Lynn,

Thank you so much for your reply. I really appreciate you taking the time to help. I an so sorry, I was gravely mistaken about the woehrle family. His name was NOT Woehrle, it was LAKE. Thank you though. In 2000 my father posted on rootsweb messageboards trying to find his father, and that is where a man posted that in his family, there were lakes who married into the Woerhle family, and that the name ELVIN had been passed to BOTH families as a middle name for the sons of the families. My father said that his mother said at one point that she thought his name was ELVIN/ALVIN/EDWIN/ERWIN/IRVING. Then, she and my great-grandmother went to the records division, and changed my fathers' birth certificate to read that his father was RICHARD IRVING LAKE. That name was NEVER put on the certificate originally. Knowing my grandma, she could have made the whole thing up. What we do know is this, it must have been something HUGE to make her cover this up, because she took my dad, uncle, and aunts and vanished into hiding, changing their names, and never speaking of their father again, until about 2 years before her death, when she told my father that the only reason she hated him (my father) was because he looked just like his father.

I am speaking with the stearman family who are possibly cousins of mine through the lake family. Thank you for your help. I very much appreciate you taking the time to help. Her is the "facts:"

Father: Richard Edward Lake (b. 2/14/1959 in Santa Monica, CA)
Grandfather: Richard Irving (?) Lake (b. ~1938 in NY, NY)
Great-Grandfather: Edward (?) Lake (b. ~1918)