Category: Landry

I didn’t really have an idea for a blog tonight.  No wonderful discoveries lately and no tragic story to tell.  So I just looked through my photos to see what would catch my eye.  And this one grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go!  Maybe because I just felt a little lazy and I comfort myself by saying that at least I’m writing something.  We wouldn’t want my seven-year streak to end, now would we?

But really, look how cute we all looked in this photo.  Too bad a large portion of the photo is missing.  I’m not exactly sure how that happened or when.  I’m thinking that it happened when the photo was first taken.  It was one of those Polaroids where you had to peal the backing off of the photo after you shook it a while.  “Shake it like a Polaroid picture!”  I just know that you were supposed to wait a predetermined amount of time before pealing the backing off.  

Obviously that didn’t stop my dad from enjoying the photo then, nor me from admiring it now.  The photo is still around and now everyone gets to see it!  I mention Lucy Street because I think this was not too long after we moved to 758 Lucy Street in Jennings proper.  We had lived just north of the I-10 in Jennings for about two years.  It was a house that we rented.  So when it was time to buy a house, we looked at a few places. (I presume.  I don’t remember that part.)  My mom always said that at that point they asked us kids which house we wanted, and we replied, “The yellow house on Lucy Street” with enthusiasm.  So Lucy Street it was.  We moved there in the fall of 1964.

We were the biggest family on the block.  We didn’t have any competition from across the street.  It was just a large open field with a gully along the back of it.  The neighbors to the east of us were the Theunissen brothers.  I think there were three of them.  They couldn’t have been much older than us, because their mom was a classmate of my mom’s at Hathaway High School.  To the west were the Hotard brothers.  There were four of them and the oldest was my age.  Their dad was the principal of Northside Junior High School where my dad was starting his new teaching position.  So he moved in next door to his boss.  I’ve never really thought of it that way before.  Past the Hotards were the Minter sisters.  Two of them were the same ages as my older siblings, but one of them was closer to the age of my younger sister.  She would call on the phone with a, “May I please speak to Jamie, please?”

There were a few more households on the block, but not many more kids.  The Theunissens and Minters moved away after a few years and were replaced by the Bordelons and Daniels.  Our family remained the largest one on the block.  Yet we all fit on the sofa for this wonderful photo.  We are seated unusually.  The oldest two are on each end, with the middle two in the middle.  The youngest two are each seated between their older siblings of the same sex.  I will make this like a word game.  I’ve given you those clues, and now for the final clue.  Our names in the order of oldest to youngest are Jodie, Rob, Karen, Al, Van, and Jamie.  Our last name was Landry and our parents’ names were Bob Landry and Betty Bucklin Landry.  That last sentence wasn’t a clue.  It was just a fact.

Any questions?

I can’t believe I have never posted a photo of my dad in his Air Force uniform on this blog.  I’ve posted several photos of his dad (my paternal grandfather) from World War I.  One of my earliest photos is a photo of my great great grandfather Trasimond Landry in his Civil War uniform.  And there is not just this one professional-looking portrait of Daddy in his uniform, there are two.  For the longest time I thought there was just one.  I would see one or the other and didn’t pay close attention to the details.  But they are obviously different.  You’ll have to take my word for it.  I’m only going to post one of them.  I’ve got to parcel out these good photos to make them last.  I’m glad you understand.

So how do you like it?  It really is a nice photo, and everyone loves a man in uniform.  Or so I’ve heard.  This is my dad, Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr. when he was in the Air Force.  He joined in 1952 and I think this photo was taken that year or maybe the next.

My dad was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on January 31, 1929, to Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  He was the fifth child (like me) and third son (like me) out of eight children.  I don’t know when his interest in music started, but I’m sure it was very early.  The earliest story I know about his musical interest was from when he was in high school.

