Happy Birthday to Ed
Saturday, March 25 is Ed's birthday. Happy Birthday, Ed. I could not find the picture I wanted of you when you were a baby, so we will just call this a birthday picture. David, you are not in it because you were not yet born. I would place it in 1944 or early 1945, at the house in the country in Oklahoma City.
posted by David R. Snow at
11:20:00 AM
23 Comments:
WOW! Compared to your sister, you are HEAVY!
I don't think those broad shoulders are all me. Now that the picture is larger, I see that the cape is wrinkled. That was probably dug out of the winter box and was probably Mary's leftover and too big.
I can see a lot of your descendants in that face, Granny. Aron, especially looked like you at that age.
Alice Ann says Mom looks like me.
Happy Birthday Ed!!
Maybe my expression has to do with the surrounding actors. The one on my right was probably bothering me, and the one in the back was probably pinching me. Or maybe I just didn't want to be in a picture. The most likely thing is that the sun was hurting my eyes. The ophthamologist says I am photosensitive, which was a relief to me since Dave just thought I was cantankerous about lights.
Jami, I found a picture of Aron at about Beth's age, and saw a great similarity of expression there.
Alice Ann: I guess that is his burden to bear in life. Bless his heart.
This picture was taken around the time that I saw Santa Claus in his sleigh flying across the Oklahoma sky. Saw this out my bedroom window, around on the other side of this very house.
Happy 75th Birthday, Edwin!!! The reminder got me started looking through my big, black trunk for pictures I was certain I had. Of course, I've spent the day now searching through all the mess....mostly pictures and keepsakes...and discovering several things I didn't know I had! One is the Certificate of Ownership for at least one (possibly more) cemetery lot in Raton, New Mexico dated 1899. My mother's twin, Bessie, who died in infancy, is buried there. Another is a letter from your mother to my mother written in July, 1949. I'll send you copies just as soon as I figure out how to do that....AGAIN (sigh), and when somebody comes this way from the US, I'll send the originals back with them for mailing to you.
PS to Susie: Not that I want to join the fray over your picture, BUT...The letter I mentioned above lists your restaurant order when Paul told you to get whatever you wanted. You ordered fried chicken, lima beans, pickled beets, grape juice, limeade, lemon pie, jello salad, and chocolate cake. Ruth said, "We helped her with the chicken but she ate nearly everything else. She just about popped by the time she got thru."
Love to you both,
Betty
Well, I was not going to continue in the fray, but, since Betty read the menu...
My original post was a reference to the earlier posts about Mary's comment that our mother was not heavy, suggesting that Carolyn was. Then Carolyn responded to my post with a comment about the broad shoulders on her picture--but I was not referring to the shoulders--I was referring to the stomach pushing out the coat in the middle. It may be an optical illusion, but it appeared that Susie was bigger around the middle.
However, she has a much cuter face.
And spare me the comments about my standing to comment on protruding stomachs. I live with it every day, so I am painfully aware.
Ever wonder how things would have turned out if Mary had gone to live with Herbert and Elice and Susie and I had gone to live with Ed and Frances?
No, but I've often wondered how things would have turned out if
all of you had gone to live with my mother. At least, you'd have all been together. I've always regretted that she was more assertive at the right time.
Oops! Correction: ...that she was NOT more assertive at ....
It is quite interesting to me to hear these things about my early childhood. Thanks. I do remember that for some reason I got to buy everything I wanted at the Old Mill or Red Mill or some cafeteria with a name like that in St. Louis, but the deal was that I had to eat anything I ordered. I still like all those foods--especially pickled beets.
David: Looks to me like it is one of those high-waisted dresses that makes one look fat--I have one now that makes me look very pregnant, which of course I am not--just fat. But whatever. When did you start thinking anyone would have enough lack of tact to make such a comment as you mentioned about your stomach?
Betty: I often wished that we could have lived with Bertha, but apparently that wasn't the plan, so I enjoyed the times when I was there. Herbert would have been hard to argue with. I figured out every possible plan I could to move, but none of them worked until H and E moved to Albuquerque in 1955 and agreed that I could go to Abilene to finish high school. They probably regretted that, but I didn't.
Carolyn
I noticed you selected two desserts. I have ordered that much food, but I don't remember ordering two desserts at a cafeteria, although I am sure there were times I wanted to. Now a dinner, church social, or such where people brought multiple desserts was quite a different matter.
In answer to your question to me--about 50 years ago.
Thank you, Mary, I was going to mention that children that age often do have big tummies, but I thought that would belabor the point, so thanks for doing it for me.
We are looking forward to next week. The forecast is for a chance of showers every day.
Ruth's letter says Mrs. Hullings for Susie's pig-out. I'll have to wait for a chance to get the letter to the U.S. by some other means than the local P.O. Things have improved here tremendously, but occasionally mail still disappears forever.
Susie: My eyes have always been photosensitive,too,though my pupils were always dilated...just the reverse of what you'd expect. As the years have passed, I have had to work out better plans for seeing. My vision flares out from any glare. I couldn't find any sunglasses that really worked, because light always seeped in from above. Finally, a friend, who treks on glaciers, took me to a shop where they outfitted me with the kind of dark glasses used to avoid snow-blindness on glaciers. I look a little weird, especially since I'm too vain to use a cane for balance and instead use a Leki Trekking Pole....so with that and the special mountaineering goggles, I look like some crazy old lady from the high mountains...you should catch my getup when I have to get all decked out for some major concert...truly freaky looking, especially since wearing a dress is just the start of dress codes here.
