Month: June 2021

Myrtle in the Hat in the Sun – Revealed

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Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin circa 1950

When I was looking for something to write about this evening, I stumbled across this old, blurry, sunbaked photo of my grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  While it is not the best quality photo, I really liked the whimsical look and smile on her face.  Even though it shows a side of my grandmother I appreciate, I wasn’t sure the photo was in good enough shape to share.  But I thought I would give it a try.

This is one of those photos that I never know what the final result will be.  I’ve had better photos that I’ve edited and the results are awful.  Either I can’t get the features to look  right, or for some reason it doesn’t look like the person with the changes that are made.  I was worried that it would happen with this photo since there is contrasting darkness with sunlight and shadows.

I couldn’t even tell where her eyes were looking when I first started working on the photo.  The more I worked on it, the more I realized she was looking into the car that she is leaning against.  There are also lots of spots on the photo and a few places where the image surface had been torn off.  So I had to doctor it quite a bit.

When I went to run it through the sharpening program, it didn’t work.  It wasn’t able to recognize her face, probably because of the confusion of where her eyes were looking.  So I edited it some more to help to define her eyes.  That was all it took!  It sharpened up her face and it actually looked like my Grandma!  I still had to edit it some more to put more Myrtle back into the photo. 

Edited photo of my grandmother.

So here is the final result.  Look at that smile.  I think that’s the thing that drew me to the photo in the first place.  She looks like she’s having a jolly good time visiting with someone in the car.  I’m estimating the date of the photo based on how old she looks compared to other photos of her from around that time period.  Of course with the blurriness of the original photo, I could be off from the right date by a decade or so.

I am pleased with the result, otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing the revised version and you’d be reading about how I tried to improve that original old photo.  I would have still used that old photo by itself.  I was always charmed by it, but now even more so.  The photo was taken around 1950 when my grandmother was around 43 years old.  That was around the time that Betty Lou (Myrtle’s second daughter, my mother) was a senior in high school.  The oldest daughter Sylvia had gone off to college that year.  Alma would have been two years behind my mom, and Loris was two years after her.  The baby boy Austin was five years younger than Loris.

If I got the year close, it wouldn’t be long after this that she would become a grandmother.  She and my grandfather Fred Bucklin lived out in Hathaway, Louisiana, when most of us grandkids were growing up.  It was a fun place to visit.  They had a sock monkey that I always wanted to play with once I got there.  There were always puzzles to play with.  We had fun picking fruit in my grandfather’s nursery, making mudpies in the garden, and playing around out in the bamboo stand.  Their kitchen cabinets were backed with the same material as old chalkboards, so we could write and draw on them.

One of the things that I especially liked about my grandmother was her laugh.  She had a hearty, infectious laugh.   When I look at this picture, it reminds me of that.  I’m sure that this mirthful, expectant look was followed by rollicking laughter.  At least I like to think so.

Death of a Noble Woman

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Today I thought I would write about the death of my great grandmother Marie Therese Landry Patureau.  It’s time to write about my dad’s side of the family and it is Father’s Day this weekend, so I’ll write about his mother’s mother.  I was going to say, “But it’s mostly about my dad,” but that isn’t true.  It’s about his mother and grandmother.  My father’s name was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  Most people knew him as Bob or Pluto, or Daddy or Pappy, or Mr. Landry.  He answered to all of them.  I ran across the obituary of my great grandmother this week and was glad to find it.  I had looked for it a while back and couldn’t find it.  I also thought it would be good to combine that with some death notices that I got back in 2019 when I got together with some cousins.

Obituary for Marie Therese Landry Patureau from the Daily Champion on Oct. 6, 1909

I have always liked the title of this newspaper clipping from 1909.  Of course, as you can see, it is not the actual clipping that I have.  It is a transcription of the newspaper article.  I don’t know who did the transcribing and I’m not even sure of how I got this information.  I’m a bad genealogist.  I don’t keep good records of where I obtain things.  I find it hard enough to keep track of the things that I have, much less where they came from!  I’m a better family historian.  I can bring the information together, make a few digital edits, and share it in these writings that I do. 

Timeline for the last decade of Marie Therese Landry Patureau’s life by her granddaughter and namesake Marie Therese “Sis” Schafer Vicknair.