He went to Landry Memorial High School in Lake Charles, and it was there that he started playing a musical instrument in his freshman year.  His instrument of choice was the baritone.  His interest grew and he would learn how to play various other instruments during summer vacations.  I did the same thing when I started playing the trombone in junior high school.  But I don’t remember him telling me that he had done the same thing.  The reason I know it is that there was a newspaper article from 1963 that gives that information.  Either he didn’t tell me about it, or I didn’t listen very well.  They both sound like a plausible explanation.

During my dad’s high school career, his interest continued to grow.  So when there was no band director available at Landry Memorial during wartime, my dad took over as the leader of the band.  He liked music and he liked to teach and tell people what to do, so it was a good fit.  After graduating high school, he decided to follow this passion of his.  He majored in music at McNeese Junior College, Southwestern Louisiana Institute, and at LSU.  When McNeese became a four-year school, he returned there to graduate in the first graduating class of 1952.  He had met Betty Lou Bucklin in 1951 at a Solo and Ensemble Festival at LSU and was impressed with her baritone playing.  She was at McNeese when he returned, and it was then that they fell in love and became engaged.

“So, why,” my brother Rob asked, “did he go into the military at that point?”  He didn’t like people telling him what to do.  He was picky about the foods he would eat.  And he was engaged and ready to start a career.  I didn’t know the answer, but my dad’s younger brother Johnny probably would.  So Rob looked into it last week when he came down for a high school reunion.  He took time to go visit Uncle Johnny in Lake Charles and he got an answer.  It would seem that at the time, the draft was in force.  If he hadn’t joined on his own, he would have been drafted into the Army.  The Army?  That sounds like a place where you might have to get your hands dirty!  And that was another thing Bob Landry didn’t like.

So off he went and joined the Air Force so he could be part of the Air Force Band.  It was a much better fit for him.  He went to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, in the summer of 1952.  While he was there, he made high scores in math and marksmanship.  When he came home for a few days in the fall, he married Betty Lou on November 1 at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Lake Charles.  They made their first home at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he was a member of the 503rd Air Force Band.  They became parents with the birth of Jodie in California, and after two years there, they moved on to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He was a member of the 572nd Air Force Band and they had Rob in Albuquerque.

In 1956, his time with the service came to an end and the family moved back to Lake Charles.  His military time was over, but his music career and family had just begun.

I don’t normally group photos together like this.  And I wouldn’t have necessarily grouped these four photos together.  But this photo grouping is part of an announcement for a special event coming up.  On July 23 there will be a West Baton Rouge Acadian Heritage Celebration in Brusly, Louisiana, and the special family name featured this year is Landry.  So when one of the organizers asked me if they could use some of my photos, I answered in the affirmative.  Why wouldn’t I want to honor some of my own Landry ancestors for the celebration?  But they are just representing the many Landry families in Brusly from back when.

And actually, one of these is not my ancestor.  That would be the handsome guy with the bow tie.  His name was Sebastien Landry.  He was an older brother of my paternal grandfather Robert Joseph Landry, Jr.  Even though Uncle Seb (That’s what my dad and his siblings called him.  It rhymes with dweeb.) was 19 years older than Rob (or Pee Paw to us grandchildren), they were very close.  Seb married his first cousin Manette Landry and they had a daughter, also named Manette.  Older Manette died shortly after giving birth, and little Manette was raised like a little sister to Rob.  The families have been close ever since that time.  When I think of my grandfather, I don’t think of him from Brusly.  That’s because he was born in Westlake, Louisiana.  So it is more appropriate for Sebastien to be in the group photo because he was born in Brusly before the family moved west.

My great grandfather (father to Rob and Seb) is the man on the left in the group photo.  He was born in Brusly in 1845.  When he was old enough, he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.  After the war, he married Marie Celeste Leveque.  Grandma Celeste was born in Brusly in 1847 to Joseph Auguste Leveque and Marie Marguerite “Basalite” Landry Leveque.  Basalite is the woman between the two men in the photo.  She was born in 1821 to Joseph Emmanuel “Manuel” Landry and Clarice Celeste Bruneteau Landry.  Basalite and Alcide were half first cousins.  That’s because Alcide’s father Narcisse was the half-brother of Manuel Landry.  That would make Alcide and his wife Celeste half first cousins once removed.  In case you haven’t heard this before, all four of my dad’s grandparents were related to each other through the Landry family.

