunk of Ashkenazi Jew.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and then a smaller piece of Northern European and Great Britain.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But I also got back the the proverbial list of 2,000 close relatives.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and at the top of that list was a name I didn't recognize, and by that time I I really was very familiar with all of the names in my birth mother's family.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I saw this name, and it was identified as a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I think ancestry's nomenclature is first cousin, close relative.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I think, okay, this guy's my first cousin.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Then through him I can figure out who my birth father is.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and you know you always hear the stories of folks who are are pursuing these
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Edward Di Gangi NC: things through DNA that they'll reach out to somebody and never hear anything back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I reached out to this contact, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: within 10 min he had contacted me back.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and in fairly short order.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: short order being, you know, an hour, 2 h we determined that he and I were half brothers.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and he was able to give me a fairly
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Edward Di Gangi NC: good wealth of information about who my, you know who my father was, and really, you know, putting it into the perspective of my mother's life.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: You know, I was the product of a summer romance.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and my guess is, my father never knew I existed.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But yeah, biologically. Now, at least I have. Yeah, I've got that
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Edward Di Gangi NC: that space filled on the family tree. I know about him. I have. Yeah, I've met with my
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Edward Di Gangi NC: with my half brother, and it said, It's quite interesting.
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Alison Nissen: At 1 point he decided that all this would just make a great memoir.
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Alison Nissen: What was that inspiration.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, you know, I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I was doing my research. And I've I've always said, if yeah, if my initial
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Edward Di Gangi NC: thought about my mother was correct that she became the postal clerk or the lady at the 5 and dime there would have been no memoir.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know. I I would have known the story, and I would have known what it was. But what I found out when I started to research was, my mother was not a high school girl.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: She was 23 years old when I was born.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I found out that she was approaching the height of her career as a celebrity performer in the big ice skating spectaculars of the 1940 s, and then the 1950 s.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was, yeah, I was a very, very unplanned interruption to that life.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But yeah, the more I delved into her background.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: both from standpoint of her career, and also how she managed
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Edward Di Gangi NC: her pregnancy virtually totally in secret, and then my, so my subsequent adoption
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Edward Di Gangi NC: that just you know, it kept on
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Edward Di Gangi NC: leading bigger and bigger pieces. And I was. I was. I was taking notes. I was writing chapters.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and somebody, you know, both my wife and another good friend, who
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who is a published author, kept in saying, You really need to make a book out of this.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and the story lent itself to a book because it moved very nice and nicely in linear fashion.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: sort of came to that. So that head where? Yeah, I arrived.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And yeah, then then proceeded from there. And that's that's where the sequel is going.
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Alison Nissen: That is fascinating, that is fascinating. So you have mentioned before that you wrote
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Alison Nissen: many things in your in your life.
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Alison Nissen: What about the writing process for this.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, you know, as I said, Yeah, I I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: or I didn't say I didn't never intended to write a book. I never intended to find a story honestly, but as I started to reveal pieces I started to record the details of those.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and my wife found me a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: a memoir group at one of our local libraries, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: in the end it turned out that it was myself and the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the person facilitating the group, or pretty much the group.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So we would meet periodically, and I would write my piece, and she was a very interesting older woman, who, you know, who would come, and she would. She was writing the same things and talking about it. So that was the start. And then I moved on to another writing group as well, and both of those gave me the discipline to know that I,
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Edward Di Gangi NC: if I was to participate in the group, I knew I had to have something in black and white to take to the group.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But the story was interesting enough, and it was giving enough in that. Every day seemed like a a new discovery that I was just constantly writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and you know I would gather up information. I'd sit down and I would write.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I had a again this other individual who encouraged me to make write the book.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: He and I would probably 3, 4 days a week
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Edward Di Gangi NC: needed a local co-OP market here in town.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and we'd meet about 8 Am. We'd have coffee, and we'd talk for a while. 9 Am. We would go upstairs to the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: to the local public library, and he was working on a book, and I was working on my book, and and we'd probably sit there for a good 3 h, 4 days a week writing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and so it was. It was a good discipline.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: He's a very good discipline.
