A Shirttail Relative

Any regular reader of these postings knows I admire the obituary writing of Robert D. McFadden, the dean of NYT obituary writers whose ledes are packed with information that tell you plenty about the deceased just before you run out of breath reading them back to yourself.

He's written so many advance obits that when the subjects invariably turn 90 the obits keep bobbing up in the river like poorly anchored mob rub outs. Just the other day two subjects, one a nonagenarian and the other a octogenarian hit the tribute obit pages, both bylined by Robert D. McFadden: Gaston Glock (an absolute piece of work who passed away at 94) and Herbert Kohl, a four-term U.S. Senator from Wisconsin who founded Kohl's department stores and was a long time suffering owner of the N.B.A. Milwaukee Bucks. who passed away at 88.

Mr. McFadden's plain language usually never leaves me reaching for a dictionary or a phrase book, until reading Mr. Kohl's obituary where his opponents in a senate election were described as "former Governor Anthony Earl and Wisconsin's secretary of state, Doug La Follette, a shirttail relative of Robert M. La Follette, the former governor, senator and presidential candidate." 

What is a shirttail relative? A relative who hangs out? Someone who looks like an unmade bed? A hanger-on?

Trying to be a little more logical I self-defined it as someone who is a distant relation, perhaps a third cousin (removed or otherwise) Eleanor Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt say.

Wanting to see what the accepted definition might be, I consulted the OED, but that let me down by not having an entry of "shirttail relative" under shirttail. (I didn't think I was going to find one there.)

Okay, off to Google land. A shirttail relative relative is  someone who is either a relative by marriage, is distantly related (like a third cousin or family friend who is an honorary "relative.") The term has been around since the 1920s  and probably originated in the American South.

I asked my wife if she ever heard the term "shirttail relative." I figured with her long ago track record of following all the relationships in soap operas that she would have heard the term. She could tell you who was born to who before the birth certificates were dug out by a P.I. or the DNA testing was in.

Until now hearing the phrase "shirttail relative" I realize "distant relative" might also apply. Charles Busch, the playwright and drag performer and I are "shirttail related" through some marriages via cousins in Syracuse. No direct blood relationship, and no free tickets to see any of his plays, which are a hoot by the way.

It is extremely doubtful even with that disclosure that any obituary writer will pick up on that, hold onto it until it's time to tell the readership that I was a "shirttail relative" of a drag performer and playwright. Shucks.

Fame is elusive.

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