Author: Van

Article in Lake Charles newspaper.

Earlier this week, my cousin Tim sent me this copy of a newspaper article.  (Thank you, Tim!)  I thought it was an interesting piece of information from 75 years ago.  I didn’t think I’d be using it for my blog post, though.  I wasn’t planning that far ahead.  So when I was trying to think of what I’d post this week, I knew it was time for something about my dad’s side of the family.  When I started looking, I wasn’t sure how far back I was going to go.  I was looking at grandparents and great grandparents, but then I started thinking about this photo of my dad.

Pluto Landry circa 1946

I’m not really sure where this photo came from.  It must have been from my dad’s collection.  It is a photo of him.  That would be Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  He was known by his family as Bobbie, but friends called him either Bob or Pluto.  He was born in 1929 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  This photo looks like he was a teenager and I estimated that it was taken around 1946 or 1947.

When I realized that the photo and the article I got earlier this week were from the same time period, I figured I’d put them together for a post.  And of course I would have to use my dad’s nickname Pluto, because that’s how he’s referred to in the article.  The article is about the Catholic Youth Organization of Lake Charles planning for an Easter dance.  My dad must have been a member, because he is listed as one of the planners.  I was surprised that they called him Pluto Landry, because I thought that he didn’t get that nickname until college or later.  I was wrong.  The planning of the dance happened some time around April 22, 1946, and my dad hadn’t graduated from high school, yet.  If you remember from a post from about a month ago, my dad graduated about a month later. 

I looked through the list of planners in “Group II” and I only recognized one other name.  I heard the name Harvey Prejean my whole life.  He was a friend of my dad and they obviously were friends for a long time.  Not that I can picture who he is at the moment.  I just remember the name.  The name Bob Phillips sounds familiar, too, but that could be that I’m thinking of Ralph Phillips who married a Bouquet cousin.  I don’t know if it’s the same family.  But they were also planners for this Easter dance from 1946. 

I doubt that the photo had any connection to the Easter dance.  It’s a nice photo of my dad.  I’m thinking the photo was taken in the back yard of the Landry family home in Lake Charles.  I’m not certain, though.  I notice that his pants look brand new.  You can still see the creases from the fold at the knees. 

Son of Pluto AKA Van in June of 1979 in Jennings, Louisiana.  Lion painting on the wall was by my mom.

It reminds me of a photo of myself from the same age.  I’m posting that photo, too.  I can’t mention it without showing you what I’m talking about.  It’s a photo I took when I was trying on clothes in my room shortly after I graduated high school.  I guess I was shopping for new clothes for college with the money I got for graduation.  The funny thing is that I didn’t buy these clothes, I just took a picture in them!  But something about the clothes and the pose reminds me of this old photo of my dad.

Well that was unexpected.  I wasn’t planning on posting a photo of myself.  I usually post old photos.  I guess a photo from over 40 years ago counts!  Plus you get to see a painting that my mom did.  It was in the boys’ bedroom for many years.  I had it in my college dorm at McNeese and now my brother has it in his home. 

Well, I guess that’s all for now.  Son of Pluto signing out.

Succession Ve A’in Landry 2d April 1814 – The succession for the widow of Augustin Landry AKA Marie Magdelena; p. 80 part I

I went to a genealogy meeting last week at the West Baton Rouge Genealogical Society.  The presenter was talking about reasons to do genealogy.  Like I need more reasons to spend my time reading about dead people!  He was involved with the Hebert Society, which is for those people such as myself who are descended from Heberts.  I was able to figure out my Hebert connection to him and I’m sure there are probably other connections as well.  Some other members were talking about books and such that were available at the local museum gift shop. 

The next day I went to that gift shop to buy a few books about West Baton Rouge Parish history and the families that lived there.  I was actually listed in one of the books, and so are all of my siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles!  Not that any of us live in that parish, but our ancestors did.  It was a listing of the descendants of my great great grandparents Trasimond Landry and Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol.  The books spent a little more time on the Landry family and talked about the first generation of Acadian Landrys who settled in Louisiana – Augustin Landry and his wife Marie Babin.  I like to think of them as Magdelena and her husband Augustin. 

Succession Ve A’in Landry 2d April 1814 – The succession for the widow of Augustin Landry AKA Marie Magdelena; p. 80 part II

You remember them, right?  I’ve talked about them a few times before.  I recently wrote a short story about what might have happened on their voyage to Louisiana in 1767.  That was a follow-up to the post  about Landrys in my “From Acadian to Cajun” series.  But today this post is kind of a continuation of a post I wrote two years ago.  In that post I wrote about the succession papers that I had discovered for Veuve Augustin Landry.  Magdelena Babin Landry died in 1814 and I found the document about her succession quite interesting.

