Do you have brothers and sisters? What are their names? Who did they marry? Do they have children? Where do they live?

I have three sisters and four brothers. I was the baby and the one that they all called the "spoiled one".

Gladys was the oldest, born in 1924. I can't remember when she wasn't married. She was married to Thomas Brewer and they had one son Tommy Dale.She was a very successful career woman back when women stayed home and kept the kids. She had started to work at Southern Bell Telephone Company in Sheffield, Alabama. She worked her way up to Chief Operator with twenty five women working for her. Everyone called Thomas, "Big Tom" and their son " Little Tom". Tommy Dale was only three years younger than me and he lived with us until I was twelve and he was nine. He is more like a brother than a nephew. Big Tom was an engineer for the Southern Railway. He was a large jolly man but was an alcoholic. He was a good man until he would begin to drink and then he would be mean. She hid a lot of the things he did from the family but he was very abusive and finally after about twenty years she divorced him. She was so good and kind. Things were going really good for her, she had a great job, owned her own home, her son was married and she had one grandson when she found out she had colon cancer at the age of forty two. This was in 1966 and they didn't have all the treatments then that they have today. She took a lot of experimental drugs and worked for a year but after another year it took her life. She was only forty four years old and just as things was getting better for her, we lost her. She died just five weeks before my second daughter was born. One of the last things she did was buy an outfit for my baby. Of course then we didn't know if we were having a boy or girl and the outfit was blue, but my daughter wore it home from the hospital anyway and I still have it today. She is buried at Pleasant Hill Methodist Church Cemetery in Iuka.

Polly was born in 1925. Her name is actually Pauline but she always wanted to be called Polly. Polly married Buddy VonBoeckman and lived in Horn Lake, MS. They have one son, Michael. Polly stayed at home until Mike started to school and then she took a business course in Memphis and started to work at Kraft Foods, Memphis office. She worked there until she retired. Buddy retired from L & N Railroad. About ten or twelve years ago we noticed that she was beginning to be forgetful. Over the next few years her mind was getting bad and Buddy's physical condition began to fail and their son moved them to Huntsville, Alabama to be near him. She is now in a retirement home for Alzheimer patients and he is in a nursing home.

Elgen, Jr. is the oldest son. To me he has always been Junior. Junior married Lola Young and they have one son, Jimmy. Junior was in the Navy in WWII. He was an electrician by trade, working for the TVA and also the Union. He is a member of the American Legion and after retirement worked calling bingo for many years. Lola retired from the Tri-City Daily newspaper. They live in Sheffield in the same house they bought shortly after they married.

Virginia was born in 1928. When she was born Junior would say she was a little "darling" and it sounded like darter so the name stuck. Now only family calls her that but to me she will always be Darter. She told me that when she was born our grandmother Fell named her Lois Lile against my mother's wishes and that my mother changed it, but that her first birth certificate stated that name. Darter married Joe Schulte and they have four children, Gary, Wayne, Berry Ray, and Pamela Jane. Pamela is named after me. After her children were older she went to work at Brick School in Ford City, Alabama and retired as a lunchroom worker. Joe is retired from Reynolds Metals having worked for them over forty years when he retired. They also own a home in Bryson City, NC and spend a good portion of their time there in warm weather.

Auvie Dale was born in 1930. He had colitis and died in 1933 at the age of three. Mama had one picture of him and I have the original. He is buried at Pleasant Hill Methodist Church Cemetery.

Billy was born in 1932. He married Lillian Rhodes when he was sixteen and she was fifteen. I can barely remember but I know my mother was so upset. He quit school and went to work with my Dad as a mechanic. He and Lillian have three children, Billy Joe, Wanda, and Lee. Billy and Lillian attended the Pentecostal Church and Billy went to their school and was ordained as a minister. He was a minister at Iuka and Cherokee, Ala before moving to Horn Lake, Mississippi. He went to work as a mechanic for Bell South and worked there until he retired. He began to have problems with his memory and also walking. Doctors thought it was fluid on his brain and operated on him. It seemed to help for a few months but he is now in a nursing home in Southaven. He is completely bedridden. For a time I didn't know if he knew who I was and would he constantly cry when I was there, but the last time I went to see him he was happy to see me, didn't cry and hugged my neck and when I told him I loved him he smiled and tried to talk back to me. It breaks my heart to see him like this because he was the one I always depended on. I never in my life heard him say an unkind word to anyone and is the sweetest, kindest man I have ever known.

