Month: April 2025

Rob Landry (Pee Paw) in 1919

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Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. in 1919 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

This is not the photo that I wanted to post tonight.  I was looking for something on my phone earlier today and came across a photo that I didn’t remember ever seeing before.  It was a pretty blurry photo, but it was from around 1915 or so.  It was of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry with what looked like a group of his baseball friends/teammates.  It had a very pleasant look to the smile on his face, and everyone looked relaxed like they were having a good time.  I kept looking for the photo I was originally looking for, but in the back of my mind I decided that the photo I had seen would make a good one for tonight’s post.

So later at home I decided to start working on this post.  I got my phone out and started looking through my photos.  I was sure that it was taken in June 2024 when the Landry cousins got together for one of the funerals we had last year.  But I can not find that photo that I discovered earlier.  Was I dreaming when I saw that or did my mind just go astray?  It was a prince of a photo and now it’s just gone away!  (I’m humming now.)

But in the meantime, I noticed this old photo of Pee Paw looking kind of cool.  Of course I really should be calling him Rob since he was so young at the time.  This photo is from the years before he was married.  I’m estimating that it was taken around 1919 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry was born on January 9, 1893, in Westlake, Louisiana, to Simon Alcide Joseph Landry and Marie Celeste Leveque Landry.  He was the tenth and last child of the couple.  He did have a young niece named Manette by his older brother Sebastien who like a sister to him.  I was looking for a photo of her earlier when the mystery photo appeared. 

So Rob was around 26 years old at the time of this photo.  For some time during his twenties, he was a semi-professional baseball player.  He went off to military training in Virginia during the latter part of World War I.  He found a few other baseball enthusiasts while he was there.  I have photos to prove it.  He was never deployed and was honorably discharged due to the ending of the war and some damage to his hearing.

He looks so at ease in this photo.  Cool and relaxed.  He has somewhat of a sneer on his face like he might have been ready to start singing a song.  Not like Prince, more like Elvis Presley.  There is another photo of him from a few years earlier where he was singing.  I don’t usually think of my ancestors as young and going out to have a good time, but maybe he was getting ready to party like it was 1919.

Easter in Jennings in 1964

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Bucklin cousins in Jennings in 1964 for Easter.I’m sure some of you recognize this old Easter photo.  I actually posted it ten years ago on Facebook (April 2015).  That was a few months before I started doing the weekly blog that I now do every Thursday.  This time it looks a bit different.  I decided to edit it a bit.  People do that on Facebook all the time.  There’s an editing group that people post photos to with various requests.  Usually, when they request to remove people, I think that they’re making a fake photo.  Revisionist history.  Misleading people.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing right now!  I never liked the fact that one of our old neighbors was in the center of the photo and Jamie was off to the right by herself.  The grouping was all wrong.  I’ve thought of editing it previously, but I’ve always resisted before.  But not today!  Today Jamie has had some slight editing and has joined the group.  Sure, you can’t see her shoes, but the photo now looks so much more balanced.  It tells the story better, because the story is about cousins getting together for the holidays.

The photo was taken on March 29, 1964, in Jennings, Louisiana.  That was the date for Easter that year.   We were living just north of Interstate 10 in a two-story house that we were renting.  I always thought that we rented from a Mr. Sonnier.  I remember him stopping by the house sometimes in an old pickup truck.  (Al cut his finger on something in the back of that truck once.  Ask him to see the scar next time you see him.)  But Mama said in her memory book that it was the old Dupre house.  I’ve shared photos of that old house before.

I know it was at that house, because you can see the big barn behind us.  That barn was behind the old two-story house.  It was a red barn with rusty tin sides.  We used to rub our hands on the doors and our hands would turn red.  We also liked to peek inside because there was a small airplane in there.  It was just the skeleton of the plane.  It looked like it wasn’t quite finished being made yet.  But I don’t remember anyone working on it or anything.  Uncle Austin was away in the military and he was the only one we knew that could have done such a thing.

My family consisted of my mom and dad – Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry – Bob and Betty, and us six kids – Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van (me), and Jamie.  We moved to that house from Lake Charles in 1963 and were only there for about two years.  But there were so many memories from those times – wasps in the sand pit, running along the canal next to the property, witnessing human trafficking, watching the military convoys pass by, making powder puffs from thistles, riding the murderous horses in the fields, etc.  It was a great place to live.

There are a few other photos from that day.  I think we went to church first, and I think that the Pilchers went along with us.  The Pilchers are connected to us because the mom was my mom’s older sister Sylvia Bucklin Pilcher.  They lived in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Sylvia was married to Ronald Pilcher, and they had five children – Larry, Paul, Toni, Lynn, and Kevin.  Mama and Aunt Sylvia grew up Methodist.  They both married a Catholic man and converted to Catholicism.  Mama always claimed that she and her sister were each other’s godmother.  

So this photo is a photo of a large part of the Bucklin cousins at the time.  Betty and Sylvia had two younger sisters named Alma and Loris.  Alma and her then husband Chuck Seal only had one child at the time (Rhonda, later to be joined by sister Charla).  Loris and her then husband Ernest Woolley had three sons (Brent, Keith, and Glen).  The four Bucklin girls had a younger brother Austin who would later marry Margaret New.  They would have four children – John, Dale, Anita, and Mary.  I wish this photo had included all of the cousins that had been born at the time.  I don’t know how it came about that there were just these two families.

