Famous Relatives/Ancestors?

On my mother's side, I'm related to Bob Hope. He's a distant cousin, numerous times removed but the connection is there. It's a thoroughly useless link, since it doesn't do me much good and I certainly can't bank upon Hope's success for my own fortunes. But if you study our faces in profile, the resemblance is startling. We possess many of the same physical traits, particularly in the mouth and jawline. This is also to where I attribute my sense of humor and quick wit. The rest of my family is somewhat stern, certainly not jovial. So if not from Hope, I don't know where.

Another famous relative is Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. He was my maternal grandfather's cousin. It was through Thomas that my family came into friendship with Robert Frost. Now, I wish I had the material goods to back up this next part - if I did, I'd be a rich man - but thanks to Thomas introducing my future grandmother to Robert Frost, the world famous poem "The Road Less Travelled" was written. My grandmother and Frost were very close and they almost had an affair. However, it wasn't to be and Frost knew this. He expressed his sorrows in poetry. For years, scholars have tried to divine Frost's personal meaning within "The Road Less Travelled" but it's all come down to conjecture. Yet I know: my grandmother was that road. There were several written correspondences between Frost and my grandmother but they've been lost to time or were perhaps intentionally destroyed. I do not know if any remain, which is a shame, as all the players have deceased and I think the time has come for the literary world to learn the truth. Alas, it will always be hearsay on my part. But it makes for a nice story.


I've another obscure but still notable relative: E. Everett. Everett was the lab assistant to J.J. Thompson, a Nobel winning physicist. The two of them conducted numerous experiments and eventually discovered the electron. They also made significant advances in electromagnetics, X-rays and the duo was credited with the invention of the cathode ray tube. E. Everett's primary role was as glass-blower, but he contributed a number of theories and skepticisms that fueled Thompson's ambition. Everett ultimately died of cancer. Go figure.

(In an amusing twist, nearly 90 years after Thompson and Everett discovered the electron, two of their descendants sat in the same high school chemistry class, learning about electrons. Neither I nor Kim knew our ancestors were connected until the teacher mentioned J.J. Thompson and Kim exclaimed that Thompson was her great-great-uncle. I'd known about Everett and Thompson for several years, and was dumbstruck. I told the class that I was directly descended from Thompson's partner and there was much shock over the coincidence. The teacher was beside himself and spoke of the matter for weeks. Kim and I both completed the class with C averages, proving that genetics aren't everything.)

Jam it back in, in the dark.