Kent was born in 1938. He was only three years older than me and we fought like all brothers and sisters do. Most of our time at home there was only the two of us. We were almost like another family! When I was fifteen he married Janet Weaver. They went to the home of the local Church of Christ minister to be married and of course I had to go with them! They had three children, Stanley, Richie, and Gwyn. Kent loved NASCAR. Nascar had just became popular and Richie was named for his favorite driver, Richard Petty. I still have his ticket stub where he went to Daytona and Richard Petty won the race. He had always helped Daddy and Billy since he was old enough to know what a wrench was. After he and Janet married he worked for several garages and finally went to work in Huntsville for J.C. Penney. He began to have black out spells and the doctors couldn't find what was causing them. He had one and hit a bridge and had one and a man had to jump in the car with him to keep him from hitting the window of a Chevy car dealership in Iuka. In 1970, he was driving home and he went blind. He was able to stop the car and an ambulance took him to Huntsville Hospital. There were no MRI's or Cat scans so the surgeon had to operate and found that he had a brain tumor. Part of it had grown into his brain and they couldn't remove it. They gave him six months to live and in six months he was gone. He is also buried at Pleasant Hill Methodist Church.

I don't get to see my living brothers and sisters as much as I would like but I know they are there and I love them very much.

Have you found that you are related to someone famous as you have researched your family?

Everyone always wants to find that they are related to someone famous. If you watch TV you will notice that the first thing they do when someone is elected to an office or becomes well-known is show that somebody has researched their family and they are kin to someone famous or infamous! Makes for good reading and viewing. Everyone can be traced back many generations to a famous president, singer or star.
I didn't want to do that and I never started out to see if I had a famous relative. Then in November of 2006, Jim and I went to Nashville for our 45th wedding anniversary. When we arrived in Nashville we had a hard time finding a room. Everything was booked because they were having the TV show for the annual inductees for the Country Music Hall of Fame. I picked up a brochure and was reading the names and a short bio of each one.
When I read about Sonny James, his last name shocked me. His name is really James Loden. I had heard my mother talk of the Loden family all my life. When I returned home I started to search and found that Sonny James was born in Hackleburg, Alabama and his birth name was James Loden. He had been called Sonny as a boy and when he started his singing career he had changed his name to Sonny James. I remembered listening to his music when I was a teen and he was considered to be a rock star. As I searched further I found that his great grandmother, Mary A. Frederick Burleson was a sister to my great grandfather, Green Jackson Frederick.
I will possibly never meet Sonny James, and he may never know that we are kin but I am proud to have such a fine singer and gentleman as a cousin.

JAMES LODEN AKA SONNY JAMES
Born: May 1, 1929
Hackleburg, Alabama
Country Music Hall of fame 2006
Alabama Music Hall of Fame 1987

Did you have an 8th grade graduation?

SNOWDOWN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
IUKA, MISSISSIPPI
EIGHTH GRADE CLASS OF 1955


When I was in the 6th grade we moved from Iuka to the Snowdown community three miles east of Iuka. We has a small local elementary school that had three teachers. Mrs.Edmondson taught the 1st, 2nd and 3rd, Mrs. Grisham taught the 4th, 5th and 6th, and Mrs. Foote taught the 7th and 8th. After graduation from the 8th everyone went to Iuka High School. I started in the early spring and we got out in April, a full month before Iuka did. The rural schools did this so kids could help their parents on the farm. I was a full blooded "city" girl so it was good for me because I was out of school and didn't have to help farm. School would start back in September so we had a long summer break.
The school only had three rooms including an auditorium. It was an old building that sat off Oldham Road where the Iuka Country Club is today. The Clubhouse actually sits where the school was and I heard that they used part of the old building but I can't see where so if they did they hid it good. We had large pot-bellied stoves to heat the rooms and we used outhouseS outdoors. We had one for the girls and one for the boys! We really had a lot of fun. We had a girls and boys basketball team and we would play the other rural schools in the county. We had a 4-H club and we would attend meetings both at our school and in Iuka when they had county meetings. Each fall we would go on a trip to the Memphis Midsouth Fair and on trips to the Zoo and to Shiloh Military Park. The students would always put on plays for Thanksgiving and Christmas and at Halloween we would have a cake walk. All the kids and grown ups would be there. Kids today don't realize how much fun you can have just doing simple things with family and friends. I always had dreams of being a journalist or author and the year that I was in the eight grade, Mrs. Foote said we could write a story about the pilgrims and we would present it on stage. She picked mine as the winner and although I can't remember what it was about I remember how proud and nervous I was when we presented it for the other students and the parents.
We only had six students in the eight grade, five girls and one boy. I had the highest grade and had to make the valedictorian speech. I found a picture my mother sent my sister and on the back she wrote that I had to make the speech and that I was so nervous and excited. I don't remember anything of what I said!
Of the six who graduated, five went on to graduate from Iuka in 1959. Three of us are still close friends today. We had our 50th high school reunion last year and four of us were there.
I didn't realize at the time how important this school and these people were to me. Mrs. Foote was what a teacher should be. She encouraged us to do our best and I can say she was probably the best teacher I ever had. We didn't have modern conveniences and there was nothing high tech about an ink pen and notebook paper, but what we learned was the basics that are not taught today. The 3 r's- reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic! They helped prepare us for the "real" world.
Norma, Jane, Janette, Lois and David, Thank you for being my friend and making a new girl in school feel welcome!

