Birthday thoughts and old photos

Finding another trove of old black and white photos yesterday in the garage brought back memories and questions as another year starts and another ends as a birthday approaches.

Never before seen--two small 1" by 2" photos of my dad Terrence Miller Clark as a junior in Comanche, OK high school, 1930-31.

 Then some of me through the years.

No caption necessary

With uncle Rex after the war, in Fort Worth

With Mom, Jerry and uncle Mike at Grand Canyon

On Sandia Base, Albuquerque, cloud covered Sandias in background

And some of the people responsible for it all, Mom, Francis Faye Culp Clark, and Dad

In Taos, 1950s

Erle Thweatt Clark,Comanche, OK

Dad, grandmother Cuba Jon Miller Clark Reasor, and husband Worden, New Mexico

Memories of a favorite cousin

Carolyn thanking me for a Christmas present.

How can you measure what people mean to you, when they've been a part of you since before you can remember?
I don't know, and this morning's phone call from my cousin Sarah Beth Foote about the death of my cousin Carolyn Gee Wilson just made me more aware.
There are old black and white photos of us together when we were babies. As young kids on our vacations,  I can remember playing mud-pies and stuff in her backyard. There are some faded color photos and slides when we were pre-teens and perhaps teens. I can remember walking  down to the corner store for candy, or driving to a drive-in for Dr. Pepper on hot summer days in Silsbee.  

1945 cousins--Charlotte and Carolyn Gee, Sarah and Charles Lutrick, and me. Grandad Ezra.T. Culp in background.

Years later

I went to her wedding, and have visited her husband's grave with her.  She was always slight, almost frail, but strong and good inside. When I attended her mother's funeral (my Mom's sister) several years ago, another cousin showed up drunk, and Carolyn threw him out. A few years ago during a dark time in my life, I visited and she and I drove around looking for old Culp homesteads. We went out one night in Beaumont to eat and dance. How far back does this cousin family go? I'll always be "Terry Mike" to them. 

The Gee sisters, 3 years ago, the way I'll always remember Carolyn and Sandy.

The last time I saw her was three years ago at a family reunion in East Texas, and an evening meal at a Mexican restaurant. Since then she dwindled to about 70 pounds and lived in a nursing home.
She was five months old when I was born, and had what most folks would call not an easy life. She and Larry were never rich--in fact had very little, but they were happy together and raised three good children. She's the second Gee sister to die this year. Her younger sister Sandy was murdered in April, and that was traumatic, even with a cousin reunion in Austin a week later, that Carolyn couldn't attend. We knew Carolyn was fading, and her death is not traumatic, because she's in a much better place now. But it is still, well...just deep. She is special.
I wanted to go to the funeral, but because of an discomforting illness can't make it. But I will be there in spirit, and I will somehow visit your grave, my cousin.

Three of us are now gone since this reunion three years ago at cousin Sarah Foote's. Carolyn, second from left, Charles, third from right, and Sandy, kneeling at right.

Memories of Mom in photos

Francis Faye Culp Clark, 1949, Fort Worth

I have more photos, of course, but these span the years.  With my somber Mothers' Day trip coming up tomorrow to her grave in Waurika, they hint at her, better than the sparse letters on her gravestone--a life is so much more than a name and dates. With memories of a recent family reunion, and old photographs, I wonder at the years and stories untold. We know so little, don't we, but we love more than words can tell.

Oldest photo of Mom--1909?

