“We’re Russian,” my grandmother told me.

It wasn’t the whole story. Finding the rest led me to Slovakia.

I remember being nine years old when my grandmother told me, “We are Russian.” To my young mind, it didn’t mean much. Only years later did I realize she was simplifying our family history so I could understand it. Back then, Czechoslovakia was still under Soviet control.

On my father’s side, I had an uncle who was passionate about genealogy. I loved hearing stories about my great-grandparents and earlier generations, tracing our family’s history in the United States back more than 300 years. For decades, I occasionally added to that research whenever I had the time.

I didn’t have the opportunity to explore my mother’s side of the family until 2009. One of my mother’s uncles had discovered his father’s—my great-grandfather’s—naturalization papers. To my surprise, we weren’t “Russian” at all. He had emigrated from the small town of Mestisko in Czechoslovakia, entered the United States through Ellis Island in 1923, and settled in Pennsylvania.

Suddenly, I had the missing link to explore another quarter of my heritage. But life was busy, and I set the documents aside, assuming I would return to them someday.