Wordless Wednesday

 

A Pool Shill?

Today, August 9, is National Billiards and Pool Day.  It is noted as such on two of the "national day" sites (Days of the Year and List of National Days), although neither has any information about how it started.

I'm celebrating the day on my blog because my mother used to tell me about how she and our Aunt Sam (who was not our biological aunt, but my mother's close friend, so we called her "aunt") used to play pool.  My mother, as she told the story, was not that great a pool player, but Sam was.  So my mother got someone to play against her, and she would lose, then setting up the poor stooge to play against Sam.  That made my mother the shill.

Coincidentally, I actually found photographs in the "photo bonanza" showing my mother and someone I believe to be Sam playing pool!  Some people in other photos are playing pool or look as though they are in the same location.  I don't know who most of them are, but all the pool players are women!

This is the only easy identification, because it's my mother.
I think the woman on the right here is the one in the last photo (see below).

I think this is Aunt Sam, but I'm not sure.

Aunt Sam had a daughter named Cathy.
Could this be her?

This photo makes me wonder who the photographer was.
It could have been my father, but I don't know.

Here's the girl from the previous two photos,
with another girl and a man.  No idea who they might be.

And here's our final player!
Unidentified, of course.

Letters from Anita

Anita (Loveman) Sellers and Nanny Ireland, 1960

I wrote a few years ago about the efforts I took to track down my father's youngest half-sister, Carol (http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2021/08/finding-my-aunt-carol.html), and her mother, Anita, so I could return several photographs to them.  After that, Anita and I wrote to each other for a while.  Recently I was going through one of my genealogy folders and found three letters that Anita had written to me.  I had been trying to remember when exactly I had been able to find her, and I guess it must have been around 2001, because that's when the first letter from her is dated.

===

17 Oct 01

Dear Janice,

I'm sorry it took me so long to answer.  I really appreciate your sending me the pictures and the family tree for the Sellers family.  This is really a complicated amount of facts.

Your Mother was the second wife of your Dad.  Right?  Her name was Myra Meckler.

Bert always called your Dad, (Sunny).

I'm glad you also sent Carol a copy of the family tree.  Did you get to talk to her.  Please forgive my writing.  After breaking both wrists I tend to scribble.

Thought you might like to know Carol did go to college with my help only.  Her Dad never sent us a penny.  She was 17 and graduated 4 years later from Douglas College in New Brunswick NJ.

I worked at Fort Dix N J for 22 years.  Because I had no college I could not get a higher position than a GS-4 Top Pay.

God has been Good to us and I managed to take care of myself & Carol with no help.

I had to retire at 60 years old as Mother was sick and had to have my help.  She died at age 89 and my husband Henry Reynolds died at 79.  He insisted I go live near Carol in Fla.  I've been here for 12 years.

Pray you are keeping well and thanks again for caring enough to contact me.

All the pictures were of my family or Berts, plus a few friends.  Did you notice too the one of Nanny Ireland.  She stayed with us for 6 months after we were married.

Will close for now and thanks again.

A friend & relative

Anita

P.S. You have such beautiful hand writing.  Hope you are able to read mine.

☺

===

19 Nov 01

Dear Janice,

I went through all my photos and found a couple you might like.  I am sending these four because they show Nanny Ireland plus. (other family)

I wrote on the back of them.  They were mostly taken in 1960 while we were visiting (Aunt Bettys in NJ) except for the one of Carol at age 6 months.  I couldn't remember Aunt Catherine's husband's name.

I'm surprised your Dad didn't recognize Nanny Ireland.

You might not want the one of me with Nanny but it was a better one of her. ☺

I would love to have a picture of you.

I really liked Sonny, as his Dad called him.  I'm sorry if he felt unkind toward me because of his Mom.  I didn't know they were still together.

Yes, I did meet Mary Lou while they were still married and Carol was a baby.

If you would like a picture of me at age 75, I'll send you one.  If you wouldn't I won't be offended.

Hope to hear soon again.

Love Anita

===

6 Aug 02

Dear Janice

Was so good to hear from you.

I too want to say thank you for sending me your picture a while back.  I don't think I ever told you thank you.

Glad you were pleased with the picture I sent of Bert's family.  I gave you the one I thought you would want.

No I never saw that picture before.  It looks like a baby boy because the hands and feet are large.  Where did you find this picture?  What was the background on this picture?  The nose and ears don't look like your Dads or Carols.

Please forgive my writing.  My wrist has arthritis in it and hurts when I write much.