East Texas girls, from left, Ima, Faye, Gladys, Vera

The Culp kids,  early 1930s? (Old car in background). From left, Vera, ET, Faye, Ima, J.C., Gladys

Faye, I don't know the year

Southwest Bell basket ball team, 1929--Faye at right, front row

Ima, Vera, Faye, dated 1931

Easter Sunday, Albuquerque, 1950s, Dad, Jerry, Me, Mom

1950s in Dallas...Mom, Sissie, Grandmother, Gladys, ET

Mom, Houston, late 60s

Mom's retirement at MD Anderson

Grandkids, late 70s, Waurika...Travis, Dallas, Mom, Becky, Derrick, Vance

Waurika, Oklahoma

Mother's Day Prelude

 

Family reunions are both enjoyable and somber, especially the recent one of the Culp cousins. That occasioned me going through old photos, and those can also be wonderful and sad as well. I found a lot of them of my Mom over the years, which I'll post tomorrow in chronological order, as I get ready to head to her grave in Waurika, Oklahoma, to plant flowers.
But first, here's a copy of an 8" by 10"  portrait of my Mom's Mom, Sophie Elizabeth Beard Culp, (1879-1961) done by my Dad in 1942 in Texas.

Reunion--Cousins 'n more

Terry Clark, Sara Beth Lutrick Foote, Jerry Clark, Brenda Gee Reed and Bob Foote

First cousins--Culps...our fourth reunion in 20 years, was sad and joyful this time for several reasons. The memory  of our cousin Sandi Russell, tragically killed two weeks ago, was on all our minds. But we still shared stories and old photos and good times. 
Since the last reunion, our oldest cousin, Charles Rogers Lutrick, has also passed. And two of our cousins, Lindy and David Culp, couldn't come because their mother, Lamerle, our last surviving parent, fell and broke her hip. Two other of the Gee girls, Charlotte and Carolyn couldn't make it either. But Sandi's children and grandchildren did, as did Carolyn's daughter Gail, and Brenda's daughter Lindsey lives there in Austin with her mother Brenda.  We treasure the moments, aware of mortality, and the joys of being alive and related.
The Culps--Grandparents Ezra Thomas and Sophia Elizabeth Beard Culp. Their children: Vera Pollock--born 1903, Gladys Lutrick--born 1908, Faye Clark--born 1909, Ima Gee--born 1911, J.C. Culp--born 1916, E.T. Culp--born 1918.

Magnolia Cemetery, Beaumont, Tex

Kissin' cousin

Sandra Gail Gee Russell's funeral was today in Lake Charles. We Culps mourn.
She was as close as I've ever had to a kissing cousin. She arrived with her sister Charlotte and husband at our home in Albuquerque in the late 195os on a road trip, them driving a 1959 white Chevy convertible. 
Sandi and I went out on a date in it, full of teenage hopes and hormones. I was always "Terry Mike" and she was "Sandra Gail," because we all called people by their first and middle names back then. That was mainly because that's what our folks yelled at us when we were in trouble, but it stuck, forever.
This photo was taken by my Dad at one of our summer vacation trips to Silsbee in deep East Texas. There are so many memories. I couldn't make the funeral, but I will toast her royally at our cousin reunion next week, and remember the cute girl with the reddish hair, arched eyebrows, and captivating  laugh, forever.

Tragedy brings out the memories

The Gee girls, three years ago, Brenda, Charlotte, Carolyn, and Sandi, whose laugh we will always remember. There might be better photos, but this so captures her personality.

I lost a first cousin this week, a spirit of laughter and humor and East Texas charm, shot by her husband, who then committed suicide. Sandra Gail Gee Russell was just 69, and I was counting on seeing her at a Culp first cousin reunion in two weeks.
When something like that happens, I start rummaging through old photos, photos from childhood and before, up through the last reunion three years ago. I don't know what I'm looking for, perhaps just trying to cope, or to understand, but also to remember the good times. Tonight there are family photos from albums and boxes scattered across the floor as I search through those memories.
It's hard to write about it, but I need to, because in spite of the years and miles, she's been a part of my life as long as I can remember, and before.
We were not close, geographically or otherwise, because it had been years  since we really knew each other well. But we were close, as families used to be growing up after WWII from common grandparents and parents in East Texas. 
My brother and I lived farthest away when my Dad and Mom moved to Albuquerque, but we stayed in touch, and most summer vacations were spent visiting our aunts and uncles and cousins. 

Sandi and I as teenagers. Just found this slide after writing the post.

