While doing the background research for my books, I held conversations with quite a few individuals in order to gain information on the origins of my family. These discussions helped to fill some of the gaps that existed in my memories of various events. It also gave me valuable information on relatives that died long before I was born. Since there were eleven years separating me and my next sibling, my parents were older and as a result most of my grand parents had passed away before I was born. My only living grandparent was Herman Lapierre or as he was fondly entitled “Gramps”. He and my mother used to regale me with family stories. However, most of these stories did not go much past their lifespans. They were definitely not historians. So I found these recent interactions with like-minded individuals most rewarding. My first forays in genealogy proved to be daunting and quite overwhelming, mainly because I had so little to work with. If it had not been for the efforts of my sister Regena, I would have most likely given up before I even got started. Being that she is my only remaining sibling and immediate family member, I had been queering her unmercifully about our family history. She finally cried uncle and called in the big guns, our Aunt Barbara, one of our few remaining elder relatives. She was one of my father’s sister-in-laws. She pointed me in the direction of one of my cousins. He was the grandson of one of my father’s brothers. His name is Ricky, and thanks to years of highly involved research he was a able to provide some very valuable information for me. As a matter of fact, he provided too much information. This plethora of information is the main reason that I am expanding my family history to a whole section in my second book. I will also include several family trees in this book to help illustrate how our family spread out.

I am trying something a little different in this section, I am writing this chapter as a secondary preface or introduction for this part of the book. I am doing this mainly because the subject matter is quite varied and complicated. This part or section will consist of ten more chapters; two chapters covering both sides of the family, two chapters covering my father and mother, a single chapter covering the early years of my family, four chapters covering my three siblings and myself.

Unlike my investigation of the Landry clan, I will not have a family historian helping me with the Lapierre clan. However, I have a new skill set that I did not possess when I worked on my heritage in my previous book. I hope this will be enough to allow me to complete a thorough history of the key figures. I am making this companion book more about my family than just more anecdotal information about myself by including individual chapters on each of my parents and siblings. By the way, I am not the only oddball in my family, so hopefully you will find these chapters to be entertaining.