Vela Artesia Frederick Fell 3-25-1905 to 7-2-2001

Today is my mother's birthday. If she were alive she would be 105 years old. My mother was born March 25, 1905, the oldest of fourteen children born to William Penn and Lena Bell Davis Frederick. She was born in Prentiss County, Mississippi, to an 18 year old mother who had fourteen children and died of cancer at the age of forty-one. She was born at a time when there were no luxuries and very little money. Times were hard and it is hard for someone of my generation to imagine what a hard life she must have had. She herself had eight children but lived to be ninety-six!
I was the eighth of her children being born when she was thirty-seven years old. We had a special bond. My older brothers and sisters with the exception of one brother who was three years older than me, were married or gone from home when I was still a little girl. Most of the time we were home by ourselves and she would let me do most anything I wanted. I was so spoiled, she would cook and wait on me and everyday when I got off the school bus she had me a snack waiting. She loved her grandchildren with all her heart and they adored her. When she was ninety she broke her hip and although she had surgery she was unable to live alone and was in a nursing home for the rest of her life. After this surgery her mind began to get bad.
In 1998 I had a massive stroke and spent 3 months in the hospital learning to walk and take care of myself. We decided not to tell her and it was over six months before I was able to visit her. I would try to hide my cane and did not talk about it. I really thought I was being smart at hiding it until one day she just casually mentioned that I needed to take care of myself since I had been so sick. We had not fooled her at all!
After her mind begin to go bad, she would never call me by my name. I would say, "Mama, do you know who I am?", and she would pat me on the hand and say," Of course, I do, you're my baby!". To the end she aways knew best. I may have been fifty nine years old but she still knew I was and always would be her "baby".
I loved my mother so much. There is never a day that goes by that I don't think of her. She was the sweetest, kindest, person I have ever known and she will never be forgotten!

Who is your best friend as an adult?

This is going to be about two best friends! One is Bobby Walker and the other is his wife, my friend, Judy Walker! (This is a running joke for us, she is my friend, Judy Walker and I am her friend, Betty Marlar!!!!!) Bobby and I grew up together at Snowdown. He was a couple of years older than me and was good friends with my brother and I was good friends with his sister. He was in and out of our house constantly and my parents and family just thought of him as family. When I married Jim, Bobby was married to his first wife and we would go on trips and visit with them. She was my sister in law's sister. When we moved to Memphis and Bobby divorced and married Judy, they became more than friends. They were family. All my sisters were lots older than me and even though Judy is younger she was another sister. When we were living in Southaven, we didn't get to see them as much as we liked but in 1990 when we moved back to Iuka we made up for lost time.We have traveled together as far away as Maine, Niagra Falls, made so many shorter trips. We have so much fun. We like to do the same things, eat the same food, and I have so many good memories of our trips that I could go on and on and on......... When I had my stroke in 1998 we were only two weeks from leaving for a three week trip to Oregon, California and points west. That was one trip we were unable to take. Judy stepped in and without her I don't know what my husband would have done. I don't remember three weeks of my life but she was there for Jim and my girls. My kids and their kids all feel that they are kin! Even our grandkids!
Bobby worked at the local power company for over 40 years, before retiring. Judy had what was considered "a man's job". She is a small woman but was a union member and worked as a welder mostly in nuclear power plants. She was a hard worker and the men would request her for their jobs. This career came to an end when she found out she had a heart defect and had to have open heart surgery. They live in the country and always had a garden, a beautiful yard and would always share with friends and neighbors.
One of the many things that she and I have in common is genealogy. We both love it. We love to go to graveyards and make pictures and worked together to help our local historical society publish a cemetery book in 1997. Some of the cemeteries we visited were so rural we had to protect ourselves from wild animals such as coyotes. I always felt safe because Judy carried a gun and wouldn't hesitate to use it!
As we are getting older we are all having health problems. Jim had melanoma and has suffered from MRSA in a broken ankle for a year and a half. Bobby just found out he has cancer and is now taking chemo and radiation, but we are still trying to plan another trip. Maybe we will and maybe we won't but part of the fun has always been in the planning.
My brother died in 1970, so Bobby has been the brother I miss and Judy has been my sister. I could not love them anymore if they were blood relatives. I cannot imagine what our life would have been like without them and their family and we have always been there for each other and will continue too.
We love you!
BOBBY AND JUDY WALKER!!!!!!

