Author: Van

It has become a tradition on my blog to write two Christmas posts every year.  So I’m following through with it this year.  Our company Christmas party is tonight, so I was thinking about Christmas parties of the past.  That led me to think of my first Christmases.  Not that this family history blog is all about me.  But I am the one talking about the history of my ancestors.  I also write about some of my own family history.  So maybe it is all about me!  I am the one writing all of the words for you to read.

I might as well make the first photo be all about me.  This is a photo of me under my first Christmas tree.  I look pretty happy despite having a gun pointing at my head!  Ignorance is bliss.  I was only about two months old and have no memory of this event.  I do know that the photo was taken at 1317 Clover Drive in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  That’s where the family lived for the first two years of my life.

I’ve shared a photo of this Christmas on Facebook before, because I remember people commenting about me being in a laundry basket.  I have two photos of me at Christmas that year, and both times I was in the basket.  The other picture includes my siblings and my dad, though.  I am the center of attention in this photo.  When you are the fifth child in a family, you don’t get many of those.  It’s mostly group photos with all of the siblings.  I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

I have a photo of the following year and it shows a lot more people in it.  But best of all, they let me out of the basket!  I’m still sitting near it.  Maybe it was like a security blanket for me.  I don’t know.  The basket is still in the center of the photo at the bottom, and I am the little boy sitting next to it.  I can’t really tell what I’m doing.  It is the first picture of me at a Christmas party.  This was the Landry family get together that we had every year on Christmas Eve.

The family got together at my paternal grandmother’s house.  It was better known as Mee Maw’s house, and it was at 509 Nichols Street in Lake Charles.  Mee Maw’s name given to her at birth was Germaine Erie Patureau.  She later went by Erie Landry when she married Robert Joseph Landry in 1921.  He was known as Rob Landry, but the grandkids knew him as Pee Paw.  I never knew him because he died in 1957.  

As you can tell from photo 1 of 1961 Christmas, there were lots of family members around.  Look at all of those presents in the background!  My dad had seven siblings and they were all married by that time.  With my grandmother, her children, and their spouses, that’s nineteen people right there.  There were an additional twenty-one people – my siblings and first cousins.  It was a large family and it was still growing.  My mom was pregnant for my younger sister at the time.  Starting with me at the bottom and going counterclockwise, you can see my dad (Bob Landry), my aunt Margie Harrington Landry, my aunt Germaine Landry Winn, two cousins (I think) sitting down, and my cousin and godmother Shirley Landry standing up.  It looks like she may be handing a present to Uncle A.J.  I think the three kids in front of the TV are my siblings Rob, Jodie, and Karen.  Looking toward the camera is cousin Tricia Duffy, who is looking past cousin Dennis Landry’s head.  I see a head between Tricia and Dennis and a face along the far-right edge, but I can’t tell who they are.  I’m also not sure of the identity of the little girl sitting in the middle of the room.

I can’t stop without sharing a photo of the hostess of the party.  That would be my dear sweet Mee Maw who is seen in photo 2 of 1961 Christmas.  She definitely loved her children and grandchildren.  We all wanted to be her favorite, and many of us still claim that title.  No fighting is involved.  Mee Maw would not approve of that!  It looks like my aunt Frances Landry Raley is giving her a gift.  To the right of her is uncle Norman Duffy. Watching from the other side is my aunt Mildred Sutherlin Landry.

I wouldn’t want to talk about all my cousins without sharing this photo from that Christmas that shows most of them.  They were all so cute.  Most of them still are!  In the back row we have Douglas Winn holding Lauren Duffy, Phyllis Winn, Jodie Landry, Mark Reeves, Daphne Winn, Shirley Landry holding Jeanne Raley, and Tricia Duffy.  In the front row are Karen Landry, Scott Raley, Stephen Duffy, Gene Duffy, Rob Landry holding little brother Al, and Dennis Landry.

I probably got a name or two wrong.  I’m sure some of my older cousins will correct me.  Did I tell you that my godmother Shirley was The First?  We can’t forget to give her the respect that she deserves.  She helped to make those early Christmas parties memorable for me.  I always looked forward to the opening of the gifts.  I knew that I’d get at least three!  One from Mee Maw.  (How did she afford to buy all of us something that was just perfect for us?  Sorry, Jamie, I could not resist!)  One from my godfather or parrain.  (The first French word that I remember learning.)  And one from my wonderful godmother.  She was just a teenager at the time.  Thanks for helping to make little Van a happy boy at Christmas.