The last one in the photo is Marie Therese Landry.  She was my great grandmother.  She was the mother of Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  My siblings, cousins, and I knew her as Mee Maw.  She was the best and I think I was her favorite!  Marie Therese was the older sibling of Manette Landry that I mentioned earlier.  She was married to her cousin Seb.  So Marie Therese’s daughter and sister were married to the brothers Rob and Seb respectively.  (Her half-sister Clemence Babin was married to Rob and Seb’s brother Louis Landry.)  Marie Therese was the oldest child of Trasimond Landry, the brother of Alcide Landry.

But there was another Landry cousin caught up in this family web, and I didn’t want to leave her out of this discussion.  That would be Marie Emma Landry and she was my great great grandmother.  She was born in 1829 in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, to Onezime Landry and Zerbine Dupuy.  The family moved to Brusly shortly after she was born.  I guess they wanted to be around other family members.  Onezime was the brother of Narcisse and the half-brother of Manuel.  They are the three sons of Joseph Ignatius Landry that I descend from.

Marie Emma spent her formative years in Brusly.  When she was a teenager, she met French immigrant Ferdinand Patureau.  The Patureau family had immigrated to Louisiana in 1840 and settled in the Plaquemine area.  Ferdinand was only 14 years old at the time, but that didn’t stop him from returning to France on his own without anyone in the family knowing where he was.  He even spent a bit of time in Cuba working on a sugar plantation.  He finally made it back to Louisiana in 1843 or so.  So Emma met him some time between then and their February 10, 1847, wedding.  Ferdinand was 20 years old and Emma was only 17.  Their first few children were born in Brusly, but they eventually settled in Plaquemine.  She gave birth to at least fifteen children.

So there you have it – most of my Landry family who lived in Brusly, Louisiana.  I suppose that I should mention that Trasimond’s wife Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol was the daughter of Anna Adele Landry.  Adele was the sister of  Basalite Landry Leveque.  There, now they are all covered and it’s as clear as can be.  If you are part of this family or have your own connection to a Landry family (or any Acadian family), be sure to attend the Celebration on the 23rd.  I’m planning on being there.  Maybe we can figure out how we’re related!

It was really hot today.  As it usually is in southern Louisiana in the summer.  I’m glad that I live in the time when air conditioning is available.  I don’t know how those people did it.  Our family didn’t have air conditioning until I was in the fifth grade.  That means I endured about ten years without air conditioning in our house.  I remember sleeping with my head in the window so I could feel the ‘cool’ breeze drawn in by the attic fan.  We also had a box fan to blow on us, so we had it made.  Like I said, I’m glad for air conditioning.

So when I was thinking about what to write about, I thought it should be about something warm.  And this is the photo that popped into my head.  It’s a photo of my siblings and me on a warm day in 1967.  How do I know that it was a warm day?  The date of the photo is July 26th and the sun is shining.  That’s pretty much of a guarantee that it was a warm day.

The place is Sam Houston Park, which is north of Lake Charles, Louisiana.  We lived in Jennings at the time, which is not that far away.  I suppose it was a day trip to go see the cypress trees and waterways.  When I looked up information on the park, it says that the place is now called Sam Houston Jones State Park.  It used to be named for Sam Houston.  I’m not sure when the name change happened, so I don’t know what it was actually name in 1967.  I just remember the Sam Houston part.

