Olya Lowen Belmer was born on July 11, 2020, at the Montreal Royal Victoria Hospital in Canada. She gestated in Wellfleet, though, where her father, Aaron Richmond, was in residence with the Cape Cod Modern House Trust while working on a dissertation on the early modernists. Her mother, Stephanie Belmer, is a philosophy professor. Olya’s name honors Aaron’s maternal grandmother, Olga Mittelman, whom he knew as “Olly,” and who survived the Nazis in Hungary to immigrate to Canada. It also pays tribute to Steph’s Irish grandmothers’ names, Murphy and Boyle. The baby’s Hebrew name Mar-goah’, and the diminutive Rugi, for short, honors the excellent rugelach at Chesky’s Bakery and may mean something like “to cause a twinkling” in Arabic. Olya’s maternal grandparents are Lynn and Michael Belmer. Her paternal grandparents are Leslie and Mary Richmond. (Photo courtesy Aaron Richmond)