Carol has some of your Dad's features.  When Carol was born she had a little bump in one ear (Like a mole).  The doctors took it off.  They told me that your Dad had that same bump or mole in the same ear.

How's your Dad doing?  Say hello to him for me.  He was always nice to me.

I guess the weather there is hot like here.  We have 90's every day.

God is good and I'm doing OK for an old lady ☺ 76.

Write me when you get time.  From looking at your picture I can see you have a beautiful personality and a very pretty & sweet face.

I'm so glad you got in touch with me.  Thanks for wanting to know me.  My wrist is really messing up.  Hope you can read this.

Guess I better close for now.

Pray you are keeping well.

Love Anita

===

I know I would have told Anita I wanted a photo of her, but she didn't end up sending me one.  So the photos I have of her are from when she was married to my grandfather, which was from June 20, 1953 to August 1961.  The photo in this post is the one she mentioned in her letter of November 2001, taken in 1960 in New Jersey.

Wordless Wednesday

Intellectual Property in My Family Tree

Annually, April 26 is World Intellectual Property Day, which was first celebrated in 2000.  It was established by the World Intellectual Property Organization to raise awareness of the impact of patents, copyrights, trademarks and design on daily life.  And some members of my family have patents and copyrights, so I'm going to celebrate them.

My cousin Al Lore, who worked as a chemist at DuPont, told me he holds five patents, relating to composition of matter and textile finishes (hospital nonwoven gown finish).  I was able to find three of them in the patent database by searching with Google.

Fluorine-containing terpolymers, as Albert L. Lore with Stuart Raynolds

Fluorosurfactant leveling agent, as Albert L. Lore

Oil- and water-repellant copolymers, as Albert Lynn Lore with Edward James Greenwood and Nandakumar Seshagiri Rao

I took chemistry in high school and got all A's, but I have to admit that I don't understand any of what Al's patents do.  I guess I'm not an organic chemist.

My cousin Sam Brainin, who was an electrical engineer, is in the database with one patent.

Space stabilization of a search pattern, as Samuel M. Brainin

My aunt Mary Meckler has written several books, for which she owns the copyrights, as far as I know.

The Magic of Tobias Twissle, as Mary Meckler

Aimsly's Attitude, as Mary Meckler

Tangled in Life:  A Lainey Kelso Mystery, as Mary M. Meckler

Everybody's Grandma, as Mary Meckler

Jangled Lives:  A Story of Love and Fear, as Mary M. Meckler

I had the pleasure of editing Tobias Twissle for my aunt.  I think I did some editing on Tangled in Life also.

My sister Stacy Fowler has cowritten two books.  I believe she shares the copyrights with her coauthor.

A Century in Uniform:  Military Women in American Films, Stacy Fowler and Deborah A. Deacon

Military Women in World Cinema:  A 20th Century History and Filmography, Deborah A. Deacon and Stacy Fowler

I know I have a thank you in the second book, because I translated several Russian titles and credits for Stacy.  I think I have a thank you in the first book also.

Maybe by posting this, I'll find out I have even more talented relatives!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Be a Time Traveler

I think Randy Seaver has previously posted a challenge similar to that of today's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, but it's an idea that deserves to be revisited multiple times.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  We all wish that we knew more about our most elusive ancestors — the ones we might not know the surname for, or the one who was probably adopted, changed his name for some reason, or lived through war or a natural disaster.

2.  Be a time traveler.  Where would you go, whom would you speak with, what would you ask them?

3.  Share your time traveler adventure on your own blog, on Facebook or other social media, or in a comment on this blog.  Share the link to your stories on this blog, so readers can respond.

Randy didn't state this was only one trip, but that's how he wrote his response, so I'll stick with that.

Since I'm time traveling only one time, I have to choose to be there when my cousin Raymond Lawrence Sellers was adopted.  This probably took place in Cumberland County, New Jersey, with a small chance of it having been in Burlington County, New Jersey instead.  Raymond was born September 23, 1945 and apparently was surrendered for adoption by my Aunt Dottie soon after that, possibly before the end of October 1945.  So those are my estimated time and place.

As for whom I would speak with, I'll try to cover the bases.  I want to talk with the adoptive parents and anyone else who participated in any steps of the adoption.  If it was a documented adoption through the court system (the second version of events that I was told), that would include a presiding judge and any administrative personnel who observed the process or handled paperwork, either in the court system or at the adoption agency.  If it was an informal adoption to friends or extended family (the original version I heard), then probably the only other individuals would have been additional family members or friends who were there.