I have to admit that those Christmas parties are my most cherished.  I will go to my company party later and I’ll have a good time visiting with my coworkers.  I really do appreciate them.  But it doesn’t compare to family.  And even though the company likes to talk about themselves as if they were family, they aren’t.  If you grew up in a big loving family, you know what the real thing is.

These photos are of the real thing.

 

I thought I would share a photo of my dad tonight.  This picture caught my interest when I saw it.  I got it in 2019 when some of the cousins got together to share photos and dinner.  I can’t believe it’s been four years already.  Time sure does fly.  There were lots of great photos that I saw then that I had never seen before.  This is one of them.  It was in the Secret Collection that my cousin Daphne is the curator of.  Thanks, Daphne, for sharing those treasures with us.

What’s interesting about this photo is how it shows the changes that a few years can make when you look at photos of a family.  My dad was part of the Landry family in Lake Charles, Louisiana, during the early thirties and forties.  His father was Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. who had grown up in Westlake, Louisiana.  His mother was Germaine Erie Patureau, and she had grown up in Crescent (Plaquemine), Louisiana.  Erie’s mother was Marie Therese Landry Patureau.  She had died when Erie was just a young girl of 14.  That’s about the same age as my dad in this photo.  Marie Therese was also the first cousin of Rob Landry.

So, yes, my dad’s parents were first cousins once removed.  But that was a long time ago, and that’s what everyone did back then.  In fact, all four of my dad’s grandparents were related to each other through the Landry family.  That’s probably why I feel so connected to the Landry name.  That, and it is my last name!  So Rob and Erie were married and they started a family.

My dad and I were both the fifth child of our families and the third son, as well.  We both had two older brothers and two older sisters.  But his older brothers were only a year apart in age, and they were 3 and 4 years older than he was.  That bit of difference is very noticeable in this photo.  Hubert on the far left and AJ in the middle look almost like adults while Bobbie (Robert Joseph Landry, Jr., my dad) still looks like a kid.  I think it’s one of a few that shows this time period.  Before long, he would catch up and become the tallest of the four brothers.  He remained the tallest even when younger brother Johnny reached his full height.  I was not like my dad in this.  My dad was 6’1 and I was only 6′.  My older brothers are taller, or at least I always thought so.  I’ve measured lately and found that I’m 6’1, so I may not be the shortest after all.  Either way is fine with me.

So there you have it.  A photo of my dad as a young teen.  A discussion of family make-up.  And a discussion of growing up.  I thought about saying something about how pleased my dad looked or how handsome they were, but I didn’t.  If you would like to address that, feel free.  I’m pretty sure the photo was taken around 1943 at my grandparents’ house in Lake Charles.

That’s right! In 1964 the Landry family had a pony.  Actually, it wasn’t a pony and there was more than one.  What we had were two horses when we lived out in the country.  For the longest time I thought that the horses were just on the property that we rented in 1963 when we first moved to Jennings.  I didn’t think that we actually owned two horses.  That’s what rich kids had and we were definitely not rich.

It always reminds me of a Seinfeld episode.  In the episode Jerry and Elaine are with Jerry’s parents and they’re eating at an older Polish woman’s home.  They both are a little uncomfortable, so they’re talking to keep the conversation going.  Somehow the topic of horses comes up.  Elaine then said that ponies reminded her of overgrown dogs.  She goes on to say, “and those kids who had their own ponies.”  “I know,” Jerry chimed in, “I hated those kids.  In fact, I hate anyone that ever had a pony when they were growing up.”  The Polish woman gives a stern, startled look and says, “I had a pony!  When I was a little girl in Poland, we all had ponies.”  I find the scene hilarious, but I never thought of myself as one of those kids who had their own pony.

