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

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!