The one question that I would be asking is the name given to Raymond after adoption.  Without that piece of information, my research has been stalled for the almost 10 years that I have been trying to find him.  New Jersey still keeps its adoption records sealed since 1941.  My aunt registered with New Jersey as being willing to speak with Raymond if he ever contacted the state to try to find his birth parents.  Not only have we never received any communication from New Jersey, Dottie died in 2021.  I have not checked with the state to find out what alternatives might be available for contact given that fact, because I'm not optimistic that there are any, but I still need to do so just in case.

If I can learn Raymond's new name, I can try to trace him through his life.  I can look for school records, marriage records, birth records (of possible children), and death records.  I might find out he died young as a child.  But I also might discover that he married and had several children and grandchildren.  I concede that I consider the latter unlikely, as I have not been alerted to any DNA matches, and I have all of the databases covered with close and fairly close relatives who should match Raymond or his next generations if they test.  So either no one among Raymond and his possible progeny have tested, or it was only him, and he either has not tested or died without testing.

But even if the answer were that he died young and had no children, no one to connect with, I would finally have an answer and could tell his siblings, particularly my cousin Pattie, who since Dottie passed away has been the primary standard bearer hoping for a resolution to the search.  I'm sure that, even posthumously, Dottie would appreciate that we knew what had happened to the son she gave up.

My Father and Two of His Sisters

April 10 is Siblings Day in the United States.  The general idea is celebrating the bond and special relationship between siblings.  Last year was the first time I posted about it on my blog, which I did for a Wordless Wednesday.  That was a photo from my brother's wedding, with my brother and all of his siblings and my sister-in-law with her siblings.  I think I have enough photos of different generations of siblings in my family that I can keep this going for a few years.

This year's photo is of my father and his two older half-sisters from my grandfather's first marriage.  I'm glad my cousin recognized her mother and her aunt in the photo, because I had never seen photos of them this young.

Dorothy Mae Sellers, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr., and Mildred Sellers

As best my cousin and I can estimate, the photograph was probably taken about 1937, maybe in summer or fall.  My father was born in December 1935.  He looks like he can't quite really stand on his own, as the girls are propping him up, but he seems to be contributing some of the effort, and he definitely looks too big to be less than a year old.  Dottie was born in 1925, and Mildred was born in 1928.  (As is common, a photograph with no identification of the people in it!  Make sure you get yours identified as soon as possible!)

Since the estimate is 1937, it was likely taken in New Jersey.  According to the list of residences my grandfather wrote down, in 1937 the family was living on Grand Avenue in Englewood, New Jersey.  My father was born nearby in Englewood Cliffs.

It was probably my grandfather who took the photo.  He seems to have taken many of the photographs in the photo bonanza I received from my sister, which is where this photo came from.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Family Christmas in Florida

These are photos from the bonanza that my sister sent me a year ago.  (Wow!  Has it really been that long already?)  I'm not sure about the year.  Based on the apparent age of my youngest cousin in the photos, I was guessing about 1998, but her grandmother thinks it was 1994 or 1995.  I'm actually leaning toward at least 1996, based on other information.

This was at my father's house in Mary Esther, Florida.  I don't know if the family get-together was actually on Christmas, but it seems to have been around that time, so close enough.

The Christmas tree, in all its glory

I didn't know my father had a train set-up

My father, Lynn, and my stepmother, Ginny

Aunt Dottie, someone behind her we can't see,
a woman I don't know, and my cousin Pattie

Ginny and Pattie

My cousins Patricia (Stacey's daughter) and Stacey (Pattie's daughter)

Pattie and Dottie

Four generations:
Stacey, Patricia, Dottie, Pattie

And now with Pattie facing the camera!

The feast table before the feast
(I can't seem to find a photo of the table laden with food, though)

j

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Then and Now, Oral Interviews

I think I've gotten a little rusty with writing, it's been so long.  But I need to start again, and today is as good of a day as any.  Thank goodness for Randy Seaver and his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun writing prompts.

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible music!):

1.  Then and Now:  Did you ever conduct oral interviews of family members or friends and neighbors about your ancestors over the years?  Who did you interview, how did you record the interviews, and what did you learn from them?  Please share your experiences.

2.  Write your own blog post, leave a comment on this post, or write something on Facebook.

I first got hooked on family history after a school assignment at age 13 to fill in my family tree four generations back.  I still have the original purple mimeographed piece of paper, even though it no longer has that special mimeograph ink smell.