The obituary is titled “Death of a Noble Woman” and continues with the story, “In the little village of Crescent, on Monday the fourth day of October, 1909, Marie Therese Landry, wife of Dr. V. Vincent Maximilian Patureau, died at the age of 41 years and 21 days.”  What I really like about this is that they actually give her full maiden name.  She’s not just Mrs. V. M. Patureau.  I don’t think her age is correct in what they say.  On the plaque on the Patureau tomb in Plaquemine, her birth is given as Sept. 25, 1868.  Cousin Sis seems to think it was in October and that she died at almost 41 years of age.  I’m going with what was carved in stone! 

“It is said that the death of her brother Thomas B. Landry, which occurred on the 26th of last month caused her much grief, and two days later having given birth to a child, her gentle soul took its flight back to its Creator.”   I don’t know about all that.  I’m sure she did grieve the death of her brother, but I wouldn’t think that it had much effect on her death.  She was only 41 (or so) and she had dealt with grief before.  The daughter that she gave birth to in 1909 was named Hedwidge and she was the 15th child that Marie Therese gave birth to.  Marie Therese had dealt with the death of five of those offspring.  Some had died at birth, and during the last two years of her life, Marie Therese had endured the death of a 22-month-old daughter and a 10 1/2-month-old son.  I’m sure she was grieving the death of her children, yet she had nine living children to take care of.  So I’m thinking that it is much more likely that she died due to complications due to childbirth.  I suppose it would have been too indelicate to mention that in a newspaper article of those times.

Marie Therese’s obituary in The Weekly Iberville South. They seem to think that only two of her children mourned her passing. I think they were wrong!

“She was educated at St. Joseph Academy of Baton Rouge.  She was a member of the Brusley choir until her marriage, and until her death, was a member of the Altar Society of Plaquemine.”  I find it really interesting that she went to school in Baton Rouge, especially since that is where I live.  I know people who went to St. Joseph Academy and it is still in operation.  I wish I knew a few more details of her time there.  Did she live there when she attended?  It is now just a high school, but previously it was from first grade to graduation.  I wonder how many years she was there?  She was born in Brusly and lived there during her childhood.  As stated, she was in the Brusly church choir before she was married at the age of 20.  I suppose she wasn’t in the choir as a married adult, but she was a member of the Ladies Altar Society.

Death announcement for Marie Therese Landry. This is from the collection of her daughter Erie Patureau Landry, better known by me as Mee Maw.

“Mrs. Patureau was a devout Catholic, a model wife and a charitable woman, who will be sadly missed, not only by her husband and children, but by the many good people of the hamlet.  She leaves to mourn her loss the following:  Her husband Dr. V. M. Patureau, seven daughters, Emma, Lydwin, Lorena, Erie, Therese, Zita and Sylvie and two sons, Rommual and Vincent; a mother, Mrs. P. M. Babin of Lafayette; two sisters, Mrs. Louis Joseph Landry of Lafayette, and Mrs. Thomas M. Blanchard of Brusley, one brother Mose Landry of Cinclare.  The Daily Champion extends its deepest sympathy to the bereaved ones.”

She sounds like a wonderful – dare I say noble – woman.  I’m sure that in a small community like Crescent was at the time, her death was a loss for a lot of people.  But my concern is for her young, impressionable daughter Erie.  She had just turned 14 and she was one of the middle children in her large family.  So if her mother was as wonderful as portrayed, it would have been a terrible loss for young Erie.  Yet I don’t know how it affected her.  I was just a silly young boy myself when I knew her.  It’s not something we discussed.  I just wanted to spend time with her and learn the card games she would teach me.  I wish I knew more.  How did her mother’s death affect her?  What were her memories of her mother?  And more.

I’m glad I have the death announcement of my great grandmother.  It came from the Secret Collection.  (hushed whispers in the background “Secret?”  “What secret?”)  I’ve already told you enough about the Secret Collection.  If I told you any more, it wouldn’t maintain its Secret name!  Only the Keeper knows what further treasures lie within the Secret Collection, so be satisfied that we have this piece to enjoy.  Like the obituary, it gives the full name of my great grandmother.  Too bad the obituary couldn’t have followed the same trend when referring to to Marie Therese’s mother.  (Again with the Mrs. P. M. Babin)  It also gives her age as 41 years and 21 days, but I think it was 41 years and 9 days.  Sept. 25, 1868, to October 4, 1909 – you do the math.

