Current Correspondent

 

While searching for a missing piece from her grandson’s jigsaw puzzle, Dupont Circle resident Carol Popper Galaty “found” her first children’s book.

 

 

The story is about David’s concern for a puzzle piece that went astray.  “David, Mormor, Horno and the Yak: An Alphabet Mystery” also tells the story of Galaty’s search  for a way to connect with her grandson an ocean away in Stockholm.

 

Galaty bought the puzzle in Ireland. It had colorful wooden pieces shaped like ani-mals with the letters of the alphabet on them. She decided to share it--exclusively-- with her first grandchild, David Alpen.

 

“I had heard of people doing this. You have something that only you and your grandchild do,” Galaty said. “He loved it so much. But I always took it back with me.  It was something just the two of us could do. Even his parents couldn’t play with it with him — only the two of us.”

When the yak piece disappeared, David got worried.

Galaty searched everywhere, but ultimately she had to combine her zoology and art backgrounds to make a new yak. In the process, a story was born. It was published in March by Publish America, under her maiden name, Carol Popper.

 

“Everybody kept saying, ‘Gee, that’s such a neat story. I think other people would enjoy it, and maybe it will give them ideas for things that they can do with their children who are far away,’” Galaty said. “It’s more than just a book. It’s a way of relating to children.”

 

It took her only a couple of days to write “David, Mormor, Horno and the Yak,” she said, and she illustrated it with photographs of her family.

 

“Mormor” is Swedish for mother’s mother (grandmother), and David named the puzzle “horno” after the Rhinoceros “R” that had two horns.

 

David was almost 2 when Galaty gave him the puzzle, and he is now 7. “He’s still concerned about the puzzle,” she said.

 

 “Whenever he comes [to visit], he wants to know where it is, and he wants to play with it, but then he’s on to other things.”

 

As for being the star of her book, David “got a real kick out of that,” she said.

 

Having grown up with a father in the Foreign Service and lived abroad as an adult, Galaty knows something about going the distance for her loved ones. She was 2 when her family moved to D.C., where she attended Lafayette Elementary School and Deal Junior High School.

 

But the family moved overseas when her father, David H. Popper, joined the Foreign Service in 1955. He went on to serve as ambassador to Chile and Cyprus and assistant secretary of state for international affairs.

 

“The rest of my life has been living somewhere else, coming back to D.C., living somewhere else, coming back to D.C.,” she said.

 

After graduating from Pomona College in California with a zoology

degree, Galaty joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Ghana teaching biology, French, health science, math and zoology.

 

Between 1966 and 1975, she hop-scotched from Washington to Ger-many to Green Bay, WI and back to Washington, where she spent 30 years doing federal government work on programs and policies related to health care, especially for children.

 

A 1908 row house near Dupont Circle has been her home with her second husband, Gil Hill, since 1993.

 

“I sort of fell into my whole career. My passion was really art and illustration, and I ended up in health because that’s what my degree was in,” she said. “I must say health care did become a passion for me, making sure that children had good health care, that they had good mental-health care, and that parents and adults did, too.”

 

She retired in 2002. “Among other things, I really wanted to get back to where I had wanted to be, which was in writing and illustrating,” said Galaty, a mother of four. She also wanted to spend time with her three grandchildren, which is a long-distance affair. One of her grandkids lives in Denver and two of them live in Sweden.

 

But, then, getting creative about staying in touch runs in Galaty’s family.  “When I was 6 years old and my  brother was about 2, my father went to Paris for six months to help set up the United Nations,” she said. “He made little record recordings and sent them back to us. So I guess this tradition of relating to your family from living far away started all the way back then.”

 

When Galaty had children of her own, her parents were in Chile. Her mother sent audiotapes of books that she read for her grandkids.  Now Galaty is connecting with her own grandkids through a shared love for literature. She has five children’s books that she wants to get published, but she had to stop shopping them around to publishers to take care of her father, who passed away July 24 at age 95, and her eldest daughter, Mara Galaty.

 

Mara was working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jordan when she was diagnosed with metastasized melanoma. She died in November 2007 at 38. Proceeds from the sale of “David, Mormor, Horno and the Yak” go toward the Mara Fund, an offshoot of Susan G. Komen for the Cure that is devoted to helping women with cancer in the countries where Mara Galaty worked.

 

“Since the [book’s] profits are going to the foundation that we set up for my daughter, which I’m also working on, it’s become a fundraiser now,” Carol Galaty said. “I really want to spend some time on this before I go back to the other books.”

 

“David, Mormor, Horno and the Yak” is available through online booksellers, and it can be ordered at local bookstores.

 

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