Category: Bucklin

Betty Lou Started McNeese in 1951

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Several times in these posts I’ve talked about my mom meeting my dad when she went off to college.  They were both in the band and they both played baritone.  They would have met then, if not for the fact that they had run into each other in 1950 the year before, when she was still in high school.  She remembered him because he helped her find her way when she was lost.  He remembered her because she was a sweet girl who was interested in music.

Betty Lou Bucklin from Hathaway, Louisiana, in the fall of 1951 at McNeese State College in Lake Charles.

But how could he forget her?  Look how cute she was!  I don’t remember this photo when I was growing up, but I know that it was taken in the fall of 1951.  I know that because it is from an old McNeese State College yearbook for the year of 1952.  The photo identifies Betty Lou Bucklin from Hathaway, Louisiana.  That’s my mom!

The photo is shown in the section for the freshman class, but that’s not where this one is from.  It’s from the Wesley Foundation group that she must have been a part of.  I don’t know why I specify, because they’re the same photo in both locations.  The Wesley Foundation is a church group for Methodist students.  She would not have met my dad in that group.

My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. from Lake Charles, Louisiana.  He was four years older than Betty Lou.  People knew him as either Bob or Pluto.  He had French and Acadian ancestry, and he was Catholic.  That didn’t stop young Bob from asking her on a date the very first day that they showed up for band practice a few days before classes even started.

As I recall, their first date was a double date with Daddy’s friend Harvey Prejean and his date who would later be his wife.  Another memorable thing about that date was that it was the first time either my mom or my dad had pizza.  I don’t think anybody nowadays can reach college age without ever trying pizza.  It would be unAmerican!

I don’t know if my dad found out that she was Methodist on their first date or shortly after.  When he first found out, he stopped seeing her.  You have to understand my dad’s family.  There was a long history in their family of staying within their community to marry.  They were French and mostly Cajun, and they spoke mainly French.  That separated them from other Americans.  My dad’s ancestors stayed within their group when it came time to marry and start a family.  In fact, all of his grandparents were related to each other.  It was a more common practice in previous centuries.  My dad was the first generation in his family that only spoke English.  Still, he didn’t know what to think when he found himself attracted to someone not from the same background, much less the same religion.

When my mom used to tell this story, it didn’t seem like she was too upset about the fact that he quit seeing her.  She seemed to be quite nonchalant about it.  Maybe she knew it wasn’t anything personal about herself and she had the confidence to deal with it.  Or maybe it confused her and she was angry with him for dumping her.  She never said anything about her trying to get him back or flirting with him.  Of course, she knew the happy ending to the story when she was telling it.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this different girl from Hathaway, as long as she agreed to become Catholic.  That wasn’t a problem for my mom.  Sure, she made lighthearted fun of Catholics when she was a younger girl, but she outgrew that foolishness.  Mostly.  Besides, he was a good guy who seemed pretty trustworthy.  They decided within that first year that they would get married.

My mom only went to college for one year.  Then on November 1, 1952, she became Mrs. Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  But she would always be just Betty Lou from Hathaway!

Bob and Betty – Two Would Never Do

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It was difficult today to come up with a topic.  It’s time for the Landry side of my family, but the only thing I could think of was so similar to what I shared last month.  I guess that’s to be expected, I’m rotating between four different grandparents.  Plus Pee Paw – my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. – has the fewest photos for his ancestors.  Thankfully there are several photos of his mother – Marie Celeste Leveque, but there are only two for his father – Simon Alcide Landry.  What’s even more limiting is that there are no photos of Alcide’s parents – Narcisse Landry and Marie Carmelite Hebert.

Jodie, Bob, Rob, and Betty Landry in Albuquerque.

I decided to change my search scope and went to look for the first color photo of my dad.  Last week I shared the first color photo of my mom from 1954.  That one was pretty blurry, but it came out pretty good when I sharpened it.  The first color photo of my dad was even worse.  There’s no way I could use it.  I kept looking for something good.  Then I found it.  It’s not a color photo, but it was a photo from exactly 70 years ago.  I’ve covered several events in the lives of my parents on their 70th anniversary.  Why not one more?!