It’s a good thing the photo was labeled, because I would have thought this was a photo of when we went to Kisatchie National Forest.  That’s a bit further north in Louisiana, but I know we would go there from time to time.  But really, the place is not nearly as important as the people in the photo.  That would be the children of Bob and Betty Landry.  My dad was Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. and my mom was Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.  They were with us on all of our outings, but neither one of them is in the photo.  On the left in the white sleeveless shirt with red stripes (the red is from my memory) is my older brother Al.  He had turned eight years old just two days earlier.  I (Van) am the six-year-old boy sitting on the cypress knee/stump.  I still like wearing shirts like this when it’s warm.  Especially when I’m playing tennis.  I need some with a V-neck like this.  V is for Van, after all.

My oldest and youngest sisters are sitting on the ground in the middle of the photo.  Jodie is on the left.  What is she doing wearing a long-sleeved shirt?!  At least it’s white.  She was thirteen years old and it was the summer before she started high school.  The Landry kids were growing up!  I was going to be starting first grade and Jamie was going to be in kindergarten.  Why did she go to kindergarten when I never did?  Not everyone did back then.  You may have figured that Jamie is the youngest one sitting down to the right of Jodie.  She was the smallest.  

I don’t know what’s happening with Karen and Rob.  It looks like they have matching poses.  It does balance the photo, wouldn’t you say?  The other subjects of the photo can’t be ignored.  Look at the flock of birds clamoring for a taste of watermelon rind.  I can just imagine the squawking going on.  Can you?  Memories of a summer long ago.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted this photo before.  I know that I have sat down at the computer a few times and considered using it.  For some reason, I ruled it out previously.  But this week, I’m going for it.  Aren’t you glad about that?  Even though I ruled it out a few times, it wasn’t because I didn’t like the photo.  I kept thinking it was a bit blurry and I could somehow fix it.  But I’ve decided it doesn’t need fixing.  It is quite charming the way it is.

I think the first time I saw this photo was around four years ago.  It is part of the Secret Collection that is curated by my cousin Daphne.  She is the daughter of Germaine Landry Winn, the little blond-haired girl on the left in this photo.  When she was older, she had this photo and she wrote the names and ages of the subjects.  With those ages, I can tell that this photo was taken around 1933 or so.  Thanks, Aunt Germaine, for writing that information and saving this photo for all those years.

But little Germaine was only six years old in this photo.  She was born on April 6, 1927.  She was the fourth child of Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. and Germaine Erie Patureau Landry.  While Aunt Germaine was named after her mother Erie, her younger brother (my dad) was named after his father.  He was a Jr. and when he was young, they started calling him Bobbie.  He was known by that name for the rest of his life – mainly by family.  He was more often known as Bob or Pluto by his peers.  But in this photo, he was just little Bobbie with his two older sisters.  There were two brothers born between these two sisters, but somehow they did not make it into the photo.  Neither did younger sister Wana who was born in 1932.

The oldest of all of the siblings was Marie Therese.  We knew her as Aunt Marie.  She is the one standing a head taller than the other two in the photo.  She was born on April 23, 1923.  This was a year and a half after the marriage of Rob and Erie.  No short pregnancies for my Mee Maw!  This photo looks like they are standing next to a field of some type of produce.  Maybe it was before a long day of working in the fields.  Isn’t that what people did back in the day?  Work hard from sunup to sundown.  I don’t think so.  That was definitely not my dad’s style.  If he would have ever had to work the fields when he was a child, I’m sure we would have heard about it.

So I’m not sure what is going on in the photo.  I just know that it is a sweet looking photo of my dad with his older sisters.  Sure the photo is a bit overexposed, a bit blurry, and their feet aren’t showing.  But somehow, I think all of that adds to the charm.  It’s why I’m sharing it with you today.  Behold.

 

If you read my post last week, you’ll know that this is a continuation of that one.  Again I will be discussing the longevity of my ancestors.  I looked through six generations (up to 4X great grandparents) and figured out as closely as I could the exact age they were at their death.  The most interesting thing I noticed was that both of my parents were in the top 10 for longevity.  I definitely got to benefit from that.

