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Genevieve George Duffin is an amalgamation of cultures. Her parents were Marinite Christians
and fled Syria in 1949. She was a baby. She was the oldest of 6 children. Her younger siblings were totally
assimilated. She desperately clung to her Arab heritage and was the only one of her siblings to retain the
language and the customs. It was because of these ties that Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar invited her to come
to Washington to work for her in 1980. Jenny had to make a tough decision for the three years that she spent in
Washington negotiating and compromising her need to be with her children and her love of politics. She loved
her work in Washington and after returning to Cleveland she continued her work in the Arab community by making
herself constantly available to anyone who needed help. Her three sons mix their Arab and Celtic heritage equally,
best manifested at her son Michael's wedding, where the groom and the wedding party wore kilts and marched down
the aisle to the sound of the bagpipe while a rabbi conducted the ceremony.
She has traveled extensively through the middle east. Her best moments in Syria have been those where she was
able to make matches between various American family members to Syrian spouses. Thus she married her sister
Evelyn (who did not speak a word of Arabic) to a distant cousin in Damascus, and her niece Janel (who had
graduated college) and her nephew CJ. The thought of more Syrian/American matches merely makes her rub her hands.
But her most favorite vacation was a trip that she and Svetlana recently took to Phoenix Arizona where after
successfully arguing a case in the Immigration Court, they drove a Blazer up to the Grand Canyon and then down
to Sedona, getting caught in a blizzard, hiking up to the Cathedral on the Rock. Jenny and Svetlana are excited
about their future plans to travel to Syria and then to Israel together.
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