Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Meet the Past
Genealogy Society honors newsman’s grandmother
NBC’s Chuck Todd comes to S. Florida to talk genealogy.
BOYNTON BEACH – More than 200 amateur genealogists were kvelling on Wednesday about a man they consider one of their own: Chuck Todd, an NBC news host and “Meet the Press” moderator.
Todd, 44, spoke to the Jewish Genealogy Society of Palm Beach County, which was honoring his grandmother, Dorothy Bernstein, 89, who until a month ago lived in Delray Beach.
Todd, a Miami native, bought his grandma a computer in 1998 and a program to help her research the family’s history. Bernstein, who worked for 25 years at the counter of a Delray Beach McDonald’s, has made it almost a full-time job.
“Once you get started, you can’t stop,” said Bernstein, who moved last month to an assisted living facility in Washington, D.C., near where Todd lives. “I’ve gone back five or six generations on the non-Jewish side.”
That would be Todd’s father’s side, who came to the United States from Wales and Scotland. Bernstein, who is Jewish and the mother of Todd’s mother, Cheri Roper, said she has found ancestors from Latvia and Hungary back to the 1800s.
While many attendees were interested in the Todd-Bernstein family tree, most wanted to hear about Todd’s life as a journalist in the nation’s capital. It was during an interview with Todd last month that presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway first used the expression “alternative facts.”
But Todd said other recent interactions with President Donald Trump’s team have been more personally memorable. When he asked White House staffers why the president’s statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day did not mention the destruction of European Jewry, he said the staffers were unfamiliar with Hitler and his Final Solution.
“Every genealogist in this
room is doing their part to make sure that history doesn’t get erased,” Todd said.
He praised his grandmother’s peers, known as the Greatest Generation for their perseverance through the Depression and World War II, and said he believes millennials, born between 1982 and 2004, will prove similarly noble and conscientious.
“They have a sense of community and shared economy,” creating popular products such as Uber and Airbnb, he said. “That’s a good thing. That’s how communities get built.”
He said the country has become a “horrendous polarizing place,” but is confident there are sufficient checks on the system for democracy to be preserved.
Asked about the emergence of fake news, Todd said mainstream journalists have not adequately defended their work.
“There is an effort to delegitimize the mainstream press, which goes back to Watergate,” Todd said. “I never like to have a story become about me, and we have left ourselves vulnerable for fake news to get a foothold.”
Don Broverman, of Boynton Beach, said he was grateful to Todd for being open about his Jewish identity and connecting with his grandmother through their genealogy search.
“You honoring your forebears is truly a mitzvah,” or good deed, he told Todd.