The photo just has the children of Sylvia and Betty Lou.  From left to right we have Lynn, Karen, Toni, Al, Van, Jodie (in front), Jamie, Rob, Kevin, Paul, and Larry.  What a group!  Most of us are looking at the camera.  Lynn and Karen are not.  They look very preoccupied with seeing what Karen has gathered in her Easter basket.  Obviously, there was some egg hunting going on that day.  There may have been some egg pocking going on as well.  We always had to see whose egg was the strongest!

I can’t let this Easter post end without sharing a poem my mom wrote years ago.  Sure, I shared the poem ten years ago when I shared the original photo.  But the poem was written more like fifty years ago.  Back then the poem was only four lines long.  I added two lines in the middle ten years ago to finish it up.  I call it “Betty Lou’s Easter Poem.”  Here it is:

 

That crummy, dummy Easter Bunny left no eggs for me.

That crummy, dummy Easter Bunny hopped right by with glee.

I tracked him to my neighbor’s house and stood outside his door,

and when I saw that Bunny head, I knocked it to the floor.

I tied up all his whiskers and macraméd his ears.

I sat down in my rocking chair and drank three beers.

 

Happy Easter everyone!

 

Bobbie in 1941

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Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. in 1941 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Since I shared a photo of my mom from the early forties last week, I thought I’d do the same thing this week for my dad.  So I found this old school photo of him from 1941.  I remember this photo from way back when.  I put it in an old photo album for the family when I was in junior high school.  I’m so glad all those old photos were saved. 

I think I may be a little spoiled.  Some people talk like they don’t have so many old family photos.  Either they didn’t take photos for one reason or another, or the photos were destroyed or thrown away.  Things happen.  Fires, flood, and hurricane winds happen and can destroy entire homes.  Fortunately, my family has fared well through the years.  At least where photos are concerned.  So I do my best to share them with the rest of the family.  

My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and he was known as Bobbie at this time.  People might have started calling him Pluto by then.  He was born to Rob and Erie Patureau Landry in 1929 in Lake Charles.  He was the 3rd son and the fifth child.  I was also the 3rd son and the fifth child in my family.  He had three younger siblings, while I only had one.  I don’t know much about the school that he attended.  The school year 1941-42 was spent at First Ward.  Was that considered an elementary school or junior high school? 

I know that he would spend the next four years at Landry Memorial High School.  They graduated in the 11th grade back then, so I think that puts this photo as a 7th grade portrait.  The year 1941 was a notable one.  That was the year that the United States became involved with World War II.  It was only a couple of years since the ending of the Great Depression.  It must have been a scary time, but young Bobbie didn’t have to worry too much about it.  He was too young to fight in that war.  Nobody would have known it at the time because it was just starting for them.  He might have been worried for his older brothers, but they all survived the turmoil.

Nubian man AKA Pluto ManThe school photo also reminds me of when I did a DNA test on my dad.  When I told the family about the ethnicity results, some of my nieces were surprised that he was 100% European.  “Really?” they asked, “He doesn’t have any sub–Saharan African?”  I told them that there was never any suggestion of that in the family tree that my dad had worked on.  It all pointed back to France.  And they responded, “But those pictures of him when he was younger (seemed to point to a mixed heritage).” They may have got the idea from a photo in an encyclopedia or Book of Knowledge in my parents’ house.  It showed an African man and my mom had labeled it “Pluto man.”  She thought the man resembled Daddy.  They seemed a little disappointed. 

We are what we are.

Betty Lou in 1942

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Betty Lou Bucklin was a fourth-grade student at Hathaway High School in the fall of 1942.

Here is a photo of my mom in 1942.  She was just a young girl living in Hathaway, Louisiana, with her parents, her three sisters, and her younger brother.  I’m pretty sure it is a school photo, though it doesn’t have the usual school’s name and year below it like most of the other ones I have of her.  But what else could it be?  She’s posed like your standard school portrait.

I was about to say that this was one of the two times that she tried out the hair style where she doesn’t have bangs.  I was thinking that it occurred at the time of this photo and then she tried it again in 1948, and all of the other years she had bangs.  But in looking back at the old photos, I realized I was wrong.  She had her hair pulled to the side from around 1941 all the way through to 1948.  That’s most of her school years!  How do I not notice these things?

It makes me wonder what other things I overlook when I read letters, Censuses, and old records about my ancestors.  It’s difficult to soak in all of the information when you look through so much information.  But I’m thinking I might have to revisit some of those documents I haven’t looked at in a while.  They might be a source for some good material for these family history posts.  I’m getting a little short on new photos to use.  I could always reuse some of the really good ones along with new discoveries about the subjects of the photos.

I’ve actually done that a few times already.  I’m surprised that it’s taken ten years to get low on new photos to share for the first time.  I know there are “new” photos out there that I haven’t seen yet.  I’ll definitely keep looking.  I do still have some good photos to share, like this one of 9-year-old Betty Lou Bucklin.  She went by Betty Lou all her life.  She said that when she started school, there were several Bettys around – Betty Jo Koll, Betty Stagg, Betty Fruge – so they all called her Betty Lou.  Though her family always called her that, too.  

This was around the time that her interest in music was starting to grow.  I shared a photo of her in her Rhythm Band at school from the same year.  In her memory book, she said that she started playing piano around this time, too.  The family was musical.  Grandma Bucklin – Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin – used to sing and play the piano and organ.  She learned that from her own mother – Daisy Henrietta Keys Phenice.  If you remember the musical recordings that I’ve shared, you’ll notice that Myrtle had a beautiful singing voice and had perfect pitch.  Daisy not so much.  She did provide wonderful accompaniment to her husband Harry Clifton Phenice on the recordings of him playing the fiddle.  Like I said, the family was musical.