Category Archives: Family

My Mother In Pictures, Part 1

Posted on by

To go with the obituary posted by the undertakers who arranged my mother’s funeral were pictures we collected. I scanned some of them in September in anticipation of a posting, while the funeral home scanned others from physical prints that we provided.

Since then, I’ve scanned a few more. Such as this one, taken soon after New Year 1926, when she was two and a half months old.

A month later:

Ca. 1929 in what must be a special-occasion dress.

Around the same time. I’ve posted this one before, of her with her father’s mother.

The mid-1930s, when she was about 10, pictured with her little sister Sue.

With her father in San Antonio, ca. 1938. According to the back of the picture, they were going, or had just been, to a baseball game. Presumably the minor league Missions, which have had a long history, with some interruptions, in San Antonio.

In San Antonio with her mother, 1942, just before she went to college.

A series of college pictures.

This one is dated December 31, 1945. Attending a New Year’s Eve party, no doubt. In no other picture have I ever seen her hair done up this way.

A formal pose around the time of her graduation in 1947.

A less formal shot at the time of graduation.

I’ve posted this one before. A trip with her family and one friend to Monterrey, Mexico, in the summer of ’47.

My parents’ wedding, November 26, 1949.

On to the 1950s. With my brother Jay, her first child.

With Jim, her second child.

With both of them in Germany.

With my father, going to some social event while he was in the Army.

 

Forward to 1963. I’ve made my appearance.

The contrast with the next picture is pretty clear; my father is gone, only a year later.

More tomorrow.

RIP, Jo Ann Stribling, 1925-2018

Posted on by

The week after my mother died last month, I wrote an obituary for her. This is a slightly modified version of it.

Jo Ann Curnutte Stribling, longtime resident of San Antonio, passed away on October 14, 2018, less than two weeks shy of her 93rd birthday.

Jo Ann is survived by her sons Jay, Jim and Dees (Yuriko), her grandchildren Sam (Emily), Dees (Eden), Robert, Lilly and Ann, her great-grandson Neil, her nephews Ralph Arnn and Vernon Jay Stribling, and their families, and cousin Michelle Gottfred.

Her beloved husband, Samuel Henderson Stribling, predeceased her, as did her parents, James and Edna Curnutte, her sister Sue Arnn and Sue’s husband Ken, her daughter-in-law Deb Stribling, her cousin Jean Horsman, and many other friends and relatives of her generation.

She is now at peace after suffering the ravages of dementia during the last few years of her life. For most of her life she had the good fortune to enjoy robust health.

Jo Ann was born in Jourdanton, Texas, on October 24, 1925, and spent most of her formative years in South Texas. After graduating from Corpus Christi High School (now Roy Miller High School), she attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman’s University) in Denton, studying nutrition and graduating in 1947.

In 1949, she married Sam, a physician from Mississippi, and soon devoted herself to their growing family as her children were born in 1952, 1955 and 1961. The young couple lived in Houston and later McKinney, Texas, along with a stint in Germany during Sam’s service as a doctor in the U.S. Army in the mid-50s.

Sam died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1964 at only 41, leaving Jo Ann bereaved and the sole parent to her children. She worked hard from then on not only to provide for their material well-being, but to guide their growth to responsible adulthood with a steady hand that was never heavy-handed. In her later years, she was delighted with the coming of her three grandsons and two granddaughters.

Jo Ann returned to TWU and obtained her master’s degree in nutrition in 1967, thus re-starting her career in that field. In 1970, she became a clinical dietitian at Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio, a position she held until she retired more than 20 years later. Dietitians are unsung healthcare professionals who make sure patients receive the best nutrition they need to speed their recovery.

She was a longtime member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, attending church regularly until her health failed, and supporting the church financially and by volunteering her time and energy. She was happy to be known as a church lady. Her faith in the Lord was quiet and steady.

Jo Ann made friends easily and was well regarded by her colleagues at the hospital. She was largely free of the social prejudices that marked many of her generation and, as the decades passed, was open to new ideas.

Though a stable and hardworking individual, she had a well-developed sense of humor — she enjoyed sharing jokes with her sister Sue in particular — and a sometimes surprising whimsical streak. She was fond of her dogs, her sewing projects, and the many books she read.