The 70th anniversary photos started when young Betty Lou Bucklin was brought home by Bob Landry to meet his family.  Then there were engagement notices and letters followed by their wedding.  Not too long later, there was their first child – Jodie Lou Landry.  You remember her.  She showed up in that first color photo of mom last week.  She was also in a 70th anniversary Valentine post in February.

And now my older brother Rob has joined the happy little family.  Look how cute they all look!  The photo was taken on May 29, 1955, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the occasion of Rob’s baptism.  This photo reminds me of when our family was celebrating my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in 2002.  I had to doublecheck that date.  It’s hard to believe it was that long ago.  It was almost in the 1900s!  Anyway, when we were preparing for that big event, I decided to write a song about their fifty years together. 

The song starts out with “More than fifty years ago is when their love began” and continues on to tell about their meeting and getting married.  Then I have the part that goes “So began their joined lives and along came Jodie Lou.”  This is when I choked up because of thinking of her death in 1989.  My siblings started singing along with the next part – “With Rob it became a pair, but two would never do.”  That’s where I got the title for this post.

If I keep doing these posts for the next seven years, I’ll have to make sure to add to the 70th anniversary collection.  Because as many of you know, there were four more children that made their appearance.  And since Mama and Daddy were such musical individuals, “they had enough for a family band!”

The First Color Photo of Betty Lou

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Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and daughter Jodie Lou Landry in California in 1954.

When I was thinking about my blog earlier today, I decided that I would post the first color photo from my mom’s side of the family.  I didn’t know what that would be, but I was sure that it would be interesting.  At least it would be interesting enough.  After I got home and watched a few chateau videos on YouTube, I decided it was time to look for the photo matching the requirements I had set.

I found a photo of my great great grandfather Samuel Phenice from 1939, but I don’t have a good copy of it yet.  It’s got too much glare on it.  Plus, I am not sure if it is an actual color photo.  It could be a color tinted photo from around 1939.  It has to be from that year or earlier because that was the year Samuel died.  So I ruled that one out.  There is still a chance that I will share it at a later date.  I also found some color photos of my mom’s maternal side of her family.  They were of her grandmother Addie May Hine Bucklin.  I like those photos, but I already shared those photos before and have said everything I wanted to about them.

I decided to look at the photos of my mom.  I was kind of surprised that the first color photo of her was from 1954.  None of her childhood photos were in color.  Color photography was around during that time, but it was not as easily available and was more expensive.  I have some photos of mom and her family that have been colored in various ways, but they weren’t originally color photos.  

My mom and dad (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. – Betty and Bob to most people) must have splurged and gotten some color film back in 1954.  It was color slide film.  I know that because I scanned this from an old slide.  I used to use slide film when I was younger because it was cheaper than having all of those photos processed.  I would take slide photos and then have prints made from the better photos.  Photography has evolved quite a bit since then.

One of the drawbacks of those old color photos is that they are all extremely blurry.  I’m not sure of the reason why.  The black and white photos that they took before and after are very clear, so I don’t think it would be human error.  I would think that they would be using the same camera, too.  Whatever caused it, it wasn’t good.  So I used a program or two to clean up the scratches and sharpen it.  My mom doesn’t look quite right.  It’s the best you can get at this point without an AI program studying all of the photos of a person and filling in the missing details from accumulated data.  That will probably happen later.

I’m still using the photo because it is a cute photo.  I like that my mom and my sister Jodie are surrounded by flowers.  I can make out zinnias in the foreground and I think those are morning glories behind my mom’s head.  I’ve been enjoying the flowers around our garden this time of the year, so I thought it was appropriate.  I think the photo was taken in August of 1954.  I’m thinking it was in California just before they moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  My dad was in the Air Force at the time.

Slide 19 taken in 1954 in an Albuquerque, New Mexico, park.

While I’m posting this photo of my mom, I thought I would go ahead and post another photo from the same time.  Like all of the other color photos from my mom and dad at that time, it is blurry.  If you know me well, you might know that I like blurry photos – especially landscapes.  Sometimes I intentionally move my camera as I’m taking a photo to get different effects. 