The old black and white photos taken when some of us were babies show that connection, sitting on pallets in the yard or gathered with grandparents and parents.
Visits  through the teenage years strengthened it, until we started having our own families and time slipped away. 
Our first cousin reunion was about 20 years ago, down on the Texas Gulf coast, and then a few years ago in Livingston, Texas, and three years ago in Cleveland, Texas. Those were times to get reacquainted, to share old photos and memories, to see their children and grandchildren living their own lives.

We will miss her, because we are cousins.

Sandra was always the life of the party with her laugh and smile and good natured humor. She'd worked hard all her life, as that family of four girls had to to survive, with their Daddy dying when they were young. 

Sandi's 7th grade yearbook photo

There was not much money, but there was love and family, and they could laugh and enjoy life. Charlotte, Carolyn, Sandra and Brenda Gee, daughters of Ervin and Ima Culp Gee. She deserved so much better than the way she died, and we'll miss her, because we are cousins.
These photos and memories make me realize how important cousins are as time goes by, and it's evident on this blog with many articles and photos from the last reunion or other posts. Just click on these links: The delicious taste of memories. East Texas Cousins. When a Cousin Dies. Cousins part 2. Redheads and Cousins. East Texas Cousins Chapter 3.
I wrote this poem a few years ago when attending the funeral of their mother, my mother's baby sister, and changed it a little for my cousin Sandi. 

"East Texas family"

Swamps and steeples.

Pines and pickups.

Barbecue, beer, bayous and Baptists.

Holiness and honky-tonks.

Wildflowers and wandering roads.

In East Texas, springtime feels like it just rained, or is about to.

There's no horizon, and humid skies are  Confederate gray 

as the warm Gulf air sticks  to you.

More than the air sticks to you.

 Driving in East Texas is like going back into the womb.

It's warm, and wet, and ... green.

Where families are born, and grow, and spread out like runners 

from the ivy growing up the trunks of the hardwoods, 

across miles and years.

Go back for a reunion, or the funeral of an aunt,

your mother's youngest sister and her friend.

You sit around in lawn chairs 

visiting with cousins you hadn't seen for years.

The memories of earlier years come flooding back,

drenching you like the soft Texas rain 

Beginning as a mist and then saturates 

every green plant before moving on.

Without horizons you can't see the rain coming or going,

Pools of standing water and wet pavement and water-dappled leaves

Mark its passing, like the memories, like the years.

Memories of playing mud pies as a child with cousins,

aunts and uncles doing magic tricks, 

playing the guitar, or playing 42.

Memories of a nearby Mom and Pop store 

Of 5-cent Cokes and 3-cent candy bars. 

Memories of  grandma's house

cornbread in old cast iron forms. 

teen-agers going to the corner drug store.

Sitting on a porch with a summer girlfriend, 

watching the rain come down and the moments sweep by. 

Memories of aunts and uncles and parents and cousins now gone.

A year of journeys

I'm trying to plan a trip to Alaska for us in May, and it's not easy, unless you go to a travel agent and get stuck on one of those gargantuan cattle trucks called cruise ships, and I don't want that.

So planning the trip will be an adventure too, and as I pour over brochures, scan books, contact friends and scour the Internet, I'm aware of the journeys, planned and unplanned, to places know and unknown, that have made this year memorable.

First was a trip to Chennai, India, in February to SRM University for a conference. It was a trip of utterly new sensations, experiences and people.

Then in March, I spent a week aboard the nuclear carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Pacific, thanks to a former student, the Public Affairs officer aboard one of the largest ships in the world, Lt. Cdr. Steve Curry. Much more first time living.

In April I drove to the third Culp cousin reunion at my cousin Sarah Beth Foote's house in East Texas. Ten of us were there--only one barely known was missing--the children of my Mom and her three sisters and two brothers. A journey of mixed emotions of laughter and stories and good times, mixed with the awareness of passing time, and wondering if we'd ever do it again.

May was packed. On Mother's Day, I met my brother Jerry of Lubbock, to spend a boring evening in Wichita Falls before visiting our Mom's grave in Waurika, for an emotional trip into memories. In mid-May, Susan and I went to Florida and Savannah and soaked up southern food and comfort and history.