Death notice of Marie Therese’s brother Thomas B. Landry from September 1909.

I thought I’d share another death notice from the Secret Collection. (hushed gasps from the peanut gallery “Another treasure?” asked in awe. “That Secret Collection sure is leaky!” someone responds suspiciously)  This is the death notice for Marie Therese’s brother Thomas Belisaire Landry.  As mentioned in her obituary, he died just a few days before she did.  His age looks close enough.  I won’t ask you to do any more math!  But you can tell that he was her younger brother.  Marie Therese was the first child of Trasimond Landry and Belite Bujol.  She was followed by Mary Catherine “Kate” Landry (Mrs. Thomas M. Blanchard of Brusly from the obituary),  Thomas, Mose (or Moses), and Manette.  Manette had passed away in 1904 – another death that Marie Therese had to grieve.

Marie Therese also had three half-sisters by her mother’s second  husband Mack Babin.  The first one had died shortly after her birth in 1880.  Then came Clemence (Mrs. Louis Joseph Landry of Lafayette in obituary) and Albine.  Albine had passed away in 1903 – yet another death .  I didn’t mean for this to turn into a sad story, but how could it not?  It’s about death.  But really, everyone that she knew has died since then.  It’s the way of the world.  The same thing could be said about each of us in years to come.

Uh, oh, I feel like I crossed a line with that statement.  Forget I said it.  I’ll turn this back around with something I heard on the news tonight:  Never give up!  Just keep moving forward doing the best that you can do.

Mom’s Memories Page 15 AKA Keepsakes Lost

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For some reason I’ve been thinking of this topic this week.  (I know the reason, I’m just keeping it secret.)  The loss of one of my mom’s family keepsakes did not sit well with her.  I think she mentioned it to us when we were kids, but she definitely talked about it toward the end of her life.  It’s a shame that some of those negative memories aren’t the first ones to go when a person starts losing their memory.  Yet we are a result of our experiences good and bad.  And both kinds make for good stories for a blog like this.  

Mom’s memories p. 15 plus a bit more

I say that the loss of her keepsake didn’t sit well with her, but it doesn’t sit well with me either.  It’s something that I would love to see.  She mentioned it in her little book she kept when she was documenting the memories she wanted to remember.  Now that I think about it, she didn’t mention that my dad sold her baritone without her permission.  It’s something else she talked about with a bit of sass to her voice.  It was another thing that did not sit well with her.  She wasn’t bitter about it, she just didn’t appreciate how it played out.

From mother to daughter – four generations: Martha, Daisy, Myrtle, and Betty

But the loss we’ll look at more closely is the loss of the trunk that was left to her by her maternal grandmother.  Let me introduce all of the players.  My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  She was born in Elton, Louisiana, on May 20, 1933, and died at the age of 83 on January 19, 2017.  Her mother was Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  She was born in Hathaway, Louisiana, on December 19, 1906, and died at the age of 79 on May 7, 1986.  Grandma’s mother was Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice.  She was born April 20, 1876, in London, England, and died at the age of 76 on July 29, 1952, in Elton, Louisiana.  My great great grandmother was Martha Ann Cook Keys.  She was born November 8, 1836, in Great Wigsborough, England, and died at the age of 59 on July 17, 1896, in Elton, Louisiana.

So let’s see what she wrote.  I’ll quote it and then discuss it.  “Mama somehow got the idea that Uncle Roy had a museum in his warehouse.”  The Mama mentioned here is my maternal grandmother Myrtle.  She was married to Fred Bucklin and Uncle Roy was his younger brother.  They lived down at the other end of Bucklin Road (where Ronnie C. now lives).  I don’t know anything about his warehouse.  Was it behind the house?  Connected to the house?  or at another location?   Uncle Roy died in 1999.

“At his funeral I asked Aunt Effie – she said he had a ‘collection’ – Mama had given him the gun collection from the Bucklins.  I had Martha Cooks antique trunk.  Grandma (Daisy) gave it to me when I was in high school.  It had some of her needlework in it.  It was no longer there + had been emptied on a shelf on the wall – So I guess MY trunk went to the ‘museum.'”  I’m not sure what the 1999 funeral and the gun collection had to do with the trunk, other than that was probably another time she had tried to track down its location. 