Last week the focus was on my mom’s side, so this week the focus is on my dad.  The amazing thing is that my dad outlived most of my other ancestors.  Only three ancestors outlived him.  When I was younger, I would have never agreed with anyone if they would have suggested that that would happen.  Both of his parents died from heart issues, and he had heart issues for a while.  

He’s like Nadal in the tennis world.  Everyone said that his aggressive style of tennis would take an early toll on his body and he wouldn’t last long.  He ended up having one of the longest careers of elite tennis players and has set many records.  My dad may not have set any world records, but I have been told that he is a legend!

The two longest-lived ancestors were on my mom’s side of the family.  The longest-lived ancestor from his side of the family made it the age of 90.  So she lived a year longer than he did.  That was accomplished by Marie Magdelena Babin, who lived two hundred years earlier.  She lived from 1725 to 1814, and Daddy lived from 1929 to 2017.  She was born in Acadie, married Augustin Landry around 1752 (my parents married in 1952), and ended up in Louisiana after being exiled by the English during the Grand Derangement.   What tales she could have told.

I find it interesting that the three ancestors who outlived all the rest did it against the odds.  All three of them survived events that took the lives of many of their contemporaries.  And they weren’t just any old event.  They each had an Event with a Capital Letter.  Like I mentioned last week, Samuel Charles Phenice (the oldest) survived being injured during the Civil War.  That was a war with many casualties.  The next oldest was Edward McGrath who was from Ireland.  And he wasn’t just an immigrant from Ireland, he survived the Irish Potato Famine.  That happened during the 1840s and about a million people perished from the Great Hunger.  Edward and his wife Ettadosia brought their children to the United States and settled in Massachusetts.  And now we see that one of those long-lived ancestors was a survivor of the Great Expulsion of the Acadians.  We are all descendants of survivors, and these were the long-lived ones.

On the other end of the spectrum were a few ancestors who lived only long enough to produce one offspring.  Most of my ancestors had large families.  That was true for both sides of my family.  And likewise each side of the family had a short-lived ancestor that only produced one offspring.  I’ll start with the runner up.  Can an ancestor who lived the shortest amount of time be considered the winner?  Hey, at least we are talking about him all these years later.  The winner and the runner up both lived about 200 years ago.  They were alive at the same time as Marie Magdelena Babin Landry.  The runner up was on my mom’s side of the family.  Peter Hine was her great great great grandfather.  He died on July 22, 1819, at the age of 24 years, 8 months, 12 days.  He died from consumption less than two months before the birth of his son.  He never knew his only child.

The winner of the Shortest Lived Ancestor goes to Simon Hebert.  He died on April 17, 1802, at the age of 24 years, 6 months.  It was a close contest – only two months separated the two.  The main difference between the two is that Simon was able to meet his only child.  Marie Carmelite Hebert was born two months before her father died.  Simon’s wife Marie Martha Hernandez would go on to marry a second time and have more children.  But she did not live very long herself.  In fact, she had the third-shortest lifespan of my ancestors.  She died on Dec. 22, 1814, at the age of 33 years, 11 months, 9 days.  So they are definitely the couple with the fewest years when looking at their combined ages.

In fact, I’ve outlived their combined age of 58 years and some months.  I’ve outlived almost forty of my ancestors.  I mentioned Augustin Landry earlier.  He lived 62 years and some days.  I’m a few months older than that.  His great granddaughter Emma Landry Patureau (my great great grandmother) died in 1892 at the age of 62 years, 2 months, 14 days.  She is the most recent of my ancestors that I have outlived.  My sister Karen outlived our ancestor Pierre Bruneteau who lived to the age of 63.  She did not outlive his daughter Celeste Bruneteau Landry who lived to 63 years, 5 months, 29 days.  Karen lived to 63 years, 4 months, 6 days.  My brother Al has outlived Karen and Celeste.  He will soon outlive Henry Keys (63 years, 10 months, 24 days).  My brother Rob has gone on to further outlive nine more of our ancestors, including our Pee Paw – Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. (64 years, 7 months, 19 days)

I plan to touch on this topic again in the future.  Possibly in 10 months, 25 days.  But who’s really counting?

