Category: Phenice

An S. C. Phenice Incident

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Samuel Charles Phenice circa 1935

Getting a little late start today.  I knew that would happen, so I planned a little bit ahead.  At least I know what I’m writing about.  This post is about an incident that showed up in the local newspaper in Almena, Kansas.  That is in northern Kansas, just south of Nebraska.  That’s near the area that my Phenice ancestors lived around the turn of the century when the 1900s began.

Samuel Charles Phenice was born in Pennsylvania and that’s where he spent his boyhood.  When he became an adult, he went off to war in the Civil War.  He only fought in one battle that I know of – the Battle of the Wilderness in Spotsylvania, Virginia.  He was injured during that battle, and he became part of the Invalid Corps.  It was during the time with that group that he ended up being assigned to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, during that pivotal point in American History.  He was a witness to the Lincoln Assassination.  I know that he talked about it to anyone who would listen, and several newspaper articles were written about it.

After the war he married Cathrine Foster in their home state of Pennsylvania.  They started their family in Pennsylvania, had their second child in Tennessee, then moved back to Pennsylvania for the births of their next three children.  The family then moved to Nebraska in 1880 or so and had their last three children in that state.  They started off in Milford, moved on to Hitchcock, but ended up in Beaver City in Furnas County.

If you were familiar with the area, you would know that Beaver City, Nebraska is just a short trip from Almena, Kansas.  I only know this because I’ve studied the area that my ancestors lived in and I’ve been there once.  Beaver City (and Precept) is in the southernmost part of Nebraska, just north of Almena.  I don’t think there are any major roads that go directly from one to the other.  The most direct route are some old farm roads.  Along that road is the graveyard that Samuel and Cathrine are buried in.

Almena, Kansas, article about Samuel Phenice from Oct. 1, 1931

But this story happened between the deaths of Cathrine and Samuel.  Cathrine had her accident at the end of 1920, and then she died at the beginning of 1921.  Samuel was a widower for almost 20 years.  He probably lived by himself for the first years, but when he got older, he went to stay with his daughter Lola Mrytle who lived in Almena.  One day they decided to go to town and do a little shopping.  They were going from one shop to another and then all of the sudden – BLAM – Samuel walked into a plate glass window and it shattered everywhere.  

Old Samuel was 87 years old at the time, but he sounds like he was pretty sturdy.  He ran into the plate glass window thinking it was the entrance.  His head hit the window and broke it.  Samuel fell back against the other side of the entrance, but he reported that he was fine.  He did have some cuts on his hands.  This is the second article about Samuel that talks about an incident that happened, and the results were injuries to his hands.  When Cathrine’s clothes caught fire, he tried to help her out and he burned his hands as a result of his actions.

But this article reports less serious events than previous incidents.  He was shot during the Battle of the Wilderness, Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre, and his wife died as a result of her clothes catching fire.  This was just a little tumble in a small Kansas downtown and all he had were a few cuts on his hands.  But somehow it still made the news.  Otherwise, we would not know about that particular outing back on September 26, 1931, in Almena, Kansas.

I’m glad to know that he was all right and that people cared about his welfare.  He lived a long, interesting life.

Myrtle Phenice Bucklin in 1954

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Myrtle Phenice Bucklin in 1954 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

I’ve been wanting to post this photo for a while, so the only problem I had with it was determining the date of it.  I had a date of 1947 for it, and I even started the post with that in the title.  This photo came from my Aunt Loris a few months ago.  She is my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry’s younger sister.  I like this photo so much, so I was wondering why mom didn’t have a copy of it in her possession.  It is a photo of their mother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin after all. 

So I went to the family photo album that I put together when I was in junior high school to see if I could find it.  There on the first page of the album was a small photo of my grandmother in 1954.  My grandmother was Mrs. Bucklin who taught the 3rd grade at Hathaway High School back in the 1940s through the 60s.  And one of the things they’ve always done at school is take school photos.  There were usually one or two photos to choose from.  The nice thing about those old photos was that they put the year on the bottom of the photos. 