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Alison Nissen: So did you plot everything out, or or did you just do it by the seat of your pants?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, I I think in this case I was a pancer.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But I think I was gifted with the fact that this was
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Edward Di Gangi NC: kind of a linear story. You know. I I took it from.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know, obviously my search for details.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: but also, as I was discovering my mother's story.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know. She left home in New York City at the age of 17.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: In 1942.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Her parents somehow allowed her to
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Edward Di Gangi NC: get on a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: on a train that was crossing the United States and and going to Vancouver, British Columbia, to pursue her career.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was able to trace everything that she did over the next 5 years to the time that she came back to New York City in secret.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and manage both her pregnancy and my adoption, unknown to anyone but her oldest sister and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and the sister's husband. So that laid out, you know, in very linear fashion.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So she gifted me there with an outline.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, she she had kind of a plot for me.
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Alison Nissen: How did you discover all this information?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, I yeah. I was gifted in that, you know, being in the public eye and the 19 in the 19 forties ice skating was a big thing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It was very big, and so I I was able to pull things from personal items, from ancestry, you know.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: dot com. But newspapers.com. You could go in and plug in
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Edward Di Gangi NC: her name, or you could plug in the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the tour that she was with
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Edward Di Gangi NC: billboard magazine.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I think, has existed since sometime like 1914,
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and they have a remarkable remarkable index to their archives, which are all digitized.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and that took lots and lots of searching. But you could, you could basically go in by week and flip through 80 pages
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Edward Di Gangi NC: of each week. And and yeah, and that that took a lot of work.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: But yeah, every now and then I would just glean some. Yeah, some special little piece.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And the other part is, I discovered a number of people still alive.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who knew my mother in one facet of her, her life or not, and they were just ever so.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yes, so generous in sharing. And I've
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Edward Di Gangi NC: the book talks about my encounter with some antique dealers
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Edward Di Gangi NC: who had purchased a carton of my mother's Memorabilia at an auction in Atlanta in 19.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I'm sorry in 2012.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And yeah, and I made contact with them. It was just. It's kind of a very
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Edward Di Gangi NC: serendipitous contact that we that we were able to make at all.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And they had this information.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: this box 5 years later, and they said, Come on down. You need to see it.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and my wife and I travel down there to see it, and they push it across the table and said, We've just been holding this for you. It's yours.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And it had documents from my mother had loads of promotional photographs.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It had one of her first scrapbooks.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and so it was a remarkable treasure trove.
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Alison Nissen: That really is amazing.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, not many people are as lucky.
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Alison Nissen: Yeah, I imagine this pub publishing experience for you was really interesting.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It was very much so, you know I I think I I approach the publishing experience very naively.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I went in thinking that well, just write my proposal. Send it off to a publisher. They will send me money, and I will send them manuscript.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and that didn't happen. You're not surprised to hear that I I eventually wary. I believe, 79, or 80 agents.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and as I did that, I think my queries got better and better. I'll ultimately did get some very, very
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Edward Di Gangi NC: brief interest from a couple of them, sent off pieces of the manuscript, and never heard anything again.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was sitting there at my, you know, this is.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: It's probably now 70, 71 years old, thinking my life is too short
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Edward Di Gangi NC: to be playing this game. And then, also realizing that.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know, by the time you find an agent
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Edward Di Gangi NC: it will typically be one or 2 years sometimes before they can find a a buyer for the manuscript, and then again, another one or 2 years before that manuscript goes to print.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was learning more and more and more about independent publishing. At that point
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I talked to some small indie presses, some hybrids.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and ultimately I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I said, I'm gonna do this on my own.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I found myself
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Edward Di Gangi NC: someone who I thought was a very good editor.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I believe the book reflects that in the end
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I found a book designer.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and I was very
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Edward Di Gangi NC: fortunate to have a a friend who pointed me to a graphic artist who said, for $100 and 6 pack of beer, I'll do a cover for you.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and he's got his beer, and he's got us $100, and I have my cover, and
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Edward Di Gangi NC: and he's actually done a revision to that cover lately, because the book was re was re-released as a large print as a, and a hard copy as well.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And I I I went to print with it, and it's
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Edward Di Gangi NC: it was a learning experience, but I think a very positive one.