This is the second week in a row that I’m posting a blurry photo.  Have I run out of clear, sharp images?  No, of course not.  Though after posting over 400 photos, my choices have gotten smaller and smaller.  I have many photos that are sharper, but this is the one that called out to me this week.  Or maybe I should say that it resonated with something inside me.  The content of the photo is much more important than the quality of the photo.  But it’s nice when I can have both. 

I tried to sharpen it up a bit with some software, but the results weren’t accurate.  There isn’t enough information in the photo to guide the software to show what the people really looked like.  Some small feature may have been accurate – like droopy eyes – but the overall results didn’t look like the people I remember.  I wasn’t around back then, but I have other photos of them and know that the software images didn’t have enough to work with.  In the future, the software will be able to look at all of the other photos of the people, gather the information about their facial structure, and make an image clear enough to represent their faces from back then.  But in the meantime, we’ll just have to make do with the image we have.

This is a photo of my paternal grandparents.  They are on the left side of this photo.  Robert Joseph “Rob” Landry and Germaine Erie Patureau were married in 1921.  Rob and Erie began having children in 1923 and ended up with eight altogether – Marie, A. J., Hubert, Germaine, Bob (my dad), Wana, Framay, and Johnny.  Standing with Rob and Erie is their son Hubert with his new wife Mildred Sutherlin Landry.  I think this photo was taken on the day of their marriage, which was on July 20, 1946.  It is a sweet photo of a young married couple with the parents of the groom.

But when I look at this photo, I think of the things to come.  Though they were not the first of Rob and Erie’s children to marry – older sister Marie married Malloy Reeves on the first day of October in 1945 – they would be the first to provide them with a grandchild.  So they weren’t known as Mee Maw and Pee Paw at this point, but that would be changing soon when my godmother shows up.  She would make them grandparents.  When you think about it that way, it is an honor.  And my godmother doesn’t let anyone forget it.  No matter how many times we say it just makes her the oldest, she doesn’t care.  She was, is, and always will be The First.  She wears that designation like a tiara, and she wears it well.

Another thing that I think about is that I never knew Aunt Mildred when she was a cute, young, and ambulatory.  Of course I wouldn’t know her when she was young, because she was born almost forty years before I was.  But she also had polio, so she wasn’t able to walk on her own when I knew her.  My mom always spoke very highly of Hubert and Mildred.  She talked about their positive approach to dealing with her difficulties and his devotion to continually working with her to provide as much mobility as possible.  When our family was performing at Shakey’s in the late 1970s, they showed up more frequently than anyone else.  Uncle Hubert would play harmonica on many of the songs, so we got to visit with Aunt Mildred quite a bit.  She was a sweet lady.

But this photo mainly makes me regret that I never knew these grandparents as a couple.  They look very pleased to pose with their son and his wife.  I never saw that because my grandfather died before I was born.  I never got to call him Pee Paw.  I’ve heard many good things about him and from all accounts he and my grandmother were happily married.  So it must have been a profound change in my grandmother’s life when he died.  She was my age (62) when she became a widow.  I have friends who have lost their partners and it is a difficult transition.  

I didn’t mean for this post to be so tinted with sadness.  It’s a sweet photo from a very happy moment in their lives.  It gives me a bittersweet smile.

Not feeling too wordy tonight.  That’s alright, though, because this photo doesn’t really need many words.  It is a photo of my dad when he was about six years old.  I’m pretty sure it is a school photo.  I’m saying that he was in the second grade, but would that be right?  He was born on January 31, 1929, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  He was named after his father obviously.  But he wasn’t the oldest son.  He was the third son, like I am.