Jo Ann was a good person who had a good run in this world. She will be missed by all those who knew her and especially by those who had the very good fortune to be part of her family.

Postcard From Russia

Posted on by

First coolish weekend since spring. Or rather warmish days and coolish nights. The beginning of the same slide into winter as every year.

A postcard I picked up in Russia in 1994.

The Sampsonievsky Cathedral (St Sampson’s), St. Petersburg. Looks like it’s been restored since the postcard was made. If I remember right, the building wasn’t even open when we visited St. Petersburg.

Anyway, at the time I sent the card to my brother Jim with a simple message.

Address whited out for posting. 600 rubles would have been… anywhere from 20 to 30 U.S. cents, since the exchange rate bucked around from 2,000 to 3,000 rubles to the dollar during the two weeks we were in country. Not bad for an international mailing.

I probably sent a dozen cards from the main post office, an elegant structure dating back to the time of Catherine the Great, and still a post office in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Elegant, but a little dingy. If these pictures are accurate, the place has been spiffed up since the mid-90s.

Labor Day Hiatus

Posted on by

Back to posting on September 4, after Labor Day. You’d think a holiday of that name would be time for “Joe Hill” or the like, though May Day’s really the time. Time to lounge around on the deck out back, provided it isn’t raining, which it has been a lot lately.

Actually, it’s the dog who uses the deck for its fullest lounging potential.

Use the deck while you can. Soon enough it’s just going to be a snow and ice collector.

Thursday Stew

Posted on by

Back again on Tuesday, May 29. Memorial Day is pretty close to Decoration Day this year, but not quite. The next time they will coincide will be 2022.

I finally got around to looking at the professional photographer’s pictures from my nephew’s wedding last month. Quite a selection. She was really busy.

File this book under relics of the midcentury, subfile: things unlikely to inspire a period TV show on cable, unlike Madison Avenue, Pan Am, Camelot, etc.

I found it at my mother’s house and, considering my interest in U.S. presidents and candidates for that office, borrowed it for a bit. It’s a first edition, with Pyramid Publications putting it out in August 1965. In other words, just as soon as possible after Adlai Stevenson died.

I’m sorry to report that, after reading a fair sample of the book, wit is pretty thinly represented. Maybe he had some wit about him in person that didn’t translate into print. More likely, Oscar Wilde, he was not. But I can sense some wisdom in the pages.

What’s the mascot of Eufaula High School in Eufaula, Oklahoma, a town of about 2,800?

The Ironheads. I drove through Eufaula last month and happened to be stopped at a place where I could appreciate the water tower.

Merriam-Webster offers two definitions: 1) a white stork (Mycteria americana) with black wing flight feathers and tail that frequents wooded swamps from the southeastern U.S. to Argentina — called also wood ibis; 2) a stupid person. I bet the school was thinking of the first definition.

Also in Oklahoma, just off of the Will Rogers Turnpike at Big Cabin.
All the usually wordy Roadside America has to say about the statue: “Standing Brave is over 50 feet tall, and guards an Indian tax-free cigarette store.”

The Trans-Pecos & Llano Estacado

Posted on by

Back on April 14, I headed for Texas by car. I spent most of following two weeks in that state, arriving home today. Along the way, I drove 3,691 miles and change.

The main event was the wedding of my nephew Dees and his betrothed Eden on April 21 at Hummingbird House, a gorgeous outdoor wedding venue just south of Austin in the full flush of a Texas spring. An actual warm and green spring, unlike the cold and still brown spring I left in Illinois.

Rain had been predicted for the day, as it often is this time of the year, and there was an indoor pavilion just for that circumstance, but the Texas spring accommodated the bride and groom and wedding party and all the guests by not raining. If fact, the sun came out just before the ceremony, which was picturesque as could be.

I was remiss in taking pictures of Dees and Eden or anyone else, except for a few shots of my family.They’d flown to Austin the day before the wedding, in time for the rehearsal dinner, which was a pizza party in Dees and Eden’s back yard. The logistics of my family getting to Austin were a little involved, but everything worked out.

As for me, I’d spent most of the week before the wedding with my brother Jay in Dallas, arriving in Austin the Thursday before the wedding. The morning after the wedding, a week ago now, Yuriko, Lilly and Ann and I drove to San Antonio, where we all visited my mother and brother Jim. They flew back home that evening, leaving me to drive back to Illinois.

