Cyn­thia Hemphill is the daugh­ter of Claire Barkey Flash, a.k.a. Clara Bar­ki. Her moth­er was born on the Island of Rhodes in 1921, the first of six chil­dren in a Sephardic Jew­ish fam­i­ly. Due to her deter­mi­na­tion and per­se­ver­ance, Clara was able to orches­trate her fam­i­ly’s escape from Rhodes dur­ing World War II and even­tu­al immi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States.