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Alison Nissen: Wow! That's fantastic. Well.
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Alison Nissen: Edward, get okay. I'm gonna get this wrong, Edward Degan.
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Alison Nissen: How'd I do.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: You did fine.
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Alison Nissen: How can people get in touch with you? How can they discover more about your journey and your book?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, the book is available through any bookseller, so it's widely available. Any brick and mortar store, or an online retailer. I also sell the book directly from my website, it'd be happy to
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Edward Di Gangi NC: personalize it and autograph it and send it out. Typically goes out. The same day I received the order. And my website is WWW. Gangji, author Com.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And there's more information about myself and the book there.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: And yet the book is also available in ebook format and in many libraries as well on Upla and in Libby.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: So if you don't care to purchase the book.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: yeah, it's typically available through your library in ebook, format.
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Alison Nissen: Well, that's fantastic. Are you ready to switch to our rapid fire questions.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I'll take a chance.
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Alison Nissen: If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Historical figure sort of narrows it down. And I've I've thought about this a lot. I would like to have dinner with Pete Seeger, the late folks singer.
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Alison Nissen: Alright! That would be a fun one. I'd like to be a fly on that wall.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, yeah, he was. He was a
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Edward Di Gangi NC: quite the interesting person. Yeah, he he tolerated the Mccarthy era. He fought in the Spanish American war, and he saw an awful lot of things be during the course of his life. He's he's quite a great man.
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Alison Nissen: Do you play a musical instrument.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I
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Edward Di Gangi NC: again, you're yeah. I do play in this. I'm I play guitar. I have not played very much in recent years, but I I used to play quite a bit. As a matter of fact, at one time this goes back to the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: late 1960 S. Which was the the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: era of of folk, music and protest music. I I even had a song published in the
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Edward Di Gangi NC: in a magazine called Broadside, and they were very democratic, and they would list all of the people whose songs were listed above in that magazine, and I appeared above Bob Dylan's name.
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Alison Nissen: Wow! If you could. Time, travel.
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Alison Nissen: present, future, I guess we're already present. There's no need to travel there. Where would you go? And why.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, that's an interesting question.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, I've had the Priv, yeah, that's 76 is a is a privilege, you know, because you've seen so much. And I I think I'd be very interested to see what? Yeah, the turn of the century in the United States looked like. So that period right around, you know, 1899, going into the 19 hundreds. I think they're just such remarkable progress at that point.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: you know, people who had never seen cars, people who had never seen electric lights.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: I'd like to see the look on people's faces.
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Alison Nissen: Edward da Ganji. Thank you so much for stopping by.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Well, I appreciate the invitation. Thank you for having me here.
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Alison Nissen: You have been listening to another edition of the Florida writer, podcast with your host, Alison, Nissen
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Alison Nissen: allison out.
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Alison Nissen: we're all done.
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Edward Di Gangi NC: Yeah, well, thank you.
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Alison Nissen: Edward Degani is a retired customer service executive, who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
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Alison Nissen: with his wife Linda.
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Alison Nissen: Edward Daganji was adopted at the time of his birth and his first book.
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Alison Nissen: The Gift best given, a memoir recounts his late adulthood search for the identity of his birth, mother, and the unexpected discoveries he made during the course of this journey
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Alison Nissen: for more information about
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Alison Nissen: Edward, visit him on the web
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Alison Nissen: at Daganji. author.com
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Alison Nissen: for more information about the Florida Writers Association. Visit us at Florida. writers.org
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Alison Nissen: until next time.