To fill in more information than what I knew already, I conducted oral interviews of all my relatives who lived nearby:  my mother, father, paternal grandfather, paternal aunt, and cousins (my aunt's children).  I recorded the information from the interviews by hand in a spiral notebook, and I still have my original notes.

I learned a lot more about my father's family through this process than about my mother's, because I had grown up hearing information about my mother's side of the family.  My father was not as close to his family, however, so much of the information was new to me:

my great-grandmother's name, Nanny Ireland

my great-great-grandmother's name, Kate Moore

my aunt's first husband's name, Zeke Lore

When I began working more diligently on researching my family, however, I learned that a lot of what I had been told was accurate but was not pointing me in the right direction.

Ireland was my great-grandmother's second husband's name.  No one knew or remembered his given name, with the story being that Nanny (given names Laura May) had been told that she really needed a man to look after her, so she married Mr. Ireland, then figured out he wasn't worth the trouble and got rid of him.  It took thirty years to track down that he was John Ireland.

Moore was my great-great-grandmother's second husband's name but was told to me as her maiden name.  That also took almost thirty years to straighten out, after my grandaunt told me that was her second marriage.

And my aunt's first husband's actual given names were Clarence Newcomb.  To this day, no one has been able to tell me where Zeke came from.  And I still haven't found documentation proving that they were really married, either.

Oral interviews are great, because you get to know your family members better and learn more about the family.  Just make sure you check everything they tell you to make sure it's right.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Best or Important Image or Document Recently Found Online

And I'm still falling behind and trying to catch up.  So it's Wednedsay; who says I can't post my Saturday Night Genealogy Fun tonight?  At least I have a document to share!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music here), is:

1.  What is the best or important image or document that you have recently found online? [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!]

2.  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post or in a Facebook Status post or note.

I'm still noodling around with the 1950 census and finding stuff.  One page that I found has my father's two older paternal half-sisters:

They were living in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, New Jersey.  The census shows my aunt Dottie (Dorothy M.) married to Clarence N. Lore, with three children:  Albert L., Clarence G., and Joan.  Living with them is my aunt Mil (Mildred A.) Sellers.

This is an important find for a few reasons.  First is that my aunts, along with my father and his parents, were not enumerated in the 1940 census.  I have looked up, down, and sideways for them, and they're simply not there.  According to a list of addresses my grandfather compiled (possibly for a security clearance for work), they lived in three different places that year, so it's easy to understand how they could have been missed.

Second, the youngest child in the household, Joan (whom I was told was named JoAnn), did not live long past the 1950 census.  I don't have an exact date of death, but she died sometime around 1951–1952.  So I am thrilled to have her appear in a census.

Third, not only was my aunt Dottie one of the people who was "sampled" to give additional information (six people on every page), she was the one of the six who was asked even more questions!  She did not work during the year previous to the census; the last work she had was as a restaurant waitress; she had been married more than once; and she had borne three children.

And fourth, this is another example of how you need to verify all that information that shows up on the census.  My aunt Dottie told two different stories about her marriage to Zeke (Clarence; no, I have no idea how the nickname Zeke came out of Clarence), and I have not yet been able to check on whether they were actually legally married (because if the person you are marrying hasn't gotten divorced, yours doesn't count as a legal marriage).  So the fact that the census says they were married might or might not be true.

Um, married more than once?  I've never heard that, either from my aunt or my cousins.  I don't know what she had in mind, but now I need to check around and see if she was married to someone before Zeke.

And three children?  Nope, she had borne four children by this time.  The one not accounted for was Raymond Lawrence Sellers, born September 23, 1945.  Dottie gave him up for adoption, I believe that same year.  I am still trying to find him.

So don't believe everything you read in the census.

Something else important about this discovery is that my cousin Albert is still alive.  I get to show him himself and his family in the 1950 census!

Eleven Years of Blogging

Yup, that's right!  Today is my 11th blogiversary.  It almost slipped by me, because I have not been keeping up with my blog as well as I would like.  I keep trying to get healthy, and that just doesn't seem to be working.

I was surprised when I saw how many posts I managed to write last year:  265!  That's sorta kinda close to one post every other day, which I don't think I've accomplished before.  It was primarily due to picking up again on my project to write about every birth, marriage, and death that I have in my genealogy database.  And I hit that total even though the last date I documented was November 15, which is when those annoying health problems popped up again.