The 1954 photo was taken on the same day as this one.  It seems that Loris liked this version of the photo, while mom liked the other one.  I have to agree with my aunt on this one.  It is a much more striking photo than the other one.  Sure, she is smiling a bit more in the other photo and it shows the date, but this one is just more dramatic.

Myrtle was born in 1906, so she would have been 48 years old in this photo.  When I was growing up, I remember my mom saying that Grandma was known as a “handsome” woman.  Well everybody knows that you’re supposed to call women either pretty or beautiful, and men are known as handsome.  I always took it to mean that she was attractive in a masculine sort of way.  And I went along with it.  After all, she was my grandmother.  That means that she was much older than I was.  My concern was that she was nice to us and she fed us well when we went to visit.  She also had an infectious laugh, especially when her sisters were around.

But now that I’ve been looking through these old photos of her, I notice that she had striking features.  She had high cheekbones, full lips, and really pretty eyes.  She and her sisters were beautiful young women.  And in this photo of her when she was 48, she could still strike a pose.  Come on, vogue!

Unnatural Phenicie Deaths

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I’m finally getting around to writing a post about a story I found almost eight years ago.  A week before Christmas in 2016 I must have been doing some research on Phenice relatives, because that’s when I found this information.  I said at the time that it was a story that needed to be told.  I didn’t tell it then because I had found another story that was very tragic, and it was about a family that had some striking similarities to my own family when I was growing up.

That other story was about my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry and her third cousin Dolores Henke Yule and their respective families.  They were related through the Stanbrough family name.  They were around the same age, they got married around the same time, and then they moved to California after they were married.  Their first two children were born within days of each other, and each of their third children was a girl with the last name of Jean.  Then in 1961, both families got into separate accidents.  My family lived to tell about it.  Theirs didn’t.

The story that I’m talking about today is concerning relatives from the Phenice line.  In the case of these cousins, they spelled their last name Phenicie.  It has some similarities to the Yule tragedy.  Their car accident happened on Sept. 17, 1961.  The accident that happened to the Phenicie cousin was on Sept. 17, 1948.  In the 1961 accident Dolores Yule died.  In the tragedy of the Phenicie family, Dolores Davies Phenicie passed away.

I had thought about writing this post last week but decided to put it off because it was an anniversary for my great great grandmother’s birthday.  So this was to be the week that I would talk about the tragedy.  The weird thing is that I heard about two deaths at different chemical plants that happened this week.  And the two projects that I’ve been working on this week were for those plants.  The first death I’m talking about happened at a chemical plant, but that was back in 1948.

Here is what happened.  On September 17 there was an explosion in Lewiston, Pennsylvania, at the American Viscose Corporation.  A blast in the vulcanizing tank turned the door of the tank into a missile that struck Wayne Rhodes Phenicie in the side.  He died shortly afterwards.  Two other people only suffered minor injuries.  It was such a tragic event.  Wayne and Dolores hadn’t been married for very long and they had a son named Jeff who had been born at the beginning of the year.

But that’s not the end of this sad story.  Dolores was not able to cope with losing the love of her life.  The second newspaper article states that the couple had been deeply in love and that she was suffering from depression.  She went to stay with family members who were willing to help out in hopes of an improvement.  But sadly, the young widow shot herself on December 22, 1948.  In just over a two-month period, little Jeff Phenicie lost both parents before he had reached the age of one.

One of the reasons I didn’t write the story in 2016 was because Jeff Phenicie was still alive.  I thought I might contact him and see if he had anything to say about the situation.  But really, what can you say about a tragedy that happened when you were so young.  And how would I even bring that up to someone?  So I put it aside for a while.  Time passed and I forgot the names of the people involved.  I’ve got thousands of people in my online tree, and I don’t make notes about people like I probably should.  I looked half-heartedly a few times but wasn’t too concerned about it.

