My mother, Lea (nickname for “Evangeline”) Bohlman, nee Sofianos [1], passed away on July 16, 2013 at age 80 (almost 81). This was expected.
I would credit my mother with kindling my interest in politics, history and culture, among other things. I may update this further, but don’t count on it.
I am her only surviving child. My sister died in 1998. My father, Victor Bohlman, is alive at the age of 88. They would have been married for 60 years this coming March.
[1] Some official records suggest that her family name was actually spelled “Sofianas” [update: these appear to be quite a minority and are probably transcription errors]. To any genealogy buffs, her father was Demitrius (James) Sofianios and her mother was Sophie Pichinos. She was born in Chicago, and both of her parents were born in Greece in 1895 (James) and early 1901 (Sophie).
Amusing note: the local high school teams are nicknamed the Trevians (New Trier, Winnetka IL) and the Spartans (Glenbrook North, Northbrook IL). My ancestors are purely Trevian (e.g. from around Trier, Germany) on my father’s side and Spartan on my mother’s side, which is unusually unmixed for someone who was born in Chicago in 1959 (my extended family, however, is slight-majority Mexican-American, with plenty of Czech, Irish, Italian and Polish members, as well as some ethnicities that I’ve probably forgotten (bur notably missing anything of African or Asian ancestry; the US is still an awfully segregated society)).