But I didn’t really.  There were two horses for our family of eight.  And they certainly weren’t thoroughbreds!  One of them was in pretty good shape.  Her name was Topsy.  The other one was rather old and had a sway back.  We called that one Old Bald.  When we were living in that location, there was a two-story house that we lived in.  In the back of the property (which was next to a canal) there was an old red barn.  There was a fenced-in area around the barn where there were some cows and I’m pretty sure that’s where the horses were kept as well.  One day after what must have been a rainy period, Old Bald fell and broke a hip or something and got stuck in the mud behind the barn.  Somebody came by to try to get him out, but I don’t think it was successful.  They were going to have to put him down.  I remember looking out the back kitchen window toward the barn and asking my mom if I could go out to see what was going on.  She told me that I didn’t want to see all that.  But I DID want to see what was going on.  I minded my Mama.

In a previous post “The Old Swing Set” that I wrote in 2019, I talked about an old sand box that we had.  I described it as a round brick building with a ceiling, and it seemed like a favorite place for wasps to build their nests.  I thought it was an unusual sand box from my memory and asked my siblings if they remembered the same thing.  Obviously I did not have access to this second photo at the time.  It’s the only photo that shows that old sand box, and sure enough it is a round brick building behind our two-story house. 

That house, which we rented from a Mr. Sonnier, was situated just north of the I-10 in Jennings, Louisiana.  It is no longer there.  The only way I know to tell where it used to be is by looking for the canal that ran along the north property line.  That’s my brother Rob on the horse.  I think I got the photo from him.  I colorized it.  You can see our old van in the driveway and on the right side of the photo, you can see the eaves of the old barn that I talked about.  It had a framework of a plane in it.  We would peek in on it from time to time.  The photo must have been taken in the fenced-in area that I talked about.  There was a separate fenced-in area on the other side of the barn for the cows.  That’s where I recall them being when Al reached through the fence and attempted to touch one.  “I almost touched a cow feather!” he excitedly exclaimed.  

It’s amazing to think that all of this happened 60 years ago.  I have memories from 60 years ago!  And I have photos that verify that some of those memories are accurate!  But I’m still just that kid in the first photo who is too busy playing with the dog to notice that my mom was taking a photo.  I was probably trying to make her bark!  It’s what I do.

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Update:  My brother Rob informed me that Topsy, in fact, was a female horse.  It’s funny how you can know something (Topsy was a male.) ever since you were a child and never stop to question if it is accurate.  So I went back to the story and corrected the pronouns so no one will be offended.  He also informed me that she was a quarter horse with good lines.  The person we sold (or gave) Topsy to entered her into several competitions, which she won.  She became more valuable, and her offspring were desirable as well.  Our Topsy did good.

 

I suppose my title isn’t really very informative.  Most of my recent ancestors have attended school, so the same thing could be said of them.  I thought about putting the word “Here” at the end of the title, but I decided against it.  You may not be here, and you may not know where my here is.  So, just to make sure that you do know, I am here in Baton Rouge.  And, yes, my great grandmother Marie Therese Landry was a schoolgirl here.

I’ve known that she came to school in Baton Rouge for a while.  Two years ago I wrote a post titled “Death of a Noble Woman.”  I shared her death notice and the obituary that was written up in the newspaper.  The title of the post came from the newspaper article.  But in that article, it talked about Marie Therese having attended St. Joseph’s Academy of Baton Rouge.  I remember thinking it was interesting that she went to school here.  I’m familiar with the present location of the Academy and wondered if she had gone there.  I was curious to know if the students at that time would live on the campus.  

I thought maybe I’d go by the school and see if they had any records from back then.  But I didn’t.  I have no excuse.  It’s not that far from here.  But come to find out, the old location of the school is even closer to where I live.  I could walk there from here.  In fact, I have been walking there every day when I go to work for the past six years!

I work at GIS, an engineering firm that is presently located in II Rivermark Centre.  When I first started working there, it was the north tower of the Chase buildings.  But the buildings changed ownership and the names changed.  For the past year or two, I Rivermark Centre has been undergoing renovations.  I’ve had to change my path to work a few times to find the safest and most manageable way to the building I work in.  I’ve seen all the progress along the way.  They’ve done a nice job.

When they had a grand opening the other day, we thought we’d go.  So we walked there and stood around waiting for the ceremonies to begin.  As I stood there, I read a plaque that was on the wall of the lobby.  And look what it said!  The location of the building was the original location of St. Joseph’s Academy from 1869 to 1941.  The plaque was to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the opening of the school.  So the school opened around October 22, 1868.  And now it has been 155 years since that date.