Then a few weeks ago I had a DNA match with the last name of Phenicie.  (Yes, they still spell it differently.  They even pronounce it differently.  They rhyme their name with Tennessee.  We rhyme Phenice with Venus.)  When I looked at the match’s tree, I saw the name Wayne Phenicie and a death date of 1948.  It seemed familiar.  Sure enough, the DNA match is a great grandchild of Wayne and Dolores.  I also saw that Jeff Phenicie had died in 2017.  In the Yule case Dolores Henke Yule was a third cousin to my mom.  With Wayne Phenicie, he was a third cousin to my maternal grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  And what that means is that Wayne Phenicie, my third cousin twice removed, had common DNA with me.  Otherwise his great grandchild would not be a DNA match to me, my brother Rob, and my cousin Charla.

I’ve mapped my mom’s and some of her siblings’ DNA sources.  Even though the match happened at Ancestry, I can still tell how we are related.  We have some common matches that tested at other sites that have chromosome browsers.  One match named Bradley matches this new Phenicie match and me, Rob, and Charla.  Bradley also matches Aunt Loris.  Mama matched Bradley with two large segments, but Aunt Loris matches him only on one.  So since the new Phenicie match doesn’t match Aunt Loris, the connection must be through the other segment that the others of us have.  So I know that along Chromosome 10, there is a section within each of my cells that is identical to a section of Chromosome 10 that was in Wayne Phenicie on the day he died.  Evidence of a family connection.

 

 

Phenice Cousins, Part 2

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Phenice cousins in Hathaway, Louisiana, circa 1939 or 1940

This is a continuation of a previous post from eight and a half years ago.  In January of 2016, I posted a photo from 1939 with three Phenice cousins.  When I say Phenice cousins, I mean cousins with a common Phenice ancestor.  It doesn’t mean that everyone has the same Phenice last name.  I do the same with my first cousins from my mom’s side of the family.  Since my mom’s maiden name was Bucklin, I call them all my Bucklin cousins even though most of them didn’t have Bucklin as a last name.  

My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin, and her parents were Fred Bucklin and Myrtle Phenice.  So when I say Phenice cousins, I mean my mom, her siblings, and their maternal first cousins.  And in her case, most of those cousins did have the Phenice last name.  When I posted that early Phenice Cousins post, I didn’t write nearly as much about the photos as I do now.  It’s up to you to determine if that’s a good or a bad thing!  I didn’t explain what I meant by Phenice cousins, but maybe you already knew what I meant, and I’ve just wasted two whole paragraphs explaining it.  Good thing vs bad thing.  You decide!

While that first photo had three cousins in it, this one has twice as many cousins with more than twice as many words.  And it costs the same amount!  Inflation hasn’t affected my posts.  I had hoped to get a better-quality version of this photo, so I waited on using it on a post.  But with the death of my mom’s first cousin Kathleen Phenice this week, I thought I’d post it now.  It’s a cute photo that she’s included in.  The children in the photo are from two Phenice families.  Four of them are daughters of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin, and the other two are daughters of her brother Orville Phenice.  Both families ended up with four daughters and one son.

Let me tell you who everyone is.  On the left, sitting on her sister’s lap, is Loris Bucklin.  She is the youngest of the four Bucklin sisters.  She lives in Houston, Texas, now.  The lap belonged to none other than my mother Betty Lou Bucklin.  She was born on May 20, 1933, and she died on January 19, 2017.  Most of her life was spent with Bob Landry (my dad) in Jennings, Louisiana.  You can barely see her face peeking around Loris’s little head.  The next little cutie is Alma Bucklin.  She was the third Bucklin daughter, born two and a half years after my mom.  I think they all were blond or tow-headed when they were young.  I think that comes from their dad’s Hine family line.  She passed away in 2014.  Sitting in the middle of the photo is the oldest Bucklin daughter Sylvia.  She was born in March of 1931 and died in 2002 in Phoenix, Arizona.  When we were growing up, Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Ronald (Pilcher) lived in Lafayette, Louisiana.