I wanted to return a different way than I’d came, especially since I had the week off from work (the week before the wedding was a work week). So I didn’t pick the most direct route home.

Namely, I drove west from San Antonio to Marathon, Texas, a town of a few hundred people in West Texas whose main distinction is its proximity to Big Bend National Park, which I visited last Tuesday. There are many impressive things to see there, but I was most astonished by the cliffs on the Rio Grande that form Santa Elena Canyon.

The next day I went to the Trans-Pecos towns of Alpine, Marfa and especially Fort Davis. Not far from Fort Davis is the McDonald Observatory, which I’ve had a mind to visit for years. It was cloudy and misty and a little cold when I got there, but that doesn’t matter when you’re looking at impressive telescopes. In Fort Davis itself, I visited the Fort Davis National Historic Site.

The next day, I drove north, through Midland-Odessa and Lubbock and finally to Amarillo, a shift in scenery from the desert of the Trans-Pecos to the high plains of the Llano Estacado. Along the way I made a few stops: the Presidential Archives and Leadership Library in Midland and the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock.

While in Amarillo, a city I had not seen since a brief visit in 1979, I took the opportunity on Friday to see Palo Duro Canyon State Park, which is about 30 minutes outside of town. It’s a great unknown among natural areas in Texas and, for that matter, the United States.

I had enough time that day after visiting Palo Duro — the days are getting longer — to drop by and see the Cadillac Ranch, famed oddball tourist attraction, which is on the western outskirts of town.

This weekend was a long drive home: Amarillo to Lebanon, Missouri, on Saturday (I’d stopped in Lebanon the first day out, on the way to Dallas), and Lebanon to home in metro Chicago today. Tiring, but I did squeeze in two more sites. In Claremore, Okla., on Saturday, I saw the Will Rogers Museum. Not bad for an entertainer who’s been dead more than 80 years.

Today I stopped just outside St. Louis and took a walk around the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Not bad for a culture that’s been gone for about 800 years.

Ann at 1111

Posted on by

No store-bought birthday cake this year for Ann, at her request. Her mother made a cheesecake.

It was good cheesecake. We didn’t have a numeral 5 candle. You’d think we would, considering my age, but no. So the numeral 1 stood for a decade, the smaller candles for years. Ann was OK with that arrangement.

I thought of, but forgot to suggest, that the numbers be in base 2, which would be 1111. There’s no reason to use base 10 for birthday candles other than the dead hand of decimal tradition, after all.

A Christmas Carol, Suburban Chicago Version

Posted on by

Metropolis Performing Arts Centre is an excellent mid-sized theater that would fit in anywhere in the city, but it happens to be in suburban Arlington Heights. We went to see a production of A Christmas Carol there on Saturday.

Another nice detail: they produce paper tickets. This was Ann’s.
The soulless ticket cartel might be eager to get rid of paper tickets, but venues ought to be eager to keep them. People keep them, especially if they show was good. They’re cheap long-term bits of marketing.

Ann had never seen A Christmas Carol on stage, and neither had Yuriko. The last time I saw it was also at the Metropolis — almost exactly 10 years ago, when I took Lilly.

This production had everything it needed to have, particularly an actor (Jerry M. Miller) who could handle Scrooge’s dour initial disposition that slowly melts to his inevitable conversion to altruism. A Christmas Carol without that is a limp rag indeed.

Since it’s based on a novella, and not a source play, stage versions are going to differ, as the movies do. There was more singing and dancing in this version than others I’ve seen. Each of the Christmas spirits got a song-and-dance by a troupe, for instance, which was pleasant enough. This version also featured Bob Cratchit as the story’s narrator, which was a little odd.

A couple of important lines were omitted. Lines I think are important, that is. Old Fezziwig, who seemed reasonably prosperous — he had apprentices, after all — but who also knew that life was about more than making money, got none of his lines. He was mentioned in passing by Scrooge, and he got to dance, but that was about it.

“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson.”

When faced with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge didn’t ask it a most important question.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

Just quibbles. Now I’ve done my bit to introduce my children to the Dickensian part of Christmas. If you’re going to celebrate the holiday in this post-Victorian world, you should know it.