With so many Tillemann-Dick children going in so many different directions, it's easy to get them confused. But really, say the kids, it's easy to keep family members straight, since everyone is unique.
Dulcia, the oldest at 38 or 39, is the Honduran orphan whom Annette and Timber adopted in 1982 when she was a teenager. Much older than the others, she's now more like an aunt to the rest of them.
Tomicah, born in a car, set the bar high for his younger brothers and sisters, graduating magna cum laude from Yale and serving as a Mormon missionary in Hungary. Now 29, he writes speeches for prominent U.S. senators while helping his wife, Sarah, raise their two small children and putting the finishing touches on his Johns Hopkins University doctoral dissertation deconstructing the role of Hungary in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kimber, 28 and expecting her first child with husband David, runs the communications arm of the family. Not only does she work for prominent Washington, D.C.-based PR firm APCO Worldwide, but she is co-authoring a biography with her cousin of grandpa Tom Lantos. In a family of very high decibels, her gift of gab reigns supreme.
Levi, the one with the quick wit, is the 26-year-old Indiana Jones of the crew, with his Mormon mission to Tokyo, his Fulbright Fellowship in China and his continuing Ph.D. research into Asian energy policy. He's also the self-described black sheep, the one who voices thoughtful dissent.
Charity, when she's not penning musical ditties for her work Facebook: The Musical or studying opera in Hungary as part of her Fulbright Fellowship, charms everyone with a supernatural cheerfulness. No wonder the 24-year-old successfully lobbied Congress to pass a bill calling for a National Civility Week, to inspire everyone to just get along.
Corban, everyone jealously agrees, is the most well-rounded; like his siblings, he aced the verbal component of his SATs, but he was the only one to also dominate in math. At 22, he graduated with an economics degree from Johns Hopkins after a short stint studying engineering at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Liberty is the bleeding heart, as well as the family cook, and everyone says the fruits of this twenty-year-old's compassion — such as her angel-hair pasta with cream sauce and seared scallops — should be featured on the Food Network.
Shiloh is known for his big head — and not just because the eighteen-year-old's impressive cranial capacity correctly predicted last August that Barack Obama's church affiliation would prove problematic. Physically, he has a very large head; it was too heavy for him to walk upright until he was three years old. He's living at home and attending the University of Denver, but he could wander off soon to more exotic locales.
Mercina, sixteen, scored the poise and style, having climbed the formidable rock plateaus of Masada National Park in Israel in high heels and a sun dress a few years ago during one of the family's many far-flung trips around the world.
Gloriana, often spotted in neon leggings and pigtails, is the reader of the group — which in this family is saying a lot. The fourteen-year-old probably just started another Dostoyevsky novel — or maybe she's begun perusing college brochures.
Zenith, at eleven, takes the youngest-child syndrome to new heights. At Lantos's 75th birthday celebration in Hungary, he stole the show among international society with his personal interpretation of his grandfather's swimwear: a very revealing Speedo.
Thank God they got it on video.
