Keeping it in the (big) family — 500 attend reunion party
MOST PEOPLE dread the idea of organising a family reunion, with all its attendant pitfalls — the uncle who always starts a row, the grandmother who insists on pinching your cheeks too hard and the cousins who don’t speak to each other.
But not Ian Levine — award-winning record producer and pioneering northern soul DJ — who brought together 500 relatives for a week of events culminating in a celebration at a Watford venue.
Through painstaking research, Mr Levine has tracked down the 661 Friends were reunited and new relationships forged at the party
descendants of his great-great-grandfather Hatskell Cooklin’s nine children.
Some at the party travelled from as far afield as Australia and Peru and there were many first-time meetings.
Mr Levine says his dedicated pursuit of family history was inspired by his late grandmother Golda Kalina, “the most loved person in my life.
“We had already organised a reunion 21 years ago when I managed to get 300 or so family members to come.”
Unable to accommodate 500 people in his home, he hired a banqueting suite.
Another key organiser was his cousin Ruth Glatman, 78, who said: “We colour-co-ordinated people’s name tags so everyone knew which part of the family they represented.”
Mr Levine explained that his greatgreat-grandfather was born in Rezhitsa, Latvia, in 1839, then home to more
than 2,000 Jews, many of them members of the Cooklin clan.
Although the Rezhitsa community was decimated in the Holocaust, three branches of the family had by then moved to England and it has since spread globally.
“It was so emotional,” Mr Levine said of the reunion. “I cried all day. People were meeting for the first time. The youngest person was a six-monthold baby, the oldest was a 92-year-old cousin.
“It is hard to explain what it feels like to have all those family members in one place. It is something else.” Few families could trace their history back to 1770.
Such is the size of Mr Levine’s family — which includes sports broadcaster Gary Newbon and a Peruvian UN representative — that it has a dedicated Facebook group. “It is the best way we can all stay in touch and share news.”