In December, I usually take stock of what happened in my life during the previous 11 months and try to anticipate what might be in store for me in the coming year.

The year 2025 was one of remembrance and discovery. On the one hand, I continued a string of longevity milestones in my personal life, and conversely, I still mourn the accidental death last year of my son, Thor, 63, who passed away many years before his time.

As for 2026, I expect to conclude a project with Dustin Smith, executive director of the Blair County Historical Society, to make my 30-year collection of newspaper biographical, historical and human interest columns available for academic and family researchers and just plain interested readers. More about that later.

To preserve a record of his Coast Guard distinguished rescue swimmer service, I arranged for biographical plaques of Thor to be displayed at the Naval Memorial in Washington, D.C., and at the new Coast Guard Museum and historical center in New London, Conn.

On a lighter side, I thought I was the oldest living male Wentz in our branch of the family going back 294 years. But wait — this news just came in. Our Wentz family history might go back many, many years beyond what I knew.

Thanks to an intrepid family researcher previously unknown to me, I recently learned that my family branch of humanity may be able to demonstrably trace its roots back thousands of years beyond what we already know.

Lisa Salamida of Concord, Calif., thought she found the existence of a long-gone relative named Daniel Augustus Wentz, my great-great-great grandfather who lived in Bedford County and died there about 1883. Lisa searched the Internet and found newspaper columns that I wrote that mentioned Daniel. She contacted me through the Altoona Mirror’s newsdesk and asked if I would provide DNA samples that might establish a linkage between our families.

What my saliva sample established was no apparent family linkage, but my Y chromosome placed me in an ancestral group (Haplogroup I-L233) whose unbroken line of male predecessors can be traced back to 4500 BC (commonly defined as “Before Christ”).

That’s more than 6,500 years ago (2,025 years back to the birth of Christ and another 4,500 further back).

WOW! I have trouble wrapping my brain around those numbers.

This situation creates a dilemma in that my family is running out of time to produce a future male offspring to continue our unbroken line of male descendants. My only sister died childless and my only brother’s two children died childless. My son Thor had two children — a girl and a boy named Colin.

My other son Kyle, 60, has never married and is childless, but is a candidate for continuing the male line.

As Thor’s widow Karen has succinctly observed, “Either Uncle Kyle or my bachelor son Colin (25) must find a loving and compatible bride to birth a baby boy.” Amen.

The forthcoming unavailing of the Wentz Newscolumn Collection will be the culmination of 30 years of biographical and historical research and reporting about Blair County, but touching on Bedford County and adjacent areas. It amounts to almost a thousand columns. The indexes list the names of thousands of people, places and things of individual, family and community historical interest and curiosity.

Cove historian Jim Wentz writes a monthly column for the Mirror.