This photo was taken a few months later at a park in Albuquerque.  It’s blurry, but not too blurry.  Just blurry enough to make it interesting!  And the colors are great.  This might have been the first time my mom saw fall colors this beautiful.  Louisiana does not have great fall colors.  She would have appreciated this scene.  I’m surprised she never painted it.  I hope you enjoy it, too.

Maternal Ancestors in 3D in 1926

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Bucklin, Hine, Phenice, Keys, and Stanbrough ancestors show up in this photo from 1926 in Elton, Louisiana. If you cross your eyes slightly and bring the two images together, you will see a 3D view of the gathering.

I thought I would write a post about my mom’s family in honor of Mother’s Day this weekend.  I thought I should write something about how wonderful she was, but I think I’ve already done that.  Of course, you can never really say enough about a wonderful mother and capture that essence on the page.  It transcends words.  So you write what you can and hope that people can relate to some of the things you express.  What I’m trying to say is that I can’t write about her every time.  I feel like I’m trying to defend my decision not to write about her.  And what’s funny about that is that she wouldn’t have been concerned in the least.  All she ever wanted was to be treated kindly and with respect.

So I’m writing about her ancestors.  When I decided that, I started thinking about finding a photo with the biggest number of her maternal ancestors in it.  I’m talking about grandmothers, great grandmothers, or great great grandmothers.  They didn’t have to necessarily be on my mom’s maternal side.  It didn’t take me long to figure out which photo that was.  I’ve posted a few photos from this gathering in 1926 before.  My mom and her cousins worked at identifying as many of the people in the photo that they could.  That was very helpful, being that there were so many.  (This is a cropped photo.  There are 86 people in the original photo.)  What I was always amazed at was the number of relatives in the photo.

The photo was taken on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the joint birthday celebration of my great great grandmother Susan G. “Sue” Stanbrough Hine and her good friend Edessa Jane “Jennie” Welton Havenar.  My Grandma Sue is the older woman in a dark dress on the far right of the photo.  In the exact center of this grouping is my grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice.  She was almost twenty years old at the time and still single.  You can only see her head in this photo.  To the left of her is a girl with glasses and a long tie.  To the left of this girl are my grandmother’s parents.  That would be Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys Phenice.

1926 – Addie Hine Bucklin with her mother Sue Stanbrough Hine.

There are three maternal ancestors in that first photo – Sue, Myrtle, and Daisy.  But there was another of my maternal ancestors present at this event.  That would be Addie May Hine Bucklin.  Of course she would be there, the gathering was to celebrate her mom’s birthday.  I don’t know why she wasn’t in the large group photo.  That would have been even better.

But I also have some paternal ancestors in the group.  You know that already because I mentioned H. C. Phenice.  He was the husband of Daisy and the father of Myrtle.  On the far left of the first photo is my grandfather Fred D. Bucklin.  He takes after his grandmother Sue.  They both have a middle initial that doesn’t stand for anything.  Fred’s father Louis Charles Bucklin was still alive at the time and lived in the area, but he didn’t come to this event.  He’s not in photos as a rule, but there was also a newspaper article about this event.  It named all those present and it named Addie Bucklin by herself.

Now that I think about it, H. C.’s father was also alive at the time!  Samuel Charles Phenice lived up north in Nebraska and was 80 years old at the time.  Grandma Sue was only 75 years old.  Samuel’s granddaughter Mary Bucklin had married Sue’s grandson Sylvan Phenice earlier in 1926.  I wonder if Samuel came down for that?  Samuel and Sue could have met.  They had both lost their spouses six years earlier.  Things that make you wonder.

About the photo I posted.  There were several photos taken on that long ago day in 1926.  I found two of them that were taken at almost exactly the same time from two different photographers.  I say this because when you bring the two photos together, you get a 3D effect.  This happens when you have two eyes looking at the same thing.  Or two camera lenses in this situation.  So I combined the two photos to make this one image.  To see the 3D effect, get a comfortable distance from the screen.  While looking at the image, slightly cross your eyes and bring the two images together.  It helps to focus on a certain person and bring their images together.  It’s not a perfect 3D image, because it wasn’t taken at the exact same time.  But it was close, and it happened unintentionally.

