Category: Bucklin

During the last few years of her life, my mom jotted down little stories about her past. She knew that she was forgetting things and I suppose there were some things she wanted to make sure to remember. But when it came to the topic of basketball, she needn’t have worried. She was talking about her basketball days with some of the care workers up until the end of her days.

I’m glad she wrote a little bit about basketball because it makes me laugh and it provided me with some details I wasn’t aware of (or forgot). She started basketball in the 5th grade, and the 6th grade was a trying year for her since her mother was her teacher.

Her family was big into basketball. She always talked about the dirt basketball/tennis court that they made in their yard. From the way she talked about it, she scraped up all of the grass and smoothed the ground single-handedly! Maybe she did.

It was obvious from the way she talked that she loved the game. She played all through high school and nothing pleased her more than when her small town Hathaway team beat the ‘city’ teams like Jennings.

Beating the Jennings team was not their only success, though. They also made it to State, where they once made 3rd place and another time placed 1st. I’m thinking this photo may be from their winning season. If anyone knows better, let me know.

Shown in the team photo are (top row) Betty Lou Bucklin (my mom), LaVelle Krumnow (mom’s best childhood friend), Mrs. C. B. Krumnow (Gertrude Lessman Krumnow, mother of LaVelle and coach of the team), Lela Mae Jester, and Claribel Brown; (kneeling) Dorothy Gary, Carol Bryan, ? Sittig, Adley Benoit, and Jean Jester; and (front) Geneva Hayes, Laura Jane Ritter, and Eva Derks. At least that’s the information on the back of the photo.

My mom also saved some old clippings from her glory days as a basketeer Hornet, or as one reporter claimed “a bulldog.” This article is from the beginning of the 1948 year, which is the same year as the photo.  The article lists some of the members and it mostly matches Mom’s recollections. I’m sure Dot must be Dorothy, but is Ruby the same Derks as Eva?

 

The other article is from 1949, I think. The same members are mentioned, and as before, they were up to their winnings ways again. This is the article that talks about those girls giving a “bulldog” defense during the games. I’m not sure they would appreciate that description. They were, after all, rivals of Jennings and everyone knew that Jennings were the Bulldogs.

I doubt that bothered young Betty Lou. She was proud of her accomplishments with the basketball team. According to her yearbook, she and teammate Laura Jane Ritter were chosen on the “All Tournament” team. Maybe that’s the Parish team she mentions in her writing. That’s how she ended up playing in an exhibition game at McNeese. And as my mom stated, that’s when she (and presumably her teammates) “thought we were hot stuff.”

I’ve never really been a fan of basketball – as a player or an observer. But I do have some fond basketball memories from my childhood. Our family had a basketball goal set up in our driveway and sometimes we would all go out and play the game. It was my mom and dad and all six of us kids. (At least according to my memory!) I mainly remember that we were laughing and making a lot of noise and we’d play until after dark.

The dark didn’t stop us because we would go inside and get this clamp-on light that we attached to the pole for the antenna. This did not make our neighbors the Bordelons very happy. That crazy Landry family was out all hours of the night laughing, yelling, and shining a bright light right outside their window. So we put up a big, white wooden fence along the property line by the driveway.

I thought I’d post a photo of the fence, since I was talking about it. That’s Al and Rob shooting some hoops in 1974. I don’t see how that fence would have made much difference to the sound level. But we could continue playing our games and say that we tried.

I wasn’t going to post this next photo since I have posted it before. But it was posted in 2010, which is well before I started these regular blog posts. Since I’ve already written more than I intended to, I might as well add a little more.

Because I just have to talk about the basketball match to end all basketball matches. I’m talking about the famous Christmas 1977 Bucklin Girl Basketball Extravaganza. It was the most entertaining family gathering for my mom’s side of the family. (As you can see, the white fence has been removed.)

On the sidelines on the left are Uncle Ronald and Toni Pilcher. On the “court” are Sylvia Bucklin Pilcher (on the ground), Alma Bucklin Waldorf (with the ball), Betty Lou Bucklin Landry (the famed basketeer stepping over her sister Syvia’s foot), Charla Seal (with hand on her Aunt Bettilou’s hip), and the matriarch Myrtle Phenice Bucklin AKA Grandma.

There was a lot of laughter that day. As you can see Aunt Sylvia and Grandma are having big laughs as they try to catch their breaths. I know Aunt Loris was there and she was involved in the game as well. Perhaps she was taking a break at the time.