Who was your first friend?

My best friend when I was little was Sara Myrtle Jaynes. When I first moved to Iuka at age five she lived a little over a block away on Old 25 (Wilmuth St.) next to the old wooden overhead bridge which crossed the RR tracks. She lived with her mother in a two story house and her mother rented two apartments in the house and they lived in one side downstairs. Her mother was a single Mom and her aunt and uncle lived in Corinth. They were childless and doted on Sara Myrtle. We were friends before we started to school. I was at her house or she was at mine most of the time. Her aunt would take us to movies, and to her house in Corinth. We were complete opposites. She had long black, curly hair, dark skin and dark eyes. I had long,blond curly, hair, fair skin and blue eyes. We attended church together and spent hours and days together, but as all kids did we would argue and then just a few minutes later, the argument would be over and we would be best friends again. Their house was right next to the railroad and my brother-in-law was an engineer on the train and we would sit on the side of the embankment beside their house and he would blow the train whistle at us when the train when by. There were not so many trains then and we could take a short cut down the tracks to walk to town to the movie, library, and dime store. We would take pennies and lay them on the track and the train would flatten them out.
The spring that we were in the sixth grade my family moved to the country and I started to school at Snowdown and the only time I would see her was at Sunday School. I missed her so much, but we both made other friends. When I started back to school in the ninth grade she was dating a boy from Corinth and they married later that year. It was not unusual for girls to marry at a young age. When she was 18 she gave birth to her second child and died before she was released from the hospital. My mother, another friend, and I attended her funeral in Corinth and I can close my eyes today fifty years later and see her. She was so beautiful and looked so peaceful. Just like she was asleep. This was my first experience with a death of someone who was my age.
She loved cats. She and her family were living where they were not supposed to have pets and she told me, "If you will just bring one by and drop it off I will feed it and they will never know it is my pet!" And about two weeks before she died I did and she was thrilled. I don't know what caused her death but I never forgot her and never will!
A few years after she died the house that she and her mother had lived in when she was little caught on fire and when the owners build it back they never replaced the second story. I don't know who owns it but it had always been a rental house until a few years ago and had remained empty. My daughter lives across the street from it now and I noticed this weekend that it is being torn down. Just seeing it there always brought back the memories of the good and bad times of our young lives. I am going to miss seeing the house and thinking of her each time I pass. I often wonder how our lives would have been if she had lived.
I do know that my life is richer for having had Sara as my friend and I will never forget her!

My daughter, Tami Michelle Marlar White!