Succession Ve A’in Landry 2d April 1814 – The succession for the widow of Augustin Landry AKA Marie Magdelena; p. 80 part III

One of my favorite things about that document was on page 80 of the register.  The first part of it is in French, so I’m not exactly sure of what was said.  I haven’t taken the time to try to make out the words and translate them to English with an app.  But in the middle of the page is drawn a chart with the names of her descendants.  I guess you could call it a family tree.  That’s pretty amazing. 

In box 1 is listed Joseph.  That would be our Joseph Ignatius Landry.  There was a Joseph Marie Landry, but he was the son of Augustin’s first wife Anne Rivet.  Magdelena did not leave him out, though.  On another page they list his children and Magdelena leaves them a little something.  She was a generous step-mother.  She outlived both of the Josephs. 

So in box 1 is listed the descendants of Joseph Ignatius.  1 Emanuel is my ancestor who married Celeste Bruneteau.  I descend from two of their daughters and that’s the connection to my Bujol and Leveque cousins.  2 Elie is not my ancestor.  I have had several DNA matches show up who descend from him.  3 Rafael later married to a Rosalie Guidry and they had a large family.  4 Narcisse is another of my ancestors.  He lived in West Baton Rouge Parish and was the father of Trasimond and Alcide.  Both of them married back into this Landry family.  5 Valerien was not my ancestor.  He would later marry Ameranthe LeBlanc, the daughter of Joseph dit a gros LeBlanc.  He is listed as Magdelena’s son-in-law.  Ameranthe is a daughter from his second marriage.  6 Onezime was another of my ancestors, but I only descend from him once.  But he was married to Zerbine Dupuy and their daughter Emma married Ferdinand Patureau.  From that line I think I have more cousins than from all of the other lines from Onezime’s brothers.  There are so many Patureau relatives out there!

The last grandchild of Magdelena listed in box 1 is Joseph Ignatius’s daughter 7 Madelaine.  She had passed away, but she had been married to Joseph Hebert and had two children.  It looks like 1 is Eribert and 2 is Hebert.  I’ve seen records of Eribert or Ribert, but I don’t know who the second one is.  Maybe I’ll find more information about him one day.  But this page has information that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else, so I kinda doubt it.  I’ll keep looking anyway.

In box 2 is listed the descendants of Magdelena’s son Mathurin.  This was another son that she outlived.  I suppose that’s what happens when you almost reach 90 years of life.  His children were 1 Xavier, 2 Marguerite, 3 Joseph, 4 Ursin (my good friend, coworker, and cousin Marisa descends from him),  5 Artemise (my good friend and artist Karen descends from her), 6 Landry, 7 Dorville, and 8 Emerand. 

I’ll talk about box 4 now.  That one is for Magdelena’s deceased daughter Madelaine.  She was the first of her children to die.  Madeleine was married to Joseph LeBlanc dit a gros and they had three children.  Only two are listed – Marie Madeleine and Bellony.  There was a third child born in 1786 named Joseph, but he didn’t survive and neither did his mother.  Madeleine was only 22 years old when she died.  Since it happened around the same time as the birth and death of her son Joseph, it could have been the result of complications from childbirth.  Her husband went on to marry again, as I stated earlier in this post.

Now back to Box 3.  It only has Magdelena’s daughter Marguerite and her husband Joseph LeBlanc dit Michel listed in it, even though they had a large family of their own.  That’s because she is listed as Vivante!  She was still alive.  Of Magdelena’s five children and two step-children, she outlived all but one of them.  What a life she had.  The first part of her life was lived in Acadie.  Then she spent 12 years in Exile in Maryland.  The family made it to St. Gabriel, Louisiana, in 1767, and that’s where she spent the rest of her life.  The last 33 years of her life were spent as a widow.  That’s how she acquired the title Veuve Landry.  But she was more than just a widow.  She was a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

She was my great great great great grandmother.

I’ve been thinking of my sister Karen this week, because it is the one year anniversary of her death.  I write about people who have died pretty much every week, but when it is someone so close, it is much more difficult.  Usually I research people and connect with them because of what I find out.  I’ve known my sister my whole life.  It’s when you lose a sibling that you realize just how much they are a part of your being.  A piece of you is gone. 

Karen on Rob and Al’s bed in the boys’ bedroom in the front of the house at 758 Lucy Street in Jennings, Louisiana, on December 25, 1978. Photo by Van.