Oh, wait, there she is with Aunt Alma waiting for the ball to come down. See, she definitely was there. She told me that this was the last time they all played basketball together because it took so much out of them. If they’re gonna play ball, they’re gonna go all out! I, for one, am glad that I was a witness to that phenomenal game. And I’m more than just a little bit jealous that Toni and Charla took part in it. But knowing them, I’m sure they cherish those basketball memories as well.

With the anniversary of my dad’s death yesterday and the anniversary of my parents’ joint funeral on the 28th, my mind has still been preoccupied with memories of their last days.  I wrote such a sad post last week, that I fantasized about printing it up, ripping it to shreds, and then burning it.  It will be a while before I want to read it again.  So this week I decided to do something a little lighter. (That should be easy enough to accomplish!)

The subjects of this post will still be my mom and dad.  But instead of writing any more about their endings, I thought I would write about their beginnings.  Not in any detail, I just want to post a few early photos of them that capture a bit of their personality.  The two photos that I picked also happen to be the childhood photos that were included in the slideshow of their lives that was played at their wake and visitation.

The first one is this one of my mom.  How can you not smile when you see this photo?  I think it perfectly captures her playfulness that she allowed those close to her to see.  This is young Betty Lou Bucklin when she was around 6 years old or so.  She grew up in Hathaway, Louisiana, during the Great Depression and this left her being satisfied with whatever she had.  She didn’t desire anything grand or fancy.

She was the second of four daughters and they had a younger brother as well.  It was a simple life in the country.  Her grandparents had all come from different parts of the country (and one was from England) to homestead the prairie land in that area, so they didn’t really have much either.  But they had family and they enjoyed getting together and celebrating with music and festivities.

My mom had this photo on her dresser during her last years.  I don’t know of any story associated with it, but it must have been a photo that brought her fond memories of her childhood.  That’s one of the main reasons I like it so much, but it is a cute photo in it’s own right.

This next photo is one of my dad when he was probably a little bit older.  This is Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. when he was maybe 7 years old or so.  From what I can gather he was mostly called Bobbie at this point.  It’s what his siblings and cousins always called him.  He grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, during the Great Depression, but his family was larger with eight children.  He was one of four boys and four girls.

The main thing that strikes me about this photo is the brightness of his eyes.  Too bad it’s not a color photo, because he had pretty blue eyes.  Besides looking a bit inquisitive and intelligent, it also looks like he has a secret.  Usually that secret would be the punch line of his most recently discovered joke.  He always liked a good joke.  And of course they were not suggestive or dirty jokes.  Just something that would make him laugh, and he’d share them with others in hopes that they would enjoy them too.

So there you go.  My recollections of my parents this week.  Something to make you smile.  Though I have to admit that it brought a tear to my eyes writing this, because I do miss her impish smile and his hearty laugh.  Bittersweet is the appropriate word.

“How am I going to do this?” I wondered as I walked down the longest hall I had ever walked, “What am I going to say?”  Those were the thoughts going through my mind last year as I was wondering how to break the news to my dad that his wife of 64 years had passed away.  Those same thoughts crossed my mind the past few days when I was thinking about writing this post.

My mom died on January 19, 2017, at 10:27 am at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in the presence of my sister Karen and my brother-in-law Brian.  She was 83 years old and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a few years, but she died from a stroke.  It has almost been a year now.  Sometimes it seems like it just happened.  Other times it doesn’t, because she had been disappearing for a few years before her death.

We moved my parents into assisted living in August of 2015.  They had been barely holding their own living in the family home in Jennings.  They didn’t want to leave, but things were getting unmanageable.  Broken bones, failing memory, and limited movement continued to worsen.  But when Mom started taking medicine at any time because she had forgotten that she had already taken the daily dosage, Daddy knew that it was getting to be more than he could manage.  He was losing sensations in his hands and feet, so he was starting to need assistance as well.  They were in their 80s after all.

So they moved into Brookdale in Lake Charles in a nice little apartment.  Karen and Brian brought them to church with them on Sundays and afterward they would all have lunch at their home.  My dad can be a particular eater and is not reluctant to let you know how things could be better.   As Mom would say, Karen and Brian earned a lot of “brownie points” with all the help they provided Mom and Dad.

The beginning of the end was in October of 2016.  Mama fell and broke her hip (she had broken the other one a few years before) and shoulder somehow and she had to be taken to the hospital.  My brother Al flew down to help out.  When he and Daddy were getting ready to go to the hospital, Daddy fell.  It wasn’t so much that he broke anything, it was that he didn’t have the strength to keep from falling.

So when Mom was having surgery to repair her hip and shoulder, Dad was being admitted to see what was going on with his health.  We were all a bit baffled about what was going on.  He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and cirrhosis of the liver.  Cirrhosis of the liver?  He never drank at all his whole life!  We were doubtful of this diagnosis at first, but his condition never really improved much.  He slept a lot and there was minimal interaction with us when we visited.