Re: Child Custody. Missouri courts routinely awarded custody of children to the family of the last survivor when both parents died intestate or without leaving a will detailing plans for care of children. As I understood it, your parents had sent your Grandmother Broadus through an extensive medical checkup in St. Louis not long before the accident. They were told that your grandmother was seriously ill and most likely had no more than a year to live. The family was informed, but it was decided to keep the information from her. Her goal was to keep all of you together if at all possible. I argued that this would most likely mean that you would have to suffer another major loss in the near future. However, there seemed no way out of this dilemma, and the Missouri law was clear, though some discretion was left up to the judge. When the judge heard the case he must certainly have recognized the enormous difficulty your grandmother faced in taking all of you to raise at her age, and he asked if there was any alternative plan. There was no response, so that's how you came to live with your grandparents. As I recall Herbert shared in joint custody.
I know that part of my mother's problem involved my father. She wasn't sure it would be fair asking him to raise another family, even though both couples (or, at least, Ruth, Paul and my mother) had agreed years earlier that each would take surviving children to raise. I don't know exactly when this was decided, but I'm certain it was before I was 8 or 9 years old. My mother hadn't been expected to live after an emergency appendectomy, and she told me afterwards about the plan, stressing that if anything happened to her in the future the plan would still be in effect; I was still supposed to go to live with your family and vice versa.
Another conflict my mother faced was in how my father might affect your lives. I had had a very difficult time growing up with him as my father, and she worried that you would have the same bad experience.
I do know that, at the time, everybody in both families wanted to work out the best possible solution for all of you. Sadly, there just weren't any truly good options for keeping you all together permanently.
However, you all seem to have been made of pretty strong stuff....and you've all make pretty good lives for yourselves, it seems to me. Some of you are even busy re-populating the world, and there can't be a much finer tribute to 'family' than that.
Love,
Betty
Betty
Do you have access to a scanner? If so, you could get a digitilized copy of the letter and email it. The quality of a scanned copy is always iffy, but if it is a good scanner it should be equal to the original.
I am glad you shared the details of the way the decisions were made for the care of the children. You had shared that with me before, but it is probably of interest to a lot of people. It points up the necessity of a detailed will at an early age. Considering they were 40 and 44 at the time of their deaths, I am sure they had not considered the need for a will. I think it shows that any adult, no matter how young, needs to have a will expressing what you want to happen to your posessions and children, if any, following your demise.
I say that, but ironically, had our parents executed a will stating that the children would go to your mother in the event of their deaths, it surely would have been honored. That might not have been the best solution, given the issues you raise. Ultimately, as you say, in a tragedy of that proportion with both parents instantly gone, there are no good options, only the lesser of bad ones--and certainly the decisions were made in the context of high emotion.
The one thing you did not mention that surely figured in was the religious issue, since it played such a big role in our family at the time. I think the fact that your father was not a member of the Church of Christ had to cause opposition to our living there, since the rest of the family would not approve of him. I always had the feeling that your mother was suspect as not being committed enough to the "true church" as well.
In retrospect, I think we have all come to realize that everyone involved in the decision making was acting out of what they believed was best for us in the context of the times. I can't imagine today a family putting the concern for a dying mother over young children, but that was a different time. Ultimately, it is what it is, and we make the best of it.
Like the families in Lake Woebegon, our women are strong, our men are good looking, and the children are (for the most part) above average...
I read somewhere once that toddlers have big tummies because their liver is full size, so that space is liver, not too much food. I love all these old details even though I know they mean much more to the older generation. I for one am glad that things worked the way they did, because Life is just one huge chain reaction, and because of decisions made more than 50 years ago I and my children are here today.
Yes, Jami, I am glad you are here also. If Carolyn and I had gone to Wichita instead of Topeka, she probably would not have gone to High School in Abilene (may have, but less likely) and if she had stayed in Wichita she probably would have married one of those nice good-looking young men at Emporia Ave Church of Christ and still had children that are above average.
Mary might have met and married one of those airmen that came to church in Topeka. Interesting to speculate, but we are who we are and it is what it is.
Jami and Uncle David make good points. It's like my favourite poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost:
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Ashley, that is one of my favorites also. A friend quoted that to me once when we were planning to move to Denton, but I never did quite figure out if it was to encourage us to go or talk us into staying.
Ashley
That is one of my favorites also, and has actually been a rather good description of my life. Another favorite Robert Frost poem is one he wrote in 1920 titled Fire and Ice.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice Is also great,
And would suffice.
Thanks, David, for pointing me in the right direction.
Frost's Road Less Traveled is also a longtime favorite of mine.
Your comments made me recognize an odd coincidence (albeit irrelevant to the current discussion): My children are distant relatives of Robert Frost through their paternal great-grandmother who was 'a Frost'. On a different side, through their maternal great-grandfather Peck, they are also distant relatives of the Peck who chose to title one of his books "The Road Less Traveled". Curious...
That would be M Scott Peck...
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