And how does that date compare to the life of my great grandmother?  Well, Marie Therese Landry was the first child of Trasimond Landry and Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol.  She was born on September 25, 1868.  The school was started less than a month after she was born.  The family lived in Brusly, Louisiana, which is just across the river from Baton Rouge.  I still don’t know when she started attending school there or whether she boarded there.

But just a few weeks ago, my post was about her father Trasimond’s death.  He died in 1879 when Marie Therese was just eleven years old.  According to family history, this left the family destitute.  How did they afford to send her to a private school in Baton Rouge?  Her Landry grandfather Narcisse Landry had died in 1876.  He had been living with the family because he had lost everything after the Civil War.  Marie Carmelite Hebert Landry (his wife) had died before the Civil War.  Belite’s father Joseph Hubert Amedee Bujol had died before that, so Anna Adele Landry Bujol (his wife) was a widow for over 40 years.  But she was a planter with a Leveque cousin, so maybe she had some money to help the family out.

 After Trasimond died, Belite remarried not much later.  She was married to Pierre Magloire Babin within the year.  They show up on the 1880 Census in Brusly with all five of her Landry children and a new little Babin daughter.  The daughter was only three days old, and they hadn’t even named her yet.  I don’t know how long she lived, because there is no further record of her.  Also living in the household was Belite’s mother Adele.  It shows for Marie Therese that she was “at school.”  I think this just means she was attending school.  It doesn’t specifically state that she was going away for school.

Maybe she didn’t start going to the Academy until after her father’s death.  There are still a lot of unanswered questions.  Maybe this plaque will give me the motivation to look into it a bit more.  I’m glad I found out about this location for the school at this time.  I can still enjoy knowing that I’m walking the paths that my great grandmother did.  Our work is relocating, so I won’t be walking to work beginning next year.  But I’ll still be able to walk by from time to time and think about my great grandmother when she was just a schoolgirl.

Boy, there are a bunch of people in this photo!  Of course, that was always the case when the Landry family got together for holidays and such.  This was back in the 1950s in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at the home of paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  She went by her middle name Erie, but of course we grandkids only knew her as Mee Maw.

It’s interesting that this is a photo of the Landry cousins, because there are only two people in this photo that are still Landrys.  That would be my two older brothers – Rob and Al.  And the ones who carried the Landry name forward – my dad Robert Joseph “Bob” or “Pluto” Landry, Jr. and my grandfather Robert Joseph “Rob” or “Pappy” Landry, Sr. – aren’t even in the photo.

I’m estimating that this photo was taken in December of 1959.  That is based on the blonde girl holding a dollar bill and my mom holding a baby that looks like my brother Al.  The blonde is my cousin Patricia Winn and her birthday is in December.  My mom is the woman on the left with the cute saddle oxford shoes.  Her name was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and she gave birth to my brother Al in July of 1959.  He looks five months old, right?

Our family was living in Lake Charles at the time.  My parents and my two oldest siblings – Jodie and Rob – moved to Lake Charles in 1956.  Later that year Karen was born there.  My dad had a job as the band director at LaGrange High School.  He grew up in Lake Charles and most of his immediate family lived there.  His dad – my Pee Paw – died in August of 1957, which is why he is not in this photo.  I have a different reason that I’m not in the photo.  I wasn’t born yet!  But when I was born in 1960 and my younger sister Jamie was born in 1962, the family still lived in Lake Charles.  It wasn’t until 1963 that we moved away from Lake Charles.

But move away we did.  But not that far.  We moved to Jennings, Louisiana, which is only 35 miles away.  I always thought it seemed so far away.  It took 40 minutes to get there.  That was forever when I was a kid.  I live in Baton Rouge now, and it can take longer than that just to get across town sometimes.  But I think that living that far away when we were kids made a difference.  I always thought that the other Landry cousins seemed closer to each other because they lived in the same town and could see each other more often.  When I was growing up, I always thought I’d end up living in Lake Charles where my cousins lived.  

That didn’t happen.  I live in Baton Rouge, but there are still lots of cousins around.  Though they are not as closely related.  When you spend a lot of time looking at family history and DNA, you find lots of cousins.  Plus my somewhat recent ancestors were from this part of the state.  They lived just across the river from where I live now.  The family has spread out all over the country.

