The most important things of life are accomplished one by one, and often they are heart-turning experiences, said Paul Cardall in his keynote address at this year’s Brigham Young University Conference on Family History and Genealogy.
Cardall’s personal heart-turning experiences began in a literal sense. When he was born, his half-functioning heart required immediate surgery, and he has had multiple surgeries throughout his life. After a heart transplant seven years ago, he “got lost and ended up divorced,” he said. After he met and married Tina, a wonderful Catholic woman, he began a journey of family ancestry discovery and music that took them on a circuitous route to his wife’s Slovenian homeland and family members she had never met.
During World War II, Tina’s ancestors joined a Slovenian movement of guerilla freedom fighters seeking to take advantage of the unsettled conditions to create a better government. After the war, they fled Yugoslavia and Josip Tito’s leadership. The freedom fighters in Tina’s family immigrated to Ohio and then moved to Duluth, Minnesota, where her mother and maternal grandmother joined them in 1953. The family eventually settled in Price, Utah. As political refugees in an unsettled world, they knew little about their family’s past. Paul undertook the project of tracing the family line but made little progress. The needed information was in church archives in Slovenia, written in Slovenian, and access requires permission from the church leaders who maintain the archives.
“How can I track the family down?” Paul wondered. “Maybe I can turn the hearts of the fathers to help me find them,” he thought. He hired a genealogist in Slovenia to seek the family lines. She had connections with the clergy who keep the records; she knows the system and speaks the language. She and Paul developed a working friendship.
As he researched Tina’s family lines, Paul also pursued his music. When helping organize a fall social for the Missionary Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he spoke to Elder David Bednar, an Apostle in the Church, who told him, “I’ve had this song inside me for years, and I’d like you to help put it to music.”
The phrase “one by one,” Elder Bednar said, had made a deep impression on him as he considered the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ and words to a song formed in his mind. Christ healed people one by one, he explained, and after His Resurrection, He asked people to come forward one by one and touch Him. Cardall agreed to collaborate on the song. (see the final music and lyrics, read more about this story, and watch a video performance).
At the same time, Brigham Young University discovered Cardall’s Yugoslavian connection and contacted him to compose background music for a video on the former country of Yugoslavia. This project gave the Cardalls an opportunity to visit Tina’s homeland. Because of his mother-in-law’s memories of the life she had fled, she declined going with them on this visit.
While the Cardalls were in Europe, the president of the Adriatic North Mission asked Paul to perform a concert. The challenge was to find an appropriate venue. At Tina’s suggestion, they arranged to perform in a 400-year-old Catholic church supporting heart care for children of the country. Many of Tina’s relatives from the area recognized the name and attended the concert to meet their American family.
The Slovenian Heart Foundation invited Cardall to return for another concert—this time in the Slovenian Opera House. Tina’s mother joined them for that trip.“Tina’s family had heard I would be there with my Slovenian wife. Tina’s mother was reunited with family she hadn’t seen in 43 years. She hadn’t known if they were still there. They were overwhelmed as a crowd of tearful cousins welcomed them at the airport. Many family members joined the sold-out crowd for Paul’s performance.
Paul, Tina, and her mother also toured the country seeking their roots. “We found the obscure town of Tisovec, where my wife’s mother was born, in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “She learned that the people who lived in her childhood home were her cousins. It was so familiar and good to be home, she wanted to walk in,” Paul said. The cousins greeted them and showed them around.
They visited the cemetery where Tina’s ancestors are buried. The cemeteries are meticulously tended, Paul noted. “Europeans take care of cemeteries. They are hungry to know how to fix their families—to pull them all back together,” he said.“What war does is tear families apart. And what the Savior does is put families back together, one by one. By doing research, you are helping Him fit together the puzzle, person by person, piece by piece,” Cardall said.
At an extended family gathering in Slovenia, the Cardalls discussed ancestors, but the family didn’t know much about them. His wife laid out a large genealogy chart, and together they filled in the names—one by one—and then using Paul’s phone connection, they sent the information to FamilySearch.“None of this would have happened if I had not done the concert, and there would have been no concert without the hunger for family connections,” he said.
Read More from the 2017 BYU Genealogy Conference
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