The next little girl is Kathleen Phenice.  She was born on May 8, 1937, and passed away two days ago (on August 13, 2024) in Denton, Texas.  I remember her as my mom’s cousin who would sing with us at family reunions and such.  I liked hearing her and her sisters sing, because their voices reminded me of Grandma.  The family was very musical.  They also did a bit of research on the Phenice family, which I have referred to from time to time. Kathleen was the second daughter of Orville and his wife Elta Whitman Phenice.  Their oldest daughter is Marilyn Phenice, the young girl on the right in the photo.  She still lives in Louisiana.

I’m posting this photo as is.  It’s not the best quality copy.  If anyone has a good copy of it, I would love to have an improved digital version of it.  And if anyone has a more exact date, I love to be corrected.  Actually, any comment is appreciated.

Let the comments commence!

H. C. and Daisy’s Family Circa 1941

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Harry Clifton and Daisy Keys Phenice with their family circa 1941 in Hathaway, Louisiana.

Eight years ago I shared a photo with the same people on the same day.  It’s one that I’ve seen my whole life.  It belonged to my mom (Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) and she wrote on the back of that one that the photo was taken with her first camera.  I’m assuming that this photo was taken by the same person with the same camera.  The people in the photo didn’t move much from one shot to the next.  Maybe they saw this one in their phone and suggested taking another one because my grandmother (Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin) has her eyes almost closed.  She’s got pretty eyes and a pretty smile, so that would be understandable.

But it’s not accurate, because people didn’t have cameras on their phones back then.  If they did have a phone, it was locked to the wall and they had to get the operator to place a call for them.  Even when I was a kid, my grandmother’s telephone line was on a party line.  We could pick up the phone and listen in to other people talking!

So for whatever reason, they took at least two photos of this same pose on that faraway 1941 day in Hathaway, Louisiana.  I’m glad they did, because I like them both.  I got this one from Aunt Loris recently.  (Thanks again!)  It’s a little clearer than the other one.  Of course, this first version I’m posting has been edited and enhanced.  Some of the Phenice sons on the back row don’t look exactly correct because of the original blurriness.  But the ones in the front look sufficiently like the actual person, so it makes the photo more pleasing to my eyes.  Oh, yeah, it’s also cropped into a square and the subjects are centered better than in the original.  

Original version of the photo with just a little removal of dust and scratches.

In front on the left is my Grandma (Myrtle) who doesn’t look very happy in this photo.  In the other photo she looks much happier.  I don’t know why.  Next to her is the youngest daughter Marguerite.  She would be about 23 years old in this photo.  To the right of her is Grace, the oldest daughter.  She was 38 years old at the time and Mrytle was 35. Daisy Keys was born in England in 1876 and she married Harry Clifton Phenice in 1900 in Louisiana.  He was born in Butler, Pennsylvania, (made famous this week) in 1874 and moved to Louisiana as a 24-year-old.  All of their children were born in Louisiana.  On the back row we have Warren, 25; Henry, 32; Sylvan, 40; and Orville, 30.

On my post from eight years ago, I said that sometimes when I clean up photos it takes away some of the charm.  For some reason I don’t feel that way with the editing on this photo, even though it’s a more pronounced change and some of the people don’t look exactly like themselves.  So for you purists out there ( and I know you’re out there!), I’m posting the unenhanced version in all of its blurry, lopsided beauty.

Do you have a preference?

When Grandma Played a Man

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Members of Raymond Methodist Church who put on a play circa 1946. (Raymond, Louisiana)

I’ve been planning on this post for a while.  I remember this photo from when I was a kid, because I thought it was interesting that my grandmother was dressed like a man and had a moustache and a beard.  That’s not the way she dressed when she was around us!  In fact, I don’t remember my grandmother wearing anything but dresses.  Both of my grandmothers, now that I think about it.  So seeing a photo of her dressed like a man was decidedly different.

