DUNSTABLE — Anyone would likely be thankful for family on Thanksgiving. For one local family, they can be thankful for the recent arrival of the fifth living generation of the family, all gathered at once.
“It’s unusual to have a great-great-grandmother, but Kole has one,” said Lindsay Kantargis, 27, who gave birth to her son Nov. 17. Kole Kantargis, dressed in his turkey onesie, gave the family a fifth generation gathered Thursday for Thanksgiving.
On the other end of the lineage was Blanche McGrade, a 94-year-old North Andover resident who grew up in Dracut and was for more than 30 years a seamstress. Her daughter, Frances Long, is 73 and has lived in Dracut for 50 years after growing up in the Highlands section of Lowell. Then there’s Debbie Vinal, a 50-year-old hairdresser who owns Shear Designs in Dracut.
Her daughter — and next-door neighbor — is Kantargis, a Lowell General Hospital nurse.
The family has always been close, and their relative proximity in age has helped, they said. The three oldest meet every Wednesday to get their hair done, and several members referred to others as their best friend.
“They’re like sisters,” Vinal said of her mother and grandmother.
Vinal is also very close with her sister, Cheryl Blake, of Dunstable, who hosted the gathering. That much wasn’t hard to tell.
“We’re very close,” they both said at the same moment at one point.
“There hasn’t been a holiday we haven’t been together,” Vinal said.
McGrade, a widow who got married at 17, is far sharper than one might expect for a woman her age. None of her fellow residents at a retirement community in North Andover has a great-great-grandson to brag about.
“He’s adorable,” she said of Kole. “He’s so cute.”
Members of this five-generation clan said they know some families with four generations but none other with five.
“Even four (generations) is something these days, never mind five,” Long said.
There don’t appear to be many statistics on five-generation families, but their likelihood exists at the intersection of two trends. While people are generally living longer, people are typically waiting longer to have children. The average age of a first-time mother in the United States is 26, a record high, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The most-ever living generations was seven in an American family in 1989, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The oldest member was 109.
Follow Grant Welker on Twitter and Tout @SunGrantWelker.