When my youngest daughter, Tami Michelle, was born in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, it was a trying time for the United States. We were living in East Memphis near Jackson and National and Jim and I both worked downtown. I had just found out that I was pregnant when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot only blocks from where I worked. I was working for First National Bank on the eighth floor and we had guards riding on the elevators and National Guard soldiers standing guard around the outside of the building. There was a 7PM to 7AM curfew for everyone and all stores and businesses were closed. Things had eased a lot by the time that she was born, but she came in with a bang. She was born on Friday morning and on Saturday we had an earthquake that shook Baptist Hospital and did some minor damage to a building across the street. Then on Monday when we were ready to go home we woke up to an early snow storm and below freezing temps. We never picked out a boy's name and I cried for two days because I thought Jim was disappointed (he wasn't!) so I guess this was her way of making herself known! He also picked her name. Again because he had seen a girl he thought was pretty named Michelle. This girl was a receptionist for a printing company in Memphis. I guess it was a good thing we didn't have any more kids or he might have found a pretty girl he wanted to keep instead of just her name! :-)
She was a very good baby. Slept all night the second night we took her home, but when I took her to the doctor for a two week checkup she had lost weight, What did the doctor do? He made me start waking her up for a bottle every three hours day and night. Goodbye peaceful quiet nights!!!!!
When I look back now I can see that she had ADHD. Then we just said she was our "boy" and hyperactive because she was always talking and getting in to something. She went to Horn Lake Baptist Church kindergarten and the teacher used to laugh and say she spent most of her time in the corner for talking.
When she was eight years old, she had her tonsils removed and when I carried her back for her checkup. I noticed that she was smiling funny and got on to her. She tried to tell me she wasn't doing anything but I was in too much of a hurry to listen. When the doctor walked in, he said "Oh,no, this child has Bell's Palsy". She was the youngest child he had ever seen that had it. The nerves in the left side of her face were paralyzed and she couldn't close her eye and smiled crooked. We didn't know what to expect but thankfully it went away in about 3 weeks and although there is a chance it can, it has not returned.
Michelle has always had a love for the group "Loverboy", especially their lead singer, Mike Reno. She has seen him numerous times and met him several times. It is a joke around our house especially now that he is an "aging rock star".
Jan was the only child for five and a half years and then when Jan left home Michelle was the only child at home for almost five years. During her high school years she worked at TCBY in Southaven and later at a clothing chain in Southland Mall.
She graduated from Southaven High in 1986 and shortly after we moved to Pensacola, Florida. We lived there from June until the end of November and she and I went to the beach everyday. She could always swim like a fish and those were some of the best times of my life. We would go downtown Pensacola and walk around, go to the mall and just spend time together.
She also came to Iuka and lived with my mother. It was here that she met James and they were married in a simple outdoor early spring wedding on the deck behind the lodge at Tishomingo State Park. They have two beautiful children, Adam and Meghan.
Michelle works in the lab at Magnolia Hospital in Corinth. She has worked in nursing homes, doctor's offices, and also at Helen Keller Hospital. She is so good with patients especially older people. She wanted to be a nurse but had to quit school because her daughter had health problems as a child. She would be a wonderful nurse. She is so compassionate and caring.
Sometimes as Jim and I get older and have health problems, I feel like she is the parent and I am the child. She will take over and deal with the doctors, nurses, and insurance companies so we don't have too. She is one of the most family oriented people I have ever seen. No one better do anything to her family or friends! She is always the first person we call when we are sick or lonesome. She can cheer you up quicker than anyone I know.
I am so proud of Michelle. She is a hardworking, loving, caring mother, wife and daughter. If I could I would write it across the sky in diamonds-
I LOVE YOU MICHELLE WHITE!!!!!!!!!!!

My daughter, Janis Lynn Marlar Anglin!

