Famous former student explores family history in PBS’s ‘Finding your roots”

By Anna Lersch

Tony Shalhoub, a well-known Hollywood actor, is a graduate of East.  

Born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin by Joseph and Helen Shalhoub, Tony Shalhoub didn’t grow up understanding much about his family history, but Shalhoub begins to learn much more about his family’s history in the show:  ‘Finding your roots’ on PBS.

The episode “The Shirts on their Backs” with Henry Louis Gates Jr.  aired Feb. 9, on PBS.  This episode dove into Shalhoub’s family history in Lebanon, before they had immigrated to America. 

Shalhoub learned with great surprise some of the struggles his family had gone through in Lebanon.  His father Joseph became orphaned after the loss of his parents, due to war, famine, disease, and locust plagues.  Joseph’s older sister, who had been very young at the time, took the responsibility of taking care of her four younger siblings.  “She was a hero,” Shalhoub states in the documentary.  Having a stressful responsibility, she left with her younger siblings to America.

Helen Seroogy, Shalhoub’s mother, was born in Green Bay.  Her parents had immigrated to Green Bay from Lebanon, and they became successful with starting Seroogys, a chocolate shop, in De Pere.  Helen soon met Joseph, and years later, they were married.  

Shalhoub grew up with nine other siblings.  He and his siblings often played acting, and his older sister Susan recruited Tony to play the child in the play at her school.  This most possibly inspired Shalhoub to carry out an acting career in the future, and Shalhoub states his family was always there to encourage him.  “My family was really there to support me, to encourage me, to remind me of what was really important,” Shalhoub says.

Through the episode, with much shock and amazement, Shalhoub discovers much about the experiences of his family and their journey to America.  Shalhoub expresses the importance of knowing about what his family went through and how important his family truly is to him.

In an extra of the episode, Shalhoub discusses the importance of his family and how they supported him.

Watch the entire episode here: Finding Your Roots, Tony Shalhoub. Must be PBS Wisconsin member.