On Memorial Day, I visited grandkids Erin, Abby and Max and daughter Dallas and son-in-law Todd  in Amarillo and then on to Walsenburg to  my last uncle, Mike, in the veterans home. A happy,  and sobering trip, where the adventures are mental and emotional.

On the Fourth of July, I flew to California to spend time with my son Vance, his wife Kerin, and granddaughters Katherine, Sarah, and to see the new baby, Neysa, for the first time. Emotional for sure, but also the adventures of touring Vandenburg AFB where they launch satellites.

There were summer  trips on Oklahoma's back roads, including US 66, taking photos, exploring, and visiting friends at newspapers, and to Guthrie to show artwork there. There was a whirlwind trip to Vales Grande in New Mexico on roads I hadn't driven  before in early August--not much, but it helped satisfy a New Mexico attack.

In October, we celebrated anniversary in Kansas City, and spent full days in Columbia, Mo., with son Derrick, daughter-in-law Naomi, and granddaughter Liberty Faye.

Then in late October, a different journey began, when I received a phone call at night about the death of my uncle Mike. That journey isn't over yet for me, even though a resulting journey was burying him in the National Cemetery at Santa Fe, across from where he lived for-30 plus years. It was only my second trip to beloved New Mexico since a year ago when I had to move him out of that apartment that had become a second home to me in the last 10 years. I've traveled many places and miles in my mind as a result.

Those are the out-of-town trips, not counting getting artwork in Adelante Gallery in Paseo and multiple trips to the frame shop and studio. Nor around town to visit in-laws, go out to eat, visit many museums, attend the press convention, go "boothing" with friends and colleagues,  attend parties, travel over chess boards,  move brushes over blank paper and words on blank computer screens, and at Thanksgiving, tour the city with myAmarillo grandkids.

Then two days ago, my oldest cousin, Charles Rogers Lutrick, died in Beaumont, beginning a new journey for him and for those who love him. His funeral is tomorrow, and while Jerry and I are too far away to make it, his passing sets us off on another mental and somber journey contemplating passing life, a passing year and passing time.

It's been a good year--I've seen all my children and grandchildren, spent time with cousins and friends and colleagues, and faced mortality.

Although I'm trying to plan the Alaska trip, and also renewed my passport last month, I'm very aware that I really have no idea what the journeys will be this coming year, nor what kind of journeys they might be. I do know that Charles and Mike make me focus on my own journey, every day.

Charles Rogers Lutrick

Aug. 29, 1930

Dec. 10, 2011

Terry M. Clark

Jan. 5, 1944

When a cousin dies

Charles Rogers Lutrick, third from right, in April

My cousin Sarah Beth  Lutrick told me tonight, via email, that her brother, Charles Rogers Lutrick, 80, died today. He was the first of the Culp family cousins, the son of Gladys Culp Lutrick, married to Clark Lutrick, my mother's oldest sister.

We fortunately had a reunion in east Texas this April, of all but one of the Culp cousins, and he was there, not in good health, but there, along with the rest of us.

Mortality...thy sting is personal, and though I didn't know him well, all my kin folks --the aunts and uncles--always thought of him as the golden boy, and I'm sure he was. He was pleased when we named my youngest son Derrick Rogers Clark--and we didn't know the connection.

I have another picture as a baby, of Charles with me on his shoulders. Granddad Ezra Thomas Clark is in the background, and cute redhead Sarah Bath is just to my right.

I think the two cuties in front are Charlotte and Carolyn Gee.

Thanks, Charles, and God Bless.

East texas cousins, chapter 3

One more photo, to go with my thoughts on East Texas

Notice the trio of trouble at right on the back row...David Culp, Terry, Charles (Lindy) bottom row from right, Tommy Culp, Jerry Clark, Brenda Gee. I think the other girls are all Son''s. I'm sure my mouth cousin Sarah Beth will correct me..