One of the questions on my list is who are your children and write a little about them. Well, tonight I am writing about my oldest daughter. Her name is Janis Lynn but to us she has always been Jan. She was born in 1963, nineteen months after Jim and I married. We were so excited. We were young, living in government housing, Jim was working at the Vidette (The Tishomingo County News), and I worked as a secretary/bookkeeper for a auto parts company in Corinth, Ms, both of us earning 75 cents an hour!. It was a real stuggle but how proud we were, we had our own little baby girl. She was born at the Iuka Hospital on the exact day that Dr. Cosby had told me the first day he told me I was pregnant! He laughed and told me that he bet he couldn't do that the next "three" times! Jim chose her name. We would go to concerts by Wendy Bagwell and the Starliters and one of the backup singers was named Jan and he always thought she was so pretty so it just told me, she will be Jan and you can choose any name you want so I can call her Jan :-) so Janis Lynn just seemed like it fit. It was so odd because then you didn't know what you were having until they actually arrived, but we never had a boy's name chosen and it was a good thing because we never needed one.
She was such a good baby. It was almost as if she knew she had young, dumb, parents and she did. When she was 18 months old we moved to Memphis. We lived three blocks from the Memphis Zoo and I was off work each Wednesday so I would put her in a stroller almost every week and she and I would go to the zoo. We could amuse ourselves for hours just watching the animals.
She went to Merton Ave Baptist Church Daycare and for two years she attended their kindergarten. She really thought she was smart because she had so much schooling. One day I told her something and she disagreed and I said no I am right and she said, no you are wrong and I ought to know cause I have been to kindergarten! She was only five years old. How can you not love that?
She started to school in Memphis (Graves Elementery in Whitehaven) but only went there for about six months. We were living across the street from Graceland and she and my fifteen year old neice stayed at the gate so much that they became good friends with Elvis' uncle Vester and when Elvis was touring, he would ride them around on the grounds of the estate.
After going to Iuka, Hernando, and Horn Lake she actually graduated from Southaven High School. At age 16 she went to work at McDonald's in Southaven and worked there for two years. You would think that she would hate hamburgers but she still loves "Mickey D's" today. Sometimes I think they made their slogan "Lovin It" after her! Jan was a very realigous teen and was very active in all the teen activities at Southaven Church of Christ.
After high school she moved to Iuka, because in her heart she had always been a small town girl. One week end she called and said she was bringing home someone to meet us. I knew then he had to be someone special and he was. When they got ready to leave she hugged my neck and said, "Don't you just love him to death?" I knew then, wedding bells would be ringing soon. And they did. Her wedding was a simple, old fashioned, outside, country wedding that everyone enjoyed.
As the years passed by, she and Timmy had three adorable children, but life wasn't all roses as their second child, Kelsey, was born with spina bifida and didn't survive. The kids thrived in small town life with sports, cheerleading, acedemics and all the other aspects of small town life.
Her oldest, Stephany, is now married with two boys of her own, and will be getting her Bachelors Degree in accounting in May, and just started a new job at a local high tech space industry company. Her son, Andy, is a union member and travels around the country working at power plants and nuceular plants.
Timmy is a supervisor at a local steel plant. Jan has worked several different office jobs, but the one she has now is the lowest paying but most satisfying. She is Executive Director for our local historical museum. She is responsible for every aspect of everyday operations for a growing museum and a research library that had visitors from more than twenty seven states last year. She spends a lot of her own time and money to be sure that future geneations will know their heritage. I try to volunteer and help her as much as I can.
I am so proud of the woman that my daughter has become. I would like to take credit for all of it but I know that I can't. She has been an inspiration for me. I might not be the Christian I am today, if it had not been for her being so faithful when she was a child and a teen. When I see her speak to a group of well educated men and women and they tell me how intelligent and knowledgeable she is, I swell with pride.
She is currently serving as an officer on the board of museums for the State of Mississippi. Not bad for a kid from a town with only 3500 population, and one red light!
To say I am proud of her is a understatement and as her Dad and I grow older we have to count on our kids for not only moral support but also physical support. I know that when we need someone we will always have someone we can count on.
If I could I would shout it from the rooftops.
I LOVE YOU JAN ANGLIN!!!!!!! And I am so proud to be your mother!

Who did you visit during the summer when you were out of school?

My youngest sister is twelve years older than me. Her name was Virginia but to me she was and has always been Darter. My mother said when she was born my older brother would try to say she was a "darling" but he couldn't pronounce it correctly and it came out as Darter and all the family called her that. I was five years old when we moved from Alabama to Mississippi and instead of moving with us she married and stayed in Alabama. All of my brother-in-laws and sister-in-laws were just like brothers and sisters because I can barely remember when they were not a member of my family! Darter and her family built a house in the Ford City community of Colbert County, Alabama to be close to her inlaws. They still live in that same house today. My sister had three boys and a girl in five years. She always used to say she was going to have a girl and after that she quit! When they were in high school, she had a son in 12th, a son in 11th, a son in 10th and a daughter in the eighth grade. Each summer starting when I was in grammar school she would come and get me as soon as school was out and I would go and spend two weeks. I looked forward to it all winter. We would go to the drive in movie and on picnics and I could play with all the kids in the neighborhood. I would usually go a couple more times in the summer, but the best time was when school was first out. Now she is the only one I really have left who knows me. My oldest sister, Gladys, died of cancer in 1968 at the age of 44, and my other sister, Polly, is in a retirement home with Alzheimers and is over a hundred miles away. I miss my sisters and even through our lives took different paths, they were always there for me and I love them so much!