He was getting much worse in January and on the 18th I got a call from Karen.  She said that Hospice was telling her that Daddy would probably be dying sometime soon.  A sobering call, to say the least.  We all could see it happening.  The grandkids had all come to say their goodbyes and reminisce about times with Grammy and Pappy.  So the call was not a complete shock.

The more shocking call was the one I got later that night.  Actually it was at 2 o’clock on the morning of the 19th.  Mama had fallen and hit her head and the doctors said it could be a “terminal event.”  It seemed like everything that was happening with them could be considered terminal events.  She had fallen before, and when you went to see her she would smile and say, “Hey!”  with a smile as if nothing had happened.  So I went back to sleep.

The news the next morning was that there was no improvement.  It looked like she had had a stroke and fallen as a result.  I decided to go to Lake Charles and thought about letting Karen know I was coming, but to make sure she didn’t let mom “wait” for me.  Not that she would or could, but you hear about people doing this.  I wouldn’t want her to suffer any longer.  She had said she was ready to go.  It was a moot point, because I got notification that she had passed away.  So Chuck and I went to Lake Charles.  Thankfully, Chuck drove.

I was assuming that the hospital called the funeral home and that they would have removed ‘the body’ before we got there.  I talked to Brian and he informed me that the hospital had not called the funeral home.  He asked if I wanted them to wait until I had a chance to visit her.  Of course I wanted them to wait.  I shouldn’t say ‘of course,’ because I remember distinctly that Mama did not want to go see her father’s body after he had died.  He had donated his body to science, so she wouldn’t have a chance to see him at a funeral.  I thought she might want to, but she didn’t.  So I didn’t go see him at the time, even though I wanted to.

So we went to say our goodbyes to Mama in room 208 at Memorial.  I won’t tell you everything about the visit.  Some things were disturbing.  Others were not.  I kept expecting her to breathe.  She didn’t.  It was sad.  It was a relief. Something funny happened.  As we were walking out of the room, I pulled her toe and said, “Bye, Mom.”

We then went downstairs to the emergency room to check on Karen.  She had fallen as she was leaving the hospital room and cut her eyebrow.  They were waiting for her blood pressure to stabilize.  She had been through a lot with everything happening with my parents.  We all decided it was best that she go home and get some rest.  That left me with the task of informing my dad that Mom had died.

That was not something I had ever considered when dealing with my parents’ failing health.  If I ever thought much about it, I would think that if one of them died first, the other one would have been with them when it happened.  With my dad being on his ‘death bed’ and receiving the last rites that morning, he was in no condition to go see what was going on with his wife.  Karen was in need of rest and Jamie wouldn’t get there until later, so it was up to me.

Did I say that it was a long hall?  It really wasn’t.  It just seemed really long at the time.  I stopped at one point because I got choked up.  How was I going to do this?  But I had to do it.  He needed to know and it had to be one of us.  And by that I mean one of his kids.  I have a tendency to speak in the plural when talking about my childhood.  “We played ghost in the graveyard.”  “We ran away from Tez.”  You know, the usual childhood stuff.  So one of us was going to do it and I was there.

I finally made my way into the room and went to his side.  He knew that something was wrong because he had been there when they took her from their room.  I think he was waiting to hear the news, maybe hoping for a “Hey” and a smile as if nothing had happened.  Not this time.  When his eyes locked on mine, I broke down.  I just started crying and so did he.  I think he knew at that point that things were not the same.

I didn’t say anything at first, we just cried together as he held my hands.  I was surprised at how strong his grip was at the time.  He had seemed so weak previously.  He then asked a few questions about what had happened.  I told him that she had had a stroke and had died.  She was no longer suffering and he didn’t need to worry about her any longer.  That is when the wailing and moaning began.  It was heartbreaking.

He and my mom had been happily married for 64 years.  How does someone ever deal with something like that?  Weeping and saying, “I’m going to miss her,” was just the beginning of it.  He did settle down after a while.  He was worn out.  When Jamie and Allen came in later, he went through the same thing with Jamie.  It was heartrendingly touching.  Though he did have her in somewhat of a headlock.  Jamie was surprised by his strength too.  She teasingly reprimanded him by saying, “What do you think this is?  Your birthday or something?”  It was a phrase he always used for our birthday if we were saying or doing something questionable.  It was the last time I heard him laugh.

A little later in the visit, I heard him say, “I’m finished.”  It was the last thing I heard him say.  He died five days later.