The grandmother in question is my mom’s mom.  She was born Myrtle Sylvia Phenice on December 19, 1906, in Jefferson Davis Parish.  Her parents were Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys Phenice.  Harry was from Pennsylvania by way of Nebraska, and Daisy was from England.  So my grandmother was the first generation on my mom’s side to be born in Louisiana.  She got married to Fred D. Bucklin in 1930 and started a family.  So by the time that 1946 came around, they had all five of their children.

I mention 1946, because that’s around the time this photo was taken.  Even though I remember this photo from when I was young, I didn’t end up with a copy of it when I started collecting photos.  I got this copy in 2017 from my cousin John.  I just took a quick photo of it when we were visiting after the Keys Family Reunion that year.  It’s not a great quality photo, but I still like it a lot.  What kept me from writing about it was that I couldn’t remember the name of the character that Grandma played.  I’m pretty sure it was a comic piece but didn’t know much more about it.

Then a week or so ago I got a letter full of photos from Aunt Loris.  I wasn’t expecting that, but it was very welcomed!  I was especially excited about it because she sent me some photos that I had never seen before.  I’ll be sharing some of them in future posts, don’t you worry.  But what got me to finally post this photo was the fact that Aunt Loris had labeled it.  Not only did she know the name of the character that Grandma played, but she also knew the name of everyone that was in the photo!  The photo wasn’t a good quality and it was backward, so I went ahead and used the previous photo I got from my cousin.

The photo was from the late 40s (I gave it estimate of 1946 when comparing it other photos of the same people.) and it was of members of the Raymond Methodist Church who put on a play.  I’ve seen a lot of the names before, because Mama, Grandma, and many members of their family attended that church.  My grandfather’s mom was also a member.  So there’s a lot of history shared in that small town church.  I won’t tell you all the history (because I don’t know it!), but I will share with you all of the names of the people in the photo.

From left to right, we have Jay Jester, Grace Bolles Jester, Buck Jester in overalls, and Anne Jester next to him.  Then, in the role of Saul Silverstein we have Myrtle Bucklin, my dear grandmother.  She’s wearing a man’s suit, a moustache, and a beard.  She went all out!  Continuing to the right we have Sally Marshall, Vivian Jester, Harold Brown (in the Lafayette shirt which helped me to determine which image was backward), Millie Compton, and Jesse Compton.  I don’t know the connection of all of the Jesters in this photo.  Nor do I know the connection between the Comptons.  I don’t think they are related to us.  They were members of the church family.

It’s so nice to receive unexpected treasures in the mail.  It was the second package I’ve received lately with old family photos.  The other one was from my dad’s side of the family with lots of photos of Patureau family members.  Then last weekend I was able to get my hands on some more old family photos.  Keep them coming!

Samuel Charles Phenice Lost a Son

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My great great grandfather Samuel Charles Phenice circa 1910. Probably in Nebraska.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about tonight.  I was busy at work this week, so I didn’t really think about it.  There were a few things that happened outside of work that made me consider a topic.  But I wasn’t sure.  Last week I talked about my dad’s side of the family, so this week it was time for a post on my mom’s side of the family.  Specifically, it was time for a Phenice post.

I looked through the folder of Phenice photos a little, but then thought it might be interesting to find something that happened 100 years ago.  I didn’t know what that might be, so I looked at photos in the 1920s.  Nothing stood out, so I looked at my family tree to see what was happening with the Phenice family 100 years ago.  There wasn’t anything specifically in 1924 that I saw, but I did see an event that happened in 1922.  On 2-22-22 (February 22, of 1922) my great great grandfather Samuel Charles Phenice suffered the loss of his first son Chauncey.