I am a big fan of the 3D photos.  I am an even bigger fan of old family photos.  It’s great to have an old family photo that shows five of my ancestors in it AND it is a 3D photo.  How can you ask for more?  Happy Mother’s Day to all of you!

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!

 

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.

Louis Charles Bucklin Circa 1882

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Louis Charles Bucklin circa 1882 in Iowa.

This is a difficult photo.  I have two versions of the original photo, but neither of them is very good.  Both of them are really grainy, faded, and blurry.  That’s the good part.  One of them has holes all over it, like it had been chewed on by a rat at some point.  It also has some tracing on it like someone tried to define some of the edges on it.  Like I said, this is a difficult photo.

But that’s no reason to ignore it over and over again!  I decided it was time to work at making it look a little better.  And, yes, this is the final result as of now.  I think it looks relatively good now.  Maybe one day with software improvements, we’ll get something better.  But in doing so, we will probably lose a lot of the charm of the photo.  There is something charming about these old photos that LOOK like old photos.  The graininess – the faded light – the sepia color – It all adds to the charm.  Then again, some photos that have charm are also really sharp.  I prefer those.

This is a photo of my great grandfather Louis Charles Bucklin.  His son Fred was the father of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  Louis was born in Masonville, Iowa, on April 11, 1873.  His father was James A. Bucklin, whose family hails from Massachusetts for many generations.  His mother was Mary Ann McGrath, who had immigrated to the United States in the mid 1800s during the Great Potato Famine in Ireland.  I wish I knew the year that they came to America, but I’m sure the family had been in Ireland for generations.

His parents had such distinctly different backgrounds.  That is so different to my dad’s family where cousins married cousins through the years.  His DNA is French, and I can’t even tell which side of his family many of my DNA matches come from.  It’s easy with people who are related to me through Louis Bucklin.  If their family was from Massachusetts, they were connected to the Bucklin lines.  If their family was from Ireland, I connect to them through the McGrath and Mooney lines.

But Louis’s family was no longer stationary.  James and Mary Ann were married in 1854 in Springfield, Massachusetts, but they didn’t stay there.  They moved on to Iowa in 1864 and then to Louisiana in 1884.  They settled in Hathaway, Louisiana, and didn’t move away again.  Maybe they were planning on moving every 20 years, but they just didn’t live long enough!  James died at age 69 in 1890, and Mary Ann died at age 66 in 1900.

Louis was just a little older than he is in the photo when he moved to Louisiana.  His teenage years were spent in Louisiana.  I know he had a childhood sweetheart name May Ausman, but that relationship didn’t last.  When Louis went off to Ohio Normal University in Ohio in 1893, he received a letter from May breaking it off.  It was a traumatic time for him, because his older sister Jennie died shortly after that.  Louis returned home and dedicated himself to the family farm.  When his mother needed some help around the house, she called on a local girl to help out.  That girl was young Addie Hine.  I should say young woman.  She was 18 years old when her family moved down to Louisiana from Indiana in 1894.

Louis must have found Addie attractive.  Or maybe he liked the way she cleaned the house.  The attraction was mutual, and the young couple got married on June 12, 1898, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.   They set up home in Hathaway, Louisiana, and they lived happily ever after.

Mom’s Memories Page 14 AKA Mom and Plants

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Can you believe I went all of 2024 without writing a Mom’s Memories post?  Not that I neglected talking about my mom or her side of the family, but I did let the recurring theme slip my memory.  It’s just a calendar year thing anyway.  I could go for a longer time between themed posts and still have them in successive years.  I was just a bit surprised when I looked for previous ones to see that it had happened that way.  

Page 14 of Mom’s Memories

So let’s remedy that!  Here is a page from the little book my mom kept when she started having her memory issues.  She talked about various things from her childhood and young adult life.  She was born Betty Lou Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, on May 20, 1933.  She was the second child of Fred D. Bucklin and Myrtle Sylvia Phenice.  All of her childhood was spent in that small community in Jefferson Davis Parish.