So now I'm behind on that again, behind on Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, even behind on my end-of-the-year thank yous and statistics.  On the other hand, I did finally write about my Revolutionary War ancestor Moses Mulliner, which I had been intending to do for several years.  I also described the detective work I did to track down my father's youngest half-sister, so I could give her several photos of herself and her mother.  But I have a lot of catching up to do when I get my energy back, which I fully intend to do soon.

Like I always say, hope springs eternal!

FInding My Aunt Carol

I had known about my Aunt Carol for years.  My mother, who cared so much about knowing and staying in touch with family members, made sure of that, even if Carol was my father's sister, not hers.

But the problem my father had was that she wasn't his sister — she was his half-sister.  She was born from the relationship my grandfather had after he left my grandmother, and my father resented that for decades, as I eventually learned.

When my mother compiled a list of all known relatives out to stepgrandparents (yes, really!) for my brother, who was applying for a job with a security clearance, Carol was included.  I knew her full name — Carol Beth Sellers — and her birthday — August 20, 1954.  Mommy thought she was born in Niceville, Florida.  We knew her mother's name was Anita.  And that was about it.

My grandfather died in 1995, as did my mother.  Adelle, my grandfather's widow when he died, went to live with her nephew; she had no children of her own to take her in.  She herself died in 2000.

I still don't know how much of my grandfather's "stuff" Adelle kept with her when she moved to her nephew's home.  (For instance, the whereabouts of Grandpa's Shriner's fez are still unknown.)  Apparently, however, some of what Adelle did take with her were a lot of Grandpa's papers from when he worked in the Civil Service with the U.S. Air Force and several photos from his marriage to Anita.

The reason the papers and photos became known is that some years after Adelle had died, the nephew contacted my aunt Dottie — my father's oldest sister from Grandpa's side of the family — and asked if anyone in the family was interested in those items.  I am so happy Dottie said yes.

Dottie got everything from Adelle's nephew and then sat on the papers and photos for a couple of years before asking my father if he wanted them.  And thus they were passed on to a new caretaker for a while.

My father had them for some time.  He had made plans — he wanted to scan all the Civil Service documents and then share them with other family members, particularly me, the primary one interested in our family history.  He even told me that he had them and was going to share the scans after he had made them.

The problem was, however, that there were a LOT of papers.  Grandpa was known for being a little obsessive about keeping things, and his work documents were no exception.

After a while Daddy decided he wasn't going to get around to doing all that scanning and asked if I just wanted the documents, and I could be the one stuck scanning them and sharing with family members.  And of course I said yes.

When he sent everything to me, the first thing I did was separate the work documents from the several photos that were included.  When I looked through the photos, I recognized my father in a couple and my grandfather in several, but I didn't know who the woman and young girl were who appeared many times.  After asking my father and aunt, I learned they were Anita, my grandfather's wife after his relationship with my grandmother, and my aunt Carol, Anita's daughter and Daddy's youngest sister.

My father made it clear he was not interested in the photos in any way — "That is not my sister.  I've never had anything to do with her."  Of course, using his logic, his sisters Dottie and Mildred shouldn't have wanted anything to do with him, as Grandpa had left their mother to live with my grandmother (not divorcing their mother until Anita insisted on being able to marry, as I'll explain in a little while), and my older half-sister Laurie shouldn't have wanted to keep in touch with my siblings and me.  And I eventually determined that he was in photos with Carol, debunking what he said.  But that's okay, life has a way of working out sometimes.

There were so many photos, I couldn't let them just be.  I decided I had to find Anita and/or Carol and reunite them with the photos.

I asked my aunt Dottie if she was in touch with Anita or Carol.  She said no.  My only clue starting out was my grandfather's obituary, which included Carol as a surviving family member and had her last name as Ebanks.

This was the early days of genealogy information being available online.  I didn't find anything relevant with searches.  I wasn't finding much of anything with the name Ebanks at all.  I started to think that it might be Eubanks, just misspelled, so searched for that also.  I found more results, just not for the person I was looking for.

I was making a lot of phone calls by searching phone directories for Ebanks and Eubanks.  I don't remember now how I made the connection (this was several years ago), but in calling someone else named Ebanks, she told me she knew about Anita and that she used to work for this one company; maybe they could help me get in touch with her.

I was certainly grasping at straws by that point, so I said, sure, it couldn't hurt to try.  And I called the company.  I'm certain it was against policy, but the woman I spoke to said that not only did she know Anita, who had retired by that time, but she could give me a phone number for her!  I did the genealogy happy dance around the living room.