Cousins, part 2

More photos from long ago on visiting Houston, thanks to  my young, mouthy redheaded cousin,who corrects me that it was her father's camera, and ...oh well, she's bossy too.

Culps, et.al.

I don't know all these folks, but we're East Texas-related. Back row, second from left, is Aunt Gladys Lutrick.  third from left is my mouthy redheaded cousin Sarah Beth. Next to her is the baby of the family, uncle E.T. Culp, and in front of him is Louise, wife of Charles Rogers Lutrick, the oldest cousin, who must have taken this photo. Next is Aunt Ima Gee. Then there is Clark Lutrick, father of Sarah Beth and Charles. Next = is Sophie Elizabeth Beard Culp, our grandmother.Next is Tommy Culp, LaMerle Culp, wife of E, T., and mother to cousins David and Lindy. At right is a rare photo of J.C. "Son," or "Addy" (because he had his adenoids taken out). He was the tragic member of the family, dying young. His son Tommy follows in his father's footsteps. I think he was my Mom's favorite, other than Sissie. Mom is at right, holding somebody's baby.

Second row, from left, is me, with arms around Jerry. Then we get to Son's girls, one of whom died young, and the Gee girls, sitting. Carolyn on the right, in front of Brenda. At left with hands on his hips is David Culp and Charles, Lindy" is messing with a camera--they're children of E.T. and LaMerle. Aunt Sissie is in the middle, sitting down.  I think this is one of the very few photos where the four sisters and two brothers are together.

Dad, grandmother, Mom, sissie (adoring me), Me. in front, Gladys, Jerry.

Jerry and I on the galveston beach with Aunt Gladys. Look at that spiffy new Ford in the background, when you could drive on the beach.

Jerry practicing his violin. He always got special treatment. My folks "couldn't afford" to buy me a musical instrument. ;)

The Clarks

Moving to New Mexico from Fort Worth separated us from our kinfolk, so we got to see them in the summers, on vacations, but not every year. Early childhood bonding with some last to this day. We have photos of some of us as babies sitting on a blanket in the yards from long ago. But we didn't really get to know them well. I was particularly close to Carolyn and Jerry to Brenda, and Sarah Beth intimidated us. But we had good times, playing mud patties in the back yards and  going to drive in-s for soft drinks as we got older in those long hot and humid Southern summers that Harper Lee describes so well in To Kill a Mockingbird.   In later years with reunions and email we've reconnected some, marveling how the years have passed. Jerry and I remain in  self-imposed exile from East Texas. I'm the only cousin who lives outside the borders of The Republic, except maybe for a couple in nearby Louisiana. and Jerry is in Lubbock, which is a far cry from East Texas. As he says, Lubbock is an old Indian word for "flat, brown and ugly." But we're all Texans.

Redheads and cousins, part 1

Sarah Beth sent me some color photos, many taken by my Dad, on our visits to East Texas, and some of which I'd never seen.

Understand now why I have this thing for redheads?  Can't you just see that mouthy attitude?

Mother, standing at left, and her sister Gladys, sometime in Houston. Notice the redhead peeking over the heads of all the boys she's flirting with. No, I don't know who they are.

Cousins and Grandmother ...Culps  were a prolific family.

 Sophie Elizabeth beard Culp sitting. Behind her, mouthy redhead. Others standing, David Culp, Me, Charles Lutrick (the first cousin and Sarah's brother, Charles Rogers Lutrick who was the  the "good" boy), and Lindy. David and Lindy are children of the baby of the family, E.T. Culp and Lamerle of Nacodoches(that's his name, though they are the initials of our grandfather Ezra Thomas Culp). In front of me are some I recognize and some I don't. Jerry is right below David. In front of me is redheaded Charlotte Gee, and in from of her is  Carolyn Gee and then in front of her is Brenda Gee. I think Sanda Gee is at right sitting. They're the children of Mom's sister Ima, all of Silsbee.

Three of the sisters, from left, Gladys Lutrick, Faye Clark, Grandmother, and Vera Pollock Culp, known to all as Sissie, my favorite aunt.