by Pa Rock
Proud Son
Today, July 14th, is Bastille Day, the day in 1789 when street mobs in Paris stormed the Bastille and emptied the old fort and prison of its few inmates. That bloody confrontation in the streets grew into what became known as the French Revolution,
And it was on this date nearly a hundred years later in 1881 when a sheriff in New Mexico named Pat Garrett shot and killed a 21-year-old desperado who went by the name "Billy the Kid." Garrett later immortalized himself in a book that he wrote about the assassination of the young murdering outlaw.
Leslie Lynch King, Jr. was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14th, 1913. A few days after his birth the child's mother took him and moved to Michigan to escape the abuse of the boy's alcoholic father. Once in Michigan she remarried and changed the name of her child to Gerald Rudolph Ford, the name he would still be using many years later when he became the 38th President of the United States.
World renown filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was born on this date in Sweden in 1918. On that same day - and year - Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of President Teddy Roosevelt, was killed in an air battle over France during World War I. It was Bastille Day - and an American child of privilege repaid, with his own blood, some of the debt that his country owed to Lafayette.
And three years after that, on July 14th 1921, my mother, Ruby Florine Sreaves was born in her family's farmhouse in rural Newton County, Missouri. Today she would have been ninety-nine-years-old.
Mom, like so many in her generation, learned to enjoy smoking in the years during and after World War II, and that habit ultimately brought about her much-too-early death at the age of sixty-five. She had two children, and they, in turn, gave her seven grandchildren, all of whom she was able to meet before her passing on a cold December day in 1986. She was not around to meet any of her great-grandchildren, but they currently number twelve, as well as one who passed away as a toddler.
By the time ninety-nine more years have passed, my mother's descendants will likely be scattered to the edges of the Earth, and perhaps further, and they are apt to be so numerous as to defy counting.
Thanks for giving us a start, Mom. You are missed!
Proud Son
Today, July 14th, is Bastille Day, the day in 1789 when street mobs in Paris stormed the Bastille and emptied the old fort and prison of its few inmates. That bloody confrontation in the streets grew into what became known as the French Revolution,
And it was on this date nearly a hundred years later in 1881 when a sheriff in New Mexico named Pat Garrett shot and killed a 21-year-old desperado who went by the name "Billy the Kid." Garrett later immortalized himself in a book that he wrote about the assassination of the young murdering outlaw.
Leslie Lynch King, Jr. was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14th, 1913. A few days after his birth the child's mother took him and moved to Michigan to escape the abuse of the boy's alcoholic father. Once in Michigan she remarried and changed the name of her child to Gerald Rudolph Ford, the name he would still be using many years later when he became the 38th President of the United States.
World renown filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was born on this date in Sweden in 1918. On that same day - and year - Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of President Teddy Roosevelt, was killed in an air battle over France during World War I. It was Bastille Day - and an American child of privilege repaid, with his own blood, some of the debt that his country owed to Lafayette.
And three years after that, on July 14th 1921, my mother, Ruby Florine Sreaves was born in her family's farmhouse in rural Newton County, Missouri. Today she would have been ninety-nine-years-old.
Mom, like so many in her generation, learned to enjoy smoking in the years during and after World War II, and that habit ultimately brought about her much-too-early death at the age of sixty-five. She had two children, and they, in turn, gave her seven grandchildren, all of whom she was able to meet before her passing on a cold December day in 1986. She was not around to meet any of her great-grandchildren, but they currently number twelve, as well as one who passed away as a toddler.
By the time ninety-nine more years have passed, my mother's descendants will likely be scattered to the edges of the Earth, and perhaps further, and they are apt to be so numerous as to defy counting.
Thanks for giving us a start, Mom. You are missed!
1 comment:
R.I.P., my dear Aunt Florine.
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