I wanted to have a photo associated with this post, so I thought I’d post my favorite photo of her.  Nothing really popped in my head when I thought that.  I thought of the one I posted when she was just a girl standing in front of the tiger cage at LSU.  She was never too happy about me posting that photo.  She always thought that they (my older siblings) looked like little urchins in the photo.  I decided against that one because not only did she not like it, but I wanted one of her when she was older.

I also thought about posting the one I posted of her in her Shakey’s days.  It’s really a good photo of her, but she’s wearing a garishly colored shirt with a fake straw hat.  It was the uniform that we wore when we worked there, but it wasn’t the most flattering colors.  It reminds me of fun days when we sang as a family band.  Here’s an example of the kind of fun we had.  She was singing the song “Little Things Mean a Lot” one day, while I was playing the bass.  When she sang the line, “Say I look nice when I’m not,” I whispered to her, “You look nice!” with a sarcastic grin to her.  Younger brothers!

I thought of posting the family photo that we took during a trip to Branson, Missouri, during Thanksgiving 2017.  We were trying to make sure we had some good family times together while Karen was still able to do so.  It was the last big family trip that she made and it was probably a bit more difficult for her than we realized.  The photo is nice, but it was not a favorite. 

So I went searching and found this one I posted.  I didn’t realize how good of a photo it was of her until tonight.  I like the way she is looking at me.  And she was looking at me.  I took this photo on Christmas Day 1978 with the new Canon TX SLR camera I got that year.  I took it in the boys’ bedroom in our house on Lucy Street.  It’s actually a photo of Karen and Jamie.  Sorry for cropping you out, Jamie!  I think Jamie was playing the guitar (which she has picked back up recently) to a Billy Joel song.  It’s not that I have a great memory, you can actually see his name on the sheet music in the original photo!  The other thing I like about the photo is that she’s wearing a shirt with lots of blues in it.  It was her favorite color.  How could I have a favorite photo of her without her favorite color in it?

So this is my favorite photo of her today.  It may not be tomorrow, but that is yet to be seen.  I like the way her cowlick reveals her widow’s peak.  She didn’t really like that, but I thought it was interesting.  So that’s my post today in honor of my sister Karen.  I thought about talking more about her final years or days, but decided against it.  What more do I need to say than to say that a piece of me is gone?

1946 Graduating Class of Landry Memorial in Lake Charles, Louisiana. From page three of the school yearbook The Clarion.

I was looking through photos of my dad to use as a post today and came across one from around 1945.  It made me wonder what year he graduated from high school.  Last year I posted a photo of him when he was in junior high school at Landry Memorial.  I still didn’t remember the exact year that he graduated.  So then I found this page from a school publication that says that he was in the graduating class of 1946.  That would make this year the 75th anniversary of that graduating class.

I remember seeing this page when I was growing up.  It kinda surprised me because it shows that he was on the football team for one year and the softball team for two.  I never thought of him as an athletic type of person and I seem to recall that he was against any of us playing football in school.  Not that I ever wanted to!  He definitely was in favor of us participating in band and music.

It’s obvious from what they wrote about him that he was seriously interested in music from a young age.  He had four years of band, he received music awards two different years, and his hobby was playing and collecting musical instruments.  In another article I read, it says that he started teaching other students musical instruments during his senior year because there was a shortage of music teachers during World War II.  He taught cornet, trombone, French horn, bass, clarinet, and saxophone.

Diploma for Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. at Landry Memorial Senior High School in 1946.

The article from The Clarion also says that he participated in Dramatics for four years and Sodality for three.  I knew what Dramatics was right away.  He must have been involved with plays and other productions at the high school.  But I had to look up that Sodality one.  It was a social group or fraternity for young men in the Catholic Church.  Since this was a Catholic school, that kind of makes sense.  I was surprised that he made the Roll of Honor for two years.  I must have just seen his bad grades when I was young.  Or they impressed me more.  I never thought of him as unintelligent in any way, but he did talk about studying just enough to pass what he needed to.

It also shows that he was involved with ROTC during his whole time at Landry.  That’s interesting.  I never noticed that before.  It must not have made an impression on me one way or the other.  I never think of him in that way.  I know he served in the Air Force, but he never fought in a war.  He was in the band, for Pete’s sake!  ( A nod to P.R.)  I don’t know what his motivation was for being in the ROTC for all those years.  It’s not something I recall hearing him talk about.

I’d better bring this post to a close, before I make it look like I didn’t know my own father!  I know that he graduated from high school on May 28, 1946.  Of course I only know that because I found his diploma in a box of his belongings he left.  But I take care of those family keepsakes like he did when he was alive.  I’m glad he saved them so we could have a peek into some of his high school activities.