On this page of the book, she was talking about her mom’s parents.  Grandma Bucklin’s parents were Harry Clifton Phenice from Pennsylvania and Daisy Henrietta Martha Keys from England.  All of my mom’s grandparents were from different places.  They all lived in Hathaway when she was growing up.  She talks about how pretty their place was when the roses and wisteria were in bloom at the same time.  That usually happens in early spring.  On page 12 she mentioned that Grandpa (H. C. Phenice) had a strawberry patch and a watermelon field.  There was also a grape vine over their back porch.

Grandpa Bucklin was a nurseryman.  He and his identical twin got into the nursery business when they were quite young.  They had a falling out at some point but continued working as nurserymen with their own separate business just a mile apart from each other.  So my mom grew up with plants all around her.  She helped plant seedlings and wrap grafts and knew about taking care of plants.  The nursery was on the property where they lived.

Betty Lou Bucklin in Hathaway, Louisiana, in 1941.

If you look at this photo, you might think that my mom was fond of plants.  She looks so happy with her little leaf.  Yet, she always declared that she had a brown thumb.  She claimed that everything that she tried to grow would just die.  I think that was mainly true for potted plants and such.  She was too busy taking care of everyone else to think about watering a little plant regularly.  When she was older, she had a bit more time to care for some plants around their front porch.

I just like this photo of 8-year-old Betty Lou.  She does look like she may have been getting into a bit of mischief.  I’m not sure what she’s doing with the leaf in her hand.  It looks like a camellia leaf.  My grandparents had lots of those plants around their house when we were growing up.  When we’d visit sometimes, we’d cut some of the flowers so we could bring them to our teachers.  Maybe we had similar grins on our faces when we were collecting those camellia leaves and flowers.

When I was growing up and my mom talked about her childhood, she was talking about things that happened 20 or 30 years earlier.  That seemed so long ago back then.  But my growing up years was 50 years ago!  No wonder those people at work were referring to me as an old man today!

We really do grow up with our parents.

Sans Parents for Eight Years

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I’m pretty good at math.  But sometimes when I figure things out, they just don’t seem right.  This year is one of those times.  Can it really be eight years since both of my parents passed away within a week of each other?  As the Magic 8 Ball would say, “All signs point to yes.”  Where did that come from?  I must have just had the number 8 on my mind.  Time sure flies by.

I’ve been thinking of them – and the fact that I’d write a post about this – all week.  I always have to have a great picture of them to go with the post, right?  I was thinking that since this is the 8th anniversary of their deaths, I might coordinate that with a photo from around their 8th wedding anniversary.  When would that have been?  Let me tell you.  Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. married Betty Lou Bucklin on November 1, 1952, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  That would put their 8th anniversary on November 1, 1960, which happens to be the day after I was born. 

They didn’t take an anniversary photo that year, because my mom was still in the hospital with me.  I was the fifth child, and I have A+ blood.  My mom was 0- and had built up antibodies from previous pregnancies with A+ children.  Her immune system fought my blood, and it resulted in me having to have a blood transfusion a few days after I was born.  Thank you, Methodist men’s group in Lake Charles!  So, I messed up my parents’ anniversary and I didn’t want to use my own baby photo for the post today.

Betty Bucklin and Bob Landry on their 2nd wedding anniversary in 1954 in Albuquerque, New Mexico

I thought I’d look back on the past posts to make sure I didn’t repeat a photo.  Last year I stated that I wasn’t going to use the 2nd anniversary photo of my parents because I would post it later in the year for the 70th anniversary of the photo.  And guess what I forgot to do in November?  That’s right, I forgot about using that photo.  So that settled it.  I’m using the photo of my mom and dad from their 2nd wedding anniversary.

Look how sweet it is.  My mom is wearing the dress that she made and got married in.  I’ve described the color of it before, which is difficult to do, but I resisted showing the photo before because I wanted to wait until the photo was 70 years old.  Like I said, I was going to post it in November 2024.  So now you can see it in full color.  Reddish brown?  Brownish red?  It’s not easy to say for sure.

As far as their deaths are concerned, my mom died on January 19, 2017, and my dad died five days later (January 24, 2017).  We had a joint funeral for them on January 28, 2017, at the Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Jennings, Louisiana.  Jennings was where they lived most of their lives and it’s where they’re buried.

Those that loved them miss them.

