Carrying on My Family’s Knights of Columbus Legacy

he upcoming beatification of Father Michael McGivney (below), founder of the Knights of Columbus, was a poignant reminder of my family’s history in the Knights during its infancy in New Haven, Connecticut. My paternal great-grandfathers — Hugh Augustus Burns and William J. Fitzgerald — were members of that first council. Both had Brooklyn roots and lived in Ansonia, Connecticut, on the outskirts of New Haven, where the Knights began.