I always think that the first-born son is the one who usually gets named after the father.  Is that the tradition?  My oldest brother is named after my dad.  I think my other brother was named after my dad’s grandfather and my mom’s father.  So Alcide and Fred come together to form Alfred.  I wasn’t named after anybody.  Not that I know of.  

My dad was named Robert Joseph, but back then he was known as Bobbie.  And it was always spelled B-O-B-B-I-E.  It’s how he was known by his family for the rest of his life, even though everyone else referred to him as Bob.  If I have the date correct, the family that called him that were his parents Rob and Erie Landry, and siblings Marie, A. J., Hubert, Germaine, and younger sisters Wana and Frances.  They would be joined in 1936 by the youngest of them all, little Johnny.  He grew up in the middle of a large Catholic family in the 30s and 40s in a growing Southern town.

He looks like a happy little boy, doesn’t he?

Earlier today, I was wondering what I would end up writing about tonight.  I didn’t really have anything in mind.  I wasn’t too concerned, because I usually find something to write about.  But really, after sharing around 400 photos on this blog, you would think that I’d run out of photos!  Not that 400 photos are that many photos.  Right now, I’ve got 1, 874 photos on my phone.  Not that they are all worthy of something to write about, but it’s still a lot more than 400.  And I clean out my photos somewhat regularly.  I’m sure there are people reading this who have photos numbering in the thousands on their phones.  Am I right?

When I was walking home from work, I thought that maybe I’d title my post “Photos of Dead People.”  While not everyone in my photos have died (myself included), many of the subjects in the old photos I post have.  And I was not planning on posting photos of people who were dead in the photo.  There is a history of people photographing the dead to preserve their memory.  That was back in the day when photographs were relatively rare.  But the tradition has carried on in my dad’s side of the family.  

My paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry died in 1973 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  I remember going to Mee Maw’s funeral.  I have a few memories of that day.  My brother-in-law at the time gave me a piece of polished smoky quartz that I cherished for many years.  Not because of who gave it to me, but I have always liked rocks and minerals.  I haven’t seen that piece of quartz for a while now.  I also remember going to the restroom and my belt buckle fell off and fell into the toilet!  I wasn’t about to fish that thing out, and I hoped that no one would notice it was missing.  Nobody noticed and I think I’ve only told one person that story.  Now everyone knows the secret.

It was at Mee Maw’s funeral that I saw my dad crying for the first time that I recall.  For some reason that seemed like such a big thing to young pre-teen Van.  I don’t remember my grandmother or her coffin or that much of anything else.  But I do remember that afterwards, my dad was given or sent a photo of her in her coffin.  He kept it in the top dresser drawer in my parents’ bedroom.  I know that, because I remember looking through that drawer from time to time and looking at the photo.  I was just a little curious.  When my sister Jodie died in 1989, one of my cousins gave me a photo of her in the coffin.  I have the photo, but I never look at it.  After my parents died in 2017, similar photos were offered to me, but I politely declined.  

Because really, wouldn’t you prefer to have a picture like this one I’m sharing?  Of course, you would!  This is a photo of my paternal grandfather Rober Joseph Landry, Sr. from around 1920.  I always title posts about him using the name that his grandchildren called him – Pee Paw.  He went by Rob or Bob or Pappy.  But when I think of Rob Landry, I think of my brother.  And Bob Landry was my father, and all of his grandchildren called him Pappy.  So Pee Paw is the only name he went by that doesn’t confuse the issue for me.  He, of course, was married to my Mee Maw.  They actually got married around the time that this photo was taken.

I estimated that this photo was taken in 1920.  Rob Landry married Erie Patureau on November 21, 1921.  He was 28 years old at the time and she was 26.  That’s a little older than I would have thought, because they ended up having 8 children together.  That was over a period of 14 years, so Mee Maw was 40 years old when she had her last child.  My mom had her last child when she was 29.  It’s interesting how our idea of ‘normal’ is what we grew up with.  Though that is not always true.