Bucklin Family in 1960

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Sept. 23, 1960, was the date of my great grandmother Addie May Hine Bucklin’s last birthday. This is a photo of her with her children at the birthday party in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to post today.  When I saw this photo I wasn’t sure if I had used it before.  It seems like I would, because it’s a really nice group photo from my great grandmother’s last birthday.  Her birthday was September 23 and in 1960, that date fell on a Friday.  My guess is that the birthday celebration happened on the day after her birthday.  So the photo was probably taken on Sept. 24, 1960.  That was five weeks before I was born.  In another photo of the event I think that my oldest sister Jodie was there.  That would mean the rest of the family was there as well, including my mom – with me along for the ride.

My great grandmother was Addie May Hine Bucklin.  She was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana.  The Hine family moved down to Louisiana in 1894 and settled in Jefferson Davis Parish around Hathaway.  A few years later Addie met Louis C. Bucklin and they were married in 1898 in Lake Charles.  Soon after that they started a family.  She was pregnant ten times and had a total of a dozen children.  

When those children were growing up, their grandmother – Addie’s mother Susan Stanbrough Hine – had a big celebration every year for her and her friend’s birthday at the beginning of October.  I don’t know if that tradition followed through to Addie and her birthday, but at this birthday there seemed to be a lot of people there.  I think most of them were family.  When you have twelve children, you tend to have a lot of grandchildren as well.  Addie had eighteen grandchildren.  I wish there was a photo of Addie with all of her grandchildren.  Then I’d know for sure if my family had been there.  

I know that my grandfather was there.  He’s the one standing up on the left in the photo.  His name was Fred D. Bucklin and he was born in 1907.  He was married to Myrtle Phenice.  Their second daughter was Betty Lou, who is my mom.  She had four siblings – Sylvia, Alma, Loris, and Austin.  To the right of Grandpa is his oldest brother Leo.  He was born in 1898, which means that Addie had a short pregnancy for him.  Leo was married to Emily Sonnier, but they did not have any children together.  To the right of Leo is Herbert who was born in 1906.  He was married to Dora Koll.  They had two children that lived to adulthood – Louise and Ray.  Next in line is Clarence.  He was the identical twin of my grandfather Fred.  I never met him.  He was married to Sadie Manuel.  They had one daughter together, but Carla was born after the death of Grandma Addie.  Next we have Ralph, who was the second son.  He was born in 1902.  He married Leona Johnson and they had Helen.  Standing up on the right side is Roy, the youngest son.  He was married to Effie Hetzel and they had Jeannette and Doris.

On the front row, sitting on the left is Mary Bucklin Phenice.  She was born in 1900 and was married to Sylvan Phenice.  He was Grandma’s older brother.  That’s right, Grandpa’s oldest sister was married to Grandma’s older brother.  Aunt Mary and Uncle Sylvan did not have any children, so there were no double cousins.  Sitting next to Mary was good old Addie, who was celebrating her 84th birthday.  She looks pretty happy, right?!  She’s not known for smiling in photos.  But by all accounts, she was a very sweet woman.  She loved her family.  To the right of Grandma Addie is Edna Bucklin Keys.  She was married to Frank Keys.  Frank was Grandma’s first cousin.  Edna and Frank had four children – Melvin (of Star Trek fame), Stanley, Arlene, and Vernon.  Sitting on the right is Ruth Bucklin Bruchhaus.  She was married to Budda Bruchhaus and they had two sons – Harley and Laurence.

So the photo is of Addie and nine of her surviving children.  There was a son Carl who had special needs, but I think at the time that the photo was taken he was living in a facility in Metairie.  There had been a son named Paul who died as an infant in 1904.  Robert Bucklin was born in 1911 and was married to Freida Rampmier.  They had a son named Robert Jr., but Robert Sr. died in 1944 at the age of 32.  My mom was 11 at the time and she remembered how traumatic that death was to the family.  In my mom’s own words “Losing a child must be the ultimate challenge for a mother – beyond comprehension – shouldn’t happen.”  She said something similar when she talked about the death of Robert, but those words were written about her own experience losing my oldest sister Jodie.

Of course, all of these people are gone now.  It’s nice to have photos to look back on those people who came before us.  We wouldn’t be here without them.

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