Seeing family together is always a beautiful experience. While I’m not very social, I love to be around family and to meet “new” relatives. I also enjoy hearing stories of our family’s past and individual experiences, as they contribute not only to our family history, but to our nation’s history. Thank you to everyone who attended the reunion last June, and to everyone who helped make it happen.
A family reunion is an event that should provide an education of one’s ancestors and family history. It’s an opportunity to re-connect with family, and to get to know relatives whom we didn’t know prior to the event. No one should leave with the same questions regarding their family history that they had before the reunion.
The Hancock & Mattox reunion of 2020, was held at the same location, was larger in attendance, and was nearly perfect in execution. While I do acknowledge that 24 years later, the dynamics of the time period and family are very different, I struggle to wrap my mind around happenings at the 2024 reunion.
There were groups that completely segregated themselves for what seemed to be the duration of the event. There were those who were inexcusably late (arrived just in time to eat and left after they ate), those whose chatter continued through the food blessing and the moment of silence for family we lost, and those who completely disregarded the speaker(s). In no way am I pointing fingers, because first cousins on my family branch were guilty of all of the above, as were too many from other family branches.
While identifying mishaps and other things that didn’t go as planned, I found that capturing the attention of a large group of people, in such a large open space, has its challenges. I also realized that some considerations have to be made when planning another. I was thrilled that multiple family members expressed interest in “the next” reunion and would love to hear your thoughts regarding ideas for a future event.
Feedback
The most pressing questions that I currently have are listed below, and I would love to have your feedback:
- What are effective ways to capture the attention of and engage the majority of the family members?
- Are the younger adults only interested in eating and sticking with cousins they know and grew up with?
- Would you consider an indoor reunion (hotel/conference center, church, school, recreation center, etc.)?