This was actually the theme I had thought of writing about this week, because my godmother lost her son this week.  It’s such a tragedy when a parent loses a child.  When my oldest sister died in 1989, it hit my parents really hard.  My goal for the rest of their lives was to take good care of myself so they wouldn’t have to go through that kind of loss again.  I succeeded.  But things happen sometimes outside of our control.

My great uncle Chauncey Phenice – 1868-1922. This photo was taken around 1900, possibly in Nebraska.

In the case of my great great grandfather Samuel, the death of his first child came just after a year of losing his wife of fifty years – Cathrine Jane “Kate” Foster Phenice.  Most of the time when I think about them, I focus on obvious things.  They had a long marriage of fifty years – a family tradition in this line – six generations with 50 years or more.  Of course, I tell about Samuel being in the Civil War out of Pennsylvania.  Yes, he was a Yankee!  He also was a witness to the Lincoln Assassination.  Kate had a tragic end to her life.  Her clothes caught on fire and she died as a result of her injuries.  As a result, Samuel dealt with the loss of his son without her.  Chauncey was their first – he was the one that made them parents.  

It’s kind of surprising that Samuel didn’t outlive more of his children.  When you live to the age of 95 like he did, it seems to happen.  My great great grandmother Belite Bujol outlived five of her seven children, and she only lived to be 80 years old.  There are sad stories in every family.  Yet it is the family who can help in these times.  Nothing you can say can repair the hole left behind when a loved one dies.  But the love and support from family and friends can make it a bit easier to endure.

This one is dedicated to my godmother and her son.

Was Daisy Feeling a Little Unwell?

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My dear sweet English great grandmother Daisy Keys Phenice circa 1950, bless her.

I have been sick all week.  Sick, sick, sick.  And I’m sick of it!  My head feels like it’s in a fog most of the time and I don’t have much energy.  But I still wanted to do my family history blog post, right?  I can’t miss that.  It would let down my peeps.  With what I have planned for tonight, I still may disappoint some.

I was starting to look for something to post, and I thought about something musical.  Maybe I have another little ditty by Great Grandpa H. C. on his fiddle?  So I went searching for those recordings I got a few years ago.  I always think I’m so organized, but I find myself frustrated more often than I like when I’m looking for something specific.  Having a foggy head today wasn’t a help.  I finally found “Soldier’s Joy” and “The Irish Washerwoman.”  But I didn’t see another fiddly jig.  But then something else entered my foggy brain.

In my semi-demented stated, I thought of just the song recording that would represent how I’ve been feeling this week.  It’s a song from the same group of recordings as those others, but it wasn’t something that resonated with me until today.  Anytime I’m asked a question this week, I don’t want to answer with much effort.  It can set off coughing.  You also know I’m from a musical family.  I tend to relate things around me to certain songs, which I will start singing at random.  But with a scratchy throat and not much energy, I don’t really try for the correct pitch, and I really don’t care.  Like I said:  I’m sick, sick, sick!

So this is a recording of my mom’s maternal grandparents Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys.  Daisy is singing and playing the piano, while H. C. is accompanying her on his fiddle.  It’s a bit discordant.  It’s bit off key.  It’s exactly how I felt inside my head this week.  I wonder if Daisy was a bit unwell back then?  Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.

Myrtle and Fred – A Photo I Want

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I had a hard time deciding on a topic for today.  I couldn’t decide on any of my good photos that I have.  I looked and looked to find a photo that inspired me or talked to me.  I usually like to show off a great photo that I’ve come across and fixed up to look wonderful.  Hopefully some other family members like it enough to copy it to their own growing collection of family images.  How else will those old family photos survive through the generations?  You can’t just let them rot away in an old drawer or attic.

