My Father and Godfather in 1936

It was pretty easy to pick out a photo for this week’s post.  I wanted one of my dad when he was a young boy.  When I saw this one of him with his younger brother Johnny when he was just a baby, I knew it was the one.  But then coming up with a name for the post was trickier.  While the main focus of the photo are the two boys, there is also a sister and their mother in the photo as well.  I don’t want to slight them!  I stuck with the focus of the photo.  Plus it is somewhat of a continuation of the post I did a few months ago when Uncle Johnny died.  

Actually it is a prequel to all of the photos that I’ve posted that include Uncle Johnny.  This is a photo of when he was a fresh little infant.  Isn’t that the sweetest little photo?  I kept the border on it, because it has a charm about it, and it points to the period of time when it was popular.   His full name was John Alfred Xavier Landry and he was born August 2, 1936.  I estimated that the photo was taken shortly after that.  He was the last of eight children.

On the left is my dad.  He was born on January 31, 1929, and was given the name Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  He was named after his dad, obviously!  He was called Bobbie back then.  That name carried on, but he acquired more through the years.  Standing in the background, you can easily see their sister Wana.  She was four years old.  It’s surprising to see her with her hand covering her mouth.  That wasn’t typical in her later years.  She was a talker!  There is another sister standing in the background.  I’m not sure if that was Germaine or Marie.  I can’t really make out her face.  Too bad.

On the right edge of the photo, you can make out part of the profile of my dear sweet Mee Maw.  She was the mother of the children in the photo.  Her name was Germaine Erie Patureau Landry, but at the time she was just known as Erie or Mama.  She had been a teacher in Lafayette, Louisiana, in her early 20s, but gave that all up to get married and raise a family in Lake Charles.  I think she made the right choice.  She looks so content looking down at her youngest son.  She loved her children and later on, she loved all of her grandchildren.

Mon Pere et Mon Parrain en 1936.  I only have one negative thing to say about my grandmother.  But it’s not really something negative about her.  It’s about the situation that led her to make a decision.  There was a movement back then that led some educators in different parts of the state to punish children who grew up speaking French in the home.  The children would mainly speak French and that was frowned upon in some parts.  I’m pretty sure MeeMaw grew up speaking both French and English.  All of her ancestors spoke French.  She might have seen as a teacher the difficulty the French-speaking children had at school. 

She decided to only teach her children how to speak English.  I think she spoke French with Pee Paw or her sisters when she wanted to say something in private, but she didn’t speak it enough for her children to learn how to speak it.  So just like that, the family went from French-speaking and bilingual to English-speaking.  I am of two minds on the subject.  Part of it is the inevitable assimilation into a culture whose primary language is English.  Resistance is futile!  On the other side is the maintaining of different cultures within the large group. 

Her decision to teach her children only English led to another change:  they also married outside of the cultural (Cajun or French) group. (Or outside the family as I sometimes say!)  So I never wanted to speak French when I was growing up.  Actually, when we heard it on the local radio, it sounded funny to us.  We would just listen to the Cajun songs and laugh.  It wasn’t until I looked into our family history and saw so much French documentation that I started to regret the loss of something. 

If only we could have maintained both English and French.  There is a movement in southern Louisiana to preserve some of that Cajun and French heritage.  I, for my part, am learning French. Veut-tu faire quelque chose?