Great Grandpa Lou

This photo makes me smile.  It almost makes me laugh out loud.  The photo causes me to smirk with a soft chuckle.  It’s cute.  It’s sweet.  But it’s a little blurry.  I cleaned it up a bit, but I can’t make it clear.  There’s only so much you can do in photo editing.

I still like it quite a bit.  That’s kind of obvious since I’m using it for this week’s post.  The little girl in the photo is my oldest sister Jodie.  She was born on October 14, 1953, at Edwards Air Force Base in California.  She died on November 5, 1989 in Franklin, Texas.  Way too young.

Our mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry, who was the daughter of Fred Bucklin.  Fred’s mother was Addie Hine Bucklin, the other subject in this photo.  So she was the great grandmother of little Jodie in this photo.  And yet there is another person in the photo.

The other person in the photo is shown in a photo on the wall above the other two.  It’s a photo from 1905 of Addie when she was young married woman and her husband Louis Charles Bucklin, sometimes known as Lou.  In recent letters I’ve seen he was called that in 1893 by his peers.  And even though he died in 1927, he was still influencing my family much later on.

One of those influences was in 1933 when my mom was born.  There was talk of naming her Addie Lou in honor of both of Fred’s parents.  Addie was adamantly against that.  She did not want that cute little granddaughter of hers saddled with such an old fashioned name as Addie.  So mom was named Betty Lou and I have to say that the name really suited her.

Then when Jodie was born in 1953, her middle name was Lou as well.  So shortly after this photo was taken, Jodie would have started to talk a bit.  I’m not sure of the time frame.  But when she was learning what to call herself and her parents, she got a bit mixed up.  But in a good way.  She knew that she was Jodie Lou.  She knew that mom was Betty Lou.  I suppose that sometimes she was Mama Lou, because when she learned to call daddy “Pappy” she naturally ended up calling him Pappy Lou.

I’ve heard the Pappy Lou story all of my life, and I always thought it was a sweet story.  So when I found this negative and scanned it earlier this week, it reminded me of that story so much.  I don’t remember ever seeing the photo before.  And like I said at first, it’s cute.  It’s sweet.  And it’s appropriate that great grandpa Lou shows up in the photo.

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Here is another photo from the same visit.