When I called Anita, she confirmed that she was indeed the ex-wife of my grandfather and the mother of my aunt Carol.  I told her how happy I was to find her and that I had been searching for her so that I could return the photos.  She appreciated the effort I had gone to and was looking forward to seeing them again after all those decades.

She also got chatty and told me a little about herself and her relationship with Grandpa.  They met each other working at Fort Dix in New Jersey.  He apparently had been chasing after her for a while.  At some point she told him he would have to prove to her that he was divorced because she was a good Christian girl and wouldn't take up with any married man.  And he did it!  He divorced his wife!  She even went looking in her house for the divorce paperwork, which she had a copy of, so she could tell me what it said.  She found it and read some from it but neglected to tell me the name of the wife!  (I didn't find out until some years later that the divorce was from his first wife, Elizabeth, and not my grandmother, Anna, who had apparently "lived in sin" with Grandpa for all the years they were together.  When I did discover that, I immediately called my father to tell him that he was officially a bastard because his parents had never been married.  He thought that was hilarious and broke out laughing.)

I don't remember now if I sent the photos to Anita or to Carol.  I think I sent them to Anita.  I'm sure that I got Carol's address from Anita at that time, and I wrote to her.

A year or so after that, I had plans to be in Atlanta for a convention.  I realized how close that was to where Carol lived and decided I finally had to meet my aunt.  At the end of the convention, the friend who was there in Atlanta with me (coincidentally also named Carol) and I drove to lovely Toccoa (birthplace of DeForest Kelley!) to meet her.  We had a wonderful time, and I am still so happy I made the effort to do that.

When my father was turning 70, I tried to arrange for all four of his children to come to Florida to celebrate.  (Well, three of us made it.)  I also invited Carol, who wasn't able to come, but she asked for Daddy's mailing address so she could send a card.  When I arrived in Florida, the first thing my father did was show me the card that Carol had sent for his birthday, telling him how much she cared about him even though they hadn't spent that much time together during their lives.  He cried when he told me how happy he was that I had helped put him in touch with his sister.

Carol wasn't able to travel much around that time, but at some point she made it down to Florida, and the four siblings were together for one of my most treasured photographs.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Tell Us about a Favorite Aunt or Uncle

It's nice to branch out to different parts of our family occasionally, as Randy Seaver is having us do this week for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music):

(1) Most people have aunts and uncles in their lives — the siblings of their parents, and, in some cases, grandunts and -uncles, the siblings of their grandparents.  Who are/were our favorite aunts and/or uncles?

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.

I have an assortment of aunts and uncles, but somewhat lopsided:  My mother had no sisters, and my father had no brothers.  (Well, technically, my father had a half-brother on his father's side from my grandfather's first wife, but he died as an infant about 10 years before my father was born.  And from her marriage, my grandmother had male twins who were born earlier than that who apparently also died very young.)  In addition to that, my father's family was even more skewed, because of the multiple marriages and relationships that each of my grandparents had, so my father's oldest sister was 21 years older than he, and his youngest 19 years younger.  In total my father had seven half-siblings and no full siblings.  My mother had two brothers and no half-siblings.  I have met almost all of my aunts and uncles who survived to adulthood; I don't believe I ever met my father's oldest sister, Ruth.

And of all those, my favorite is — well, none of them.  My favorite aunt is actually the wife of my mother's brother.

My aunt Mary has always been very loving and welcoming and a lot of fun to be around.  I remember when my family lived in Southern Califoina, Mary came to visit once and took us kids for a fun joyride in a pick-up truck.  She and my uncle were there in Florida to welcome us when we returned to the United States from Australia in 1973.  I think may have stayed with them for a few days before leaving the Miami area to move to the Florida Panhandle.

When I moved from Florida back to Califorina to go to college, I was able to see my aunt somewhat regularly, because she was only a Greyhound bus trip away.  Then, when I moved to the San Francisco area, she was even closer, and I could take a short hour-and-a-half drive and visit.  I saw her (and my uncle!) for holidays, birthdays, when my grandmother visited from Florida, and just to say hi.  I got to know her sisters and visited one of them in Columbus, Ohio several times.  I've become an adjunct member of their family.  I'm still doing research on her family history, too!

And now that I'm thinking about it, why isn't there a single collective noun that includes aunts and uncles?  You can say siblings to mean both brothers and sisters, but there's no equivalent word for aunts and uncldes.  And "piblings" doesn't count.

Wordless Wednesday