But back when this photo was taken, the only family we knew was right there in Lake Charles.  I think it’s time to identify the people in the photo.  How bad can that be?  It’s only 18 people after all.  I’ll start with my immediate family that I’ve mentioned already.  Like I said earlier, that’s my mom holding my brother Al on the far left.  If Al kicked his foot, he’d hit my sister Jodie in the head.  In front of her in the very front of the photo is my sister Karen in the striped top.  Sitting directly across the table from Jodie is my brother Rob who is looking at her.  Standing behind Rob is my Mee Maw.  She’s the one reaching to hand the birthday girl another dollar bill.

My Mee Maw was 64 years old in this photo.  I was curious to know which of my cousins is the same age now as she was then.  I did some ciphering and determined that my brother Al is closest to that age now.  He was her most recent grandchild at that point.  Slightly older than Al was cousin Jeanne Raley.  She is not in the photo, but she was born earlier that year.  Maybe she had just been put down for a nap.  Her mother was my dad’s sister Frances Landry Raley.  Aunt Frances was holding Jeanne’s big brother Scott Raley.  They are the woman and young boy to the right of my mom and my brother Al.  Another sister of my dad was the mother of the birthday girl.  Her name was Germaine Landry Winn.  She is the other adult woman who was wearing white and standing in front of the refrigerator.

Aunt Germaine has all three of her children present.  Of course, she did.  They had all been born at this point and it was the celebration of Phyllis’s birthday.  Her oldest child was Douglas, who can be seen directly in front of Aunt Frances.  He’s got a big smile on his face and he’s sitting next to the birthday girl.  Their sister is Daphne, who is sitting next to Rob.  You can see her legs under the table.  Aunt Wana is on the far right.  She has four children in this photo.  She is holding her youngest son at the time – Tim Duffy.  

Wana’s oldest child Tricia is in the photo.  She’s on the left between Karen and Jodie.  She also has a big smile on her face.  The next oldest Duffy is Stephen.  He’s sitting in the front on the right and he’s looking right at us.  I think Gene Duffy is the one on his older cousin’s shoulders with his arms spread out.  So that just leaves the older cousin to identify.  He was the son of my dad’s oldest sister Marie Landry Reeves.  She is not in the picture, but her son Mark is.

Ok, I’m done.  If there are any corrections, please let me know.  I count on my cousins to point out any mistakes I make.  That’s what family is for, right?  

Last year I wrote a few posts about the 70th anniversary of some of the events in my parents’ lives.  I talked about them meeting each other’s parents, getting engaged, and getting married.  When I wrote those posts, I also planned to write the post I’m writing tonight that celebrates the anniversary of them becoming parents.  The reminder I had was the realization that my older sister Jodie would have turned 70 in two days.  She was born on October 14, 1953, in California at Edward’s Air Force Base.

That’s the day that my parents became parents.  Before that, they were just Bob and Betty Landry.  My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and he was born on January 31, 1929, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and she was born on May 20, 1933, in Hathaway, Louisiana.  They were married on November 1, 1952, in Lake Charles.

So when Bob and Betty welcomed little Jodie Lou into the world all those years ago, they were 24 years old and 20 years old, respectively.  It’s so weird that I’ve always thought about the age they were when they had their first child.  I’ve never paid as much attention to their ages when they were married.  I guess I’ve always placed more importance on the time that they became parents. 

I think it was a special day for my parents as well.  When I think about why I say this, it brings up sad memories.  Sad, but very sweet.  In 1989, when Jodie was dying, Mama and Daddy went to be with her at the end.  When all Jodie could do was lie there in bed, my dad would just gently run his fingers over her forehead to soothe her.  For my mom, it brought back memories from when they were first parents.  My dad would do the same thing to try to help Jodie fall asleep.  It was such a difficult thing to lose a child.  I’m glad my mom was able to share that with me.  She also told me that it was particularly hard because Jodie was the one that made her a mom.  

Well, I wasn’t expecting all of that.  I was planning on writing a sweet little story.  But sometimes really good memories are associated with really painful ones.  The photo of the three of them in 1954 is particularly sweet.  Such a happy new family.  I’m pretty sure that this photo was hand-tinted by my mom from a black and white print.  I have the photo on my shelf here in my house, but I’m thinking it really needs to go to one of Jodie’s sons.  

It’s the only photo I thought of using when I thought of writing about the 70th anniversary of my parents’ big day.  I hope you like it.