From what I remember, my mom had left the trunk at her mom’s home when she got married and moved to California in 1952.  They spent time there and in New Mexico before returning to Louisiana in 1956.  I think it was around this time that she noticed that her trunk was missing.  She probably was ready to retrieve it and it was nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t just any old trunk, and it wasn’t just the trunk.  “We liked to look at the needlework Martha had done.  It was in bad condition but I had cleaned it up.  It came from England when they moved here in 1887.”  So it was the trunk that my Keys ancestors used when they immigrated to the United States in 1887!  It probably even spent a little time in the chicken coop that the family lived in when they were waiting for their house to be built!

I first thought that the needlework that was in the trunk was by my great grandmother Daisy, but my mom specifically says later that the needlework was by Daisy’s mom Martha.  Wouldn’t that be something to see?!  My mom and her siblings enjoyed looking at it when they were youngsters.  But sadly, I will never get to see that or the trunk.

Yet I do have a piece of cross stitch that Daisy’s brother Leonard stitched in 1883.  I’ve shared a photo of that before.  I have another photo to share, too.  This one is a small photo that I have of one of Martha’s cross stitches that has survived all of these years.  I think I can make out that it was done in Feb. 1868.  It is in the care of one of Leonard’s descendants.   I love it!

Cross stitch done by my great great grandmother Martha Cook Keys in Feb. 1868.

Performing at Shakey’s – 40 Years Gone

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Me with my parents in November 1979. Bob, Van, and Betty Bucklin Landry at Shakey’s Pizza in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

I can’t believe it has been 40 years since our family sang at the Shakey’s in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  It seems like just recently that I acknowledged the 40 year anniversary of when we started playing there!  We actually performed there for just over a five year period.  We started on June 16, 1976, and ended in August of 1981.  Hey, I just realized something.  On Facebook, there was a post that read, “It’s Saturday night in the summer of 1976…tell us what you are doing?”  I responded by saying that I was resting from marching in the Bicentennial parade.  While it is true that I marched in a celebratory parade on that July 4th in Lake Arthur, Louisiana, it is much more likely that I was performing with The Landry Family Band during those first few months at Shakey’s.

We performed on Wednesday through Saturday nights that first year and later changed to just Friday and Saturday nights.  So actually on a majority of Saturday nights from 1976 through 1981 I was at Ye Olde Pizza Parlor in Lake Charles.  During football season, I missed many nights to be at the football games.  For 1976, 1977, and 1978 it would have been Friday nights at Bulldog Stadium rooting for the Jennings High bulldogs.  In 1979 and 1980, I would have been at McNeese Stadium on Saturday night cheering for the cowboys.  That’s kind of laughable, because I never really watched the games.  I was there because I was in the band and we marched at halftime.  I was too busy chatting with everyone around me to notice any of the football plays.

Bob and Betty Bucklin Landry with Karen Landry & Brian Fontenot at Shakey’s on Aug. 1, 1980.

I’m posting some photos from our time of performing at Shakey’s.  I don’t have a picture of our final performance there.  I don’t even know when it was.  I know it was in August of 1981, but I’m not sure of the date.  You would think I’d have been there for our final gig!  Maybe one of my siblings has a photo from it.  It’s possible that Karen or Jamie were there.  I wasn’t there because I was working at Astroworld that summer.  I was out of town and couldn’t make it there, so my final performance was probably in the beginning of June.  I don’t even know if I was told that our time there was coming to a close.

I couldn’t find a good photo of us singing at Shakey’s during 1981.  So I went back a year or two.  I found one of me with my parents in November 1979.  I don’t really have many photos of just me and my parents.  Most of the time there are many more family members included in the photo.  So even though I don’t think it’s that good of a photo of us, I still like it.

As you can see in that first photo, we were still wearing the red, white, and yellow Shakey’s shirts.  That changed at some point.  I know that it happened at least by August 1, 1980, because that is the date of the second photo.  This is my mom and dad with my sister Karen and her future husband Brian Fontenot.  It is such a good photo of all four of them.  They were all in a good mood because Brian had just proposed to Karen and she obviously said, “Yes!”  There were lots of memorable events that happened during our time at Shakey’s and this is a good representation of that.

I’m closing out this post as I sing, “Shakey’s is shaking up –  pizza people…”   Google it.