Love, thy cousin

One of the family's main hobbies is genealogy. Unlike most people we don't set out looking for famous people, we just wanted to know more about where we came from.

It turns out we ended up finding famous people anyway. Very famous. World leaders? Check. Religious leaders? Check. War heroes? Check. At some point I plan to do a post with cards of the various family members but I need to hunt down the cards first.

One thing we didn't have was athletes. But as it turned out, we have at least two!

Kevin Love, one of Cleveland's Big Three, is my 21st Cousin, 3 times removed. Yes, it's a distant relationship, but it is there. We are blood related.

How this works, for people who might not know genealogy, is that if you go back far enough in time, we have a common set of grandparents. In the case of myself and Kevin Love, the last common grandparents we have is in the 1300s. In the 1320s, the line splits off. We descend from a woman named Mary, the Love family descends from her brother Edmund. My mom spent most of last night poring through the records proving it out, there is no question to it's accuracy, we have the paper trail to prove it.

But wait, I said two!

Kevin's father Stan also had an NBA career in the 1970s! He did not reach the levels of success Kevin has, he only got three cards during his playing days, and at that one of them was a regional promo. This is the only one I have, and I believe it's been shown on Cardboard History before.

And that's not all!

Mike Love, second from the left, is Stan's brother. We are related to the Beach Boys! I've been a fan of their music since the 1990s, when I discovered 1960s music. I still am. Although I have misplaced most of my CD collection, I'm pretty sure I've got their entire library in my collection, and that's before I knew we were related! I remembered seeing on TV that the Wilsons- Brian, Carl and Dennis- were cousins with Mike Love. We are related to 4 of the 5 original Beach Boys! I think Al Jardine is the only one we are not related to.

Unbelievable! We found the connection last night and I have to admit I'm pretty amazed by this. Celebrity doesn't usually turn my head. With some of the people we are related to, both in the distant past and still living, and in fact still ruling multiple major countries, it's pretty great to know we are related but an NBA player? Two NBA players? And one of my all-time favorite music groups? Yeah, that's pretty special! I mean, it's not every day that somebody you have collections of turns out to be a cousin!

Unfortunately, we are distant enough that I'm still going to have to pay for my new Kevin Love cards, haha!