And some of you are probably happy about that.  Because, like I said, I grew up in a family that takes pictures of dead people.  And while I do share photos of people who are no longer with us, they were very much alive when the photos were taken.  Just like this photo of Pee Paw with a big smile on his face.  You can’t do that with a dead person, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone try.

This photo has been calling to me for a while now.  I really like the photo, but it is just another photo of my family from the 1970s.  I almost used this photo as the theme of last week’s post, but I thought I was being lazy.  It doesn’t take much research to write about something from you own life.  Yet this photo is from almost fifty years ago and I’m not exactly sure of where it was taken.  But it still calls to me, so I’m not ignoring it.  

I got this photo from my brother Rob about five years ago.  I wasn’t familiar with it at the time.  Of course, I had to crop it, clean it up a little, and sharpen it some.  I didn’t really have to, but I thought it would look better with a freshening up.  I suppose Rob told me the date on the photo, because I wouldn’t put a specific date unless I remembered it or had it written down.  The date July 24 is my brother Al’s birthday.  That may be why the date is known.

I’ve pretty much convinced myself that this was taken in College Station, Texas.  The date and the place bring back a lot of memories for me.  My oldest sister Jodie was married to Dennis Franklin and it was around this time that they moved from Lake Charles, Louisiana, to College Station.  They had met at McNeese when they were in college.  When Dennis graduated from McNeese, he was accepted into the graduate program in botany at Texas A&M University.  So that was their impetus to move.  It also explains why Jodie did not perform with the family much when we started singing at Shakey’s the following year.  She was living in Texas.

And once they were living in Texas, the rest of the family had to go see what it was all about!  I remember riding around the campus and looking at the scenes.  We went into the School of Botany (or Plant Biology?) and saw some of the experiments taking place in the lab.  After that, we stopped to look at the golf course.  (My dad was driving.  He was a golf fan.)  While we were watching, a guy shot a hole in one!  That’s the only time I’ve ever seen that in person.  It was such a surprise.  I’d like to say that I remember the family celebrating Al’s birthday, but I don’t.  Maybe he can remind me of something that happened.  We’ll see.

One of the things we did was to take this photo.  My ex-brother-in-law (yes, her first marriage did not last.)  Dennis took the photo.  Not that I remember that.  It’s just that there is another photo that shows Jodie and Dennis together in it.  So he was there that day and he’s not in this photo.  If someone else had been there to take the photo, he would have been in it, too.  So let me identify those of us who are in the photo.  Starting on the left, you see my father Robert Joseph “Bob” Landry, Jr.  He was 46 years old at the time.  He was so young!  At the time I didn’t think that.  He seemed so old to me.  Now it’s me that’s so old!

Standing in the front are my sisters Jodie, Karen, and Jamie.  Jodie was 21 years old at the time.  Karen had just graduated from Jennings High Schol that May of ’75.  She would be starting college at McNeese in a few months.  Jamie was in junior high school and would be starting the 8th grade. The day before this, Jamie was 13, I was 14, and Al was 15.  Our ages are consecutive like that for only a few weeks a year.   Standing behind the girls and next to my dad is my mom.  Betty Lou Bucklin Landry was 42 years old in this photo.  Parents really do grow up with their children.  Particularly so when they get married and have children at a young age.  My mom had six children by the time she was 29.  

Standing in the back are the boys.  The birthday boy Al is the tallest one.  It was his 16th birthday that day.  All four of his children are older than that now.  Time is zooming by!  The next person is 14-year-old Van.  I think I look kinda cute in this photo.  That’s kinda funny because the absolute worst photo of me was taken earlier this same month.  I have no plans of ever posting that photo.  I’m pretty sure it will never call to me!  On the far right is my brother Rob.  He was getting ready for his third year of college at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  One of his interests in college was photography.  Since the photo came from him, it was probably taken with his old Minolta camera.

So we can thank Rob for the photo.  I hope you all like it.