Myrtle Phenice and Fred Bucklin

When I was hopelessly looking for an amazingly inspirational image, I came across this one.  I got this from my mom’s cousin on the Phenice side of the family.  (Thanks, Shelly!)  It was in a booklet that my grandmother Myrtle Phenice Bucklin’s sister Marguerite Phenice Hill had written that was called “Marge’s Memories.”  I’ve shared some of that information in a previous post.  At the end of the booklet, there were old family photos.  This is the one that really caught my attention.

It looks like a great photo of my grandparents when they were young.  Maybe not real young, but younger than they were when my siblings, and cousins, and I knew them.  Obviously, it was a nice photo of them that they shared with family members.  This is the only version I’ve seen of it.  I could work on this to clean it up, but it would be working with such a bad version from the start.  It’s a Xerox copy and the lighting is really bad.

Surely there is a good copy of this photo somewhere, right?  And if so, I hope that whoever has access to that photo would be willing to scan it or take a photo of it to share with me.  Such a simple little thing.  It’s a photo of my grandparents Myrtle Phenice and Fred Bucklin.  They were my mom’s parents.  Now if you happen to come across an even better photo of them that I haven’t seen before, I’d be willing to take that instead. 

Do I sound greedy?  I definitely want as many old photos as I can get, but I only want a digital copy.  You can keep what you have.  You would just be duplicating it.  There would be more for everyone!

Mee Maw: Gone for 50 Years

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I can’t believe I missed this 50th anniversary in my life.  How did none of my cousins help me out and remind me of this important milestone?  I can’t give them a hard time, because last week and previously they helped me out in identifying people in my photos.  But they are fortunate that I’m posting another photo of our beloved Mee Maw for the second week in a row.  I don’t normally do that, but I can’t let this anniversary pass by unnoticed.

This is the only photo that I have of both of my grandmothers. This was taken on August 10, 1973, in Jennings, Louisiana. Germaine Erie Patureau Landry is in the center of the photo, and to her right is my maternal grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.

The anniversary I’m talking about is the death of my paternal grandmother when I was 12 years old.   I hadn’t really thought about it until tonight.  I was looking for something to post about my maternal grandmother and thought I’d look for something in the early 70s.  When I saw this photo, I remembered that it was the last photo of Mee Maw that I know of.  (I don’t count the ones of her in her coffin.  I’m just talking about ones when she was still upright and breathing!)  I knew that Jodie got married in the summer of 1973, so Mee Maw died shortly after that. 

I looked it up and my records show that Germaine Erie Patureau Landry died on September 2, 1973.  I always intended to use this photo to commemorate the death of Mee Maw.  It’s not the best quality photo.  It came from a cheap Instamatic (probably the Kodak X-15) camera, and it was printed with a matte finish.  That finish is the worst one for scanning photos.  You’re better off taking a photo of it with another camera in diffused light.  I cleaned it up as best I could.

But the photo is so good in other ways.  It’s a nice photo of my sister Jodie on her wedding day with her grandmothers.  My younger sister Jamie is on the left in the photo, and she is smiling nicely as well.  It’s a cute photo of my cousin Charla when she was just 7 years old.  Charla’s mother Alma was the sister of my mother Betty Lou.  Alma and Betty Lou were two of the daughters of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin.  Grandma is standing behind Charla.  Mee Maw is the one in the center of the photo with the white hair.  I don’t know who the guy on the far left is.

One of the things I remember about my grandmother’s death is that she died in her sleep.  It seems like I knew that that was one of her wishes before she died.  She wanted to die in her sleep and that’s how it happened.  That was a comfort.  I’m pretty sure she died in her daughter Marie’s house.  It was definitely in the house of one of her daughters.  The other thing I remember about her death was that her funeral was the first time we ever saw our dad cry.  This is something my sister Karen used to always remind me of.   

Fifty years gone.  I have fond memories of her.  Teaching me to play Solitaire.  Teaching all of us kids how to play Canasta.  Watching baseball with me. Telling me a white lie.  Being a loving grandmother.  Telling me that I was her favorite!  She will continue to be missed.

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