Category: Extended Family

In the picture above, Aunt Lola is with her daughters, Pauline and Enza. Aunt Lola was a half sister to Dad, about 15 years older. It seems like Aunt Lola came often to visit when I was growing up. I always thought of Aunt Lola (born in 1882) as the oldest person I knew when I was a kid. Dad, as well as Mom, was very fond of her.. Clarice stayed with Aunt Lola her first year of high school and went to McKinney High School because there was no bus available to Middleburg High School at that time. Aunt Lola was always a very small lady as long as I can remember. I have heard from my older sisters that my grandmother, Quintilda Durham Williams, mother of Dad and Aunt Lola, was also small like Aunt Lola.

Remember how we used to have baseball games at our reunions?  Jimmy said he remembers that Michael, Frank and Marcella’s son, was the one who would get out Dad’s old mower and mow the base lines. He was a sweet person. I know Frank really enjoyed the game.  In this picture, I’m not sure if the person standing behind the batter is Frank or  Ernest.  I think I see Uncle Ebole in a baseball cap, and Marsha might be the girl standing near the back.   Looks like they have people way out in the field, so maybe the person at bat is a good hitter.  Ronald was a strong hitter, but he would have been a left-handed hitter. 

Remember when the little kids would come up to bat, and the grownups would always pretend to fumble around so the kids have plenty of time to get on base.  No little kid EVER struck out.  I thought I had a older picture than this one attached. Maybe one of our group has a better one.

Sure miss everybody this Labor Day.

When Alline and Clarice were able, I used to like to take them for a ride over to the farm. Naturally their favorite place to see was the front porch at Ronald and Mary Lou’s house. But the visit was not complete until we came back and stopped at Donald’s front yard to look at “Kathy’s flowers.” Both Alline and Clarice love flowers, but this lawn/garden had special meaning because it was a reminder of the person who planted it, our sister-in-law Kathy. Continue reading “Kathy remembered”

My brother-in-law Jesse was probably one of the kindest men I have ever known. He must have learned his caring nature at an early age. He had plenty to be bitter about, but he was the opposite. He lost his mother when he was only 16. Before then the family had lost a child of three by drowning,* and later on in Jesse’s life, his younger brother Virgil was killed in WWII. Jesse had to drop out of school at his mother’s death to take care of his baby sister. Continue reading “Uncle Jesse remembered”

Today is the birthday of my sister-in-law Mary Lou Williams. I knew her as Mary Lou Putteet when we were classmates at Middleburg High School in the l950’s. Mary Lou was always a very pretty girl with honest-to-goodness blond hair. I liked her even before she met my brother and became part of the family. Among other things, we had four years of Mrs. Brock’s rigorous English classes together. One thing I especially liked about Mary Lou was that she didn’t seem to mind that I had the quirky habit of carrying a dictionary around with me. She just accepted me. Sometime during our senior year she and my brother Ronald met each other. Well, you know the rest of that story. Continue reading “Mary Lou’s birthday”

Tomorrow would have been my nephew Bruce’s birthday. He was Ernest and Ginny’s second son, your cousin Danny’s younger brother. He was a nice young man.  At the time of this picture, Mark, Kim, and I were living with Frank and Marcella in the same house where Alline now lives. I think it was a Sunday afternoon. Continue reading “Bruce memory”