These three people are three relatives. From left to right, the first is my first cousin Ray. Next to him is Lolagene who married my uncle Doug (he is the one making a face). Ray was Doug's nephew, but they were about the same age.
I didn't know Ray very well. After he served in WWII, he settled in Newark, NJ, and after he retired came back to Marietta, but he wasn't around in my formative years like Doug was.
Doug loved to kid his nieces and nephews. You had a very quick wit and we would think he didn't have a serious bone in him.
He almost was a professional baseball player one time. A scout came to town to watch him play, and left, without leaving any promises. And wasn't heard from again.
Doug and Lolagene had three children, two girls and a boy.
I remember one time on one of those Sunday afernoon visits Doug taking my father and me around behind his garage to show us his new possession: A hog in a pen, which was completely out of character for him... he had more of a city-bred way about him.
In the summer of 1985 he called me and asked me was I going to the Hunter Reunion in Blairsville, Ga., that year and I said yes. He asked did we have room for him, he would like to go and meet the distant cousins he didn't know and I said we had plenty of room, I was the only going. Anna or the boys didn't want to go.
He went with me and we had some nice quality time together. He was no longer the jester. He was now more sincere and serious. He told me his son's wife had a baby just a day or so before.
He got to meet his long lost cousins, some he knew already but didn't know they were cousins - they knew each other from working at Lockheed.
One of our Hunter cousins, Austine, who was a grammar school principal, wife of a University of Georgia professor, took Doug and I to meet her father, who was at home alone, he was about 90 years old. She showed us around the house and pointed out bullet holes in the wall, ceiling, and floor, where the Hunters had a ruckus one time.
Doug really enjoyed that trip. I also took him to the cemetery of our ancestor, John Hunter, and to John's cabin that is still standing.
Doug died about 6 months later.
Recently I discovered that in 1946, Doug picture was in a group picture of the Marietta Fire Department. Digging deeper, by a cousin, she found Doug's name on the payroll roster of the fire department in 1946, earning something like $160 a month.
This was news to me. I thought I knew Doug pretty well. I called his daughter and the two living aunt-in-laws of that generation and none of the three knew about Doug being a fireman.
There is always more to find out about a person.
3 comments:
Good picture. She's a pretty lady. What happened to her???
Lolagene died in 1996. Then she was a big stout woman who was overly blunt in her views. We lovingly called her "Sarge".
She worked at one of the library branches here in town and I heard she was a very good reader that put all the dramatics in when she read aloud for the children at Story Time.
A few years before she died a local newspaper columnist wrote an article about her, about when he was stationed at Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, one time just before Christmas he talked to her at the library or someplace and she found out he would be there at Christmas with no place to go so she invited him, who she didn't know from a stranger on the street to their home for Christmas dinner.
Their son married a girl in Ellijay and moved up there, one daughter married a career Army officer and the other daughter works for Georgia Power, I think - she takes after her mother in the Sarg category.
Reminds me of my Aunt Ann (or so i hear) who i will post a pic of one of these days....
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