Author: Van

The Landry cousins getting together for a birthday party in December of 1959 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

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?  

Bob and Betty Landry with daughter Jodie on June 19, 1954, in California.

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.

Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. circa 1918 during World War I.

This is a photo that I’ve seen all of my life.  I remember my dad had several photos of his dad from World War I.  When I was young, I thought that World War II was ancient history.  That was back in 1965 or so, which was only twenty years or so after the fact.  So the idea of something as far back as World War I was unfathomable.  Same with the future – I always thought the year 2000 was so far in the future.  I never looked past that.

And now I think that a photo from 20 years ago is a recent photo.  That’s because according to my childhood self, I am unfathomably old!  World War I was fifty years earlier than my childhood, and now I’m older than that.  Oh how the years go by!  

The other thing that was notable about this photo was that it was one of the few ways I got to know my grandfather.  He died before I was born, so I never had any interactions with him.  So I relied on my dad and older family members to know things about him.

His name was Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  Of course, he wasn’t born a Sr.  He became a Sr. in 1929 when my dad was born.  My grandfather went by the name Rob and sometimes Bob, so my dad was called Bobbie by his family.  My dad called his dad Papa, and the grandchildren knew him as Pee Paw.

Pee Paw was born on January 9, 1893, in Westlake, Louisiana, to 47-year- old Simon Alcide Joseph Landry and 45-year-old Marie Celeste Leveque.  He was the last of ten children born to this couple.  Though when Rob was born, only six of his older siblings were still alive.  He spent his whole childhood in Westlake.  He might have been like me and thought that his dad was so old.  After all, Alcide would have been in his fifties and he had fought in the Civil War.  And unlike me, I think he must have played a lot of baseball when he was growing up.  I do have a photo of Pee Paw as an infant, but there aren’t any of him playing games as a child.

But he must have played a lot, because when he was a young man he was a semi-professional baseball player.  I’ve shared photos of that before.  There are some really good ones of him from that age.  Then in 1917, at the age of 24, he joined the military to be part of the Great War.  He went to training at Camp Humphreys in Virginia.  I think that’s where this photo was taken some time around 1917 or 1918.  He never was deployed or involved in any battles.  The war ended in November 1918 and Robert Joseph Landry was discharged on December 4, 1918.