That was Betty's visit to West Virginia when she acquired the photographs of family gravestones there in the Core Cemetery.
We finally got our West Virginia website pulled together. And we'll make sure the links are up to date throughout.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
That was Betty's visit to West Virginia when she acquired the photographs of family gravestones there in the Core Cemetery.
We finally got our West Virginia website pulled together. And we'll make sure the links are up to date throughout.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Sometime when she was in her sixties Grandma Betty found out she had Diabetes. It was late in life to be proactive about it, so she did the best she could to manage the symptoms and she and Lyle decided to move out West together.
Despite the good weather and retirement lifestyle, Grandma Betty felt sick and tired. She wasn't one to be a burden on anybody or to wreck a pie-eating party with bad news. And it wasn't very long between feeling bad one day and passing over soon after. She launched from the top of Vegas with a view she loved to talk about straight up to heaven. And Lyle helped the family get Betty back to Michigan where she rests beside her mama, Grandma Pearl.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
.......... ..........
Grandma Betty's genealogical story is even more complicated than Pearl's. Really.
She never was sure if her biological father was Glen or Ben Wilson, or Charles McVicker. She couldn't get the whole story out of her mother as to whether or not she really was a twin. Her first marriage to Grover Candy was "puppy love," that's what Sherry says.
And Betty got married a lot. But she didn't have any children after her marriage with Paul Kughn.
So she was mother to Johnny Ross Candy and Sherry Lynn Candy by Grover. And Betty and Grover were married for about two years. Grover was in the military after high school and his being away at training and bases seems to have been stressful on Betty as a young mother. Things fell apart for the young couple and Betty decided to marry to Paul Kughn. They had two children together, Gail and Paula. But eventually they got divorced.
And that's pretty much all that's been "discussed" about that.
After divorce and "didn't work out"... Betty ...
Well, there's some gray areas in everybody's sixties and seventies. Not only was the greatest generation beside themselves that things weren't quite as iconic as advertised...but then wars went the way of liberating and much smaller scale "theatres." Only, the impact on peoples' lives was full blown, large as life, and, generally of devastating proportion. Most things from family to nation seemed...scattered.
I know she married an Ash. Carl, I believe.
Mama says they built a house together, but it didn't work out.
That's when Betty's heart got broke and she got sick of love and she was ready to be independent; a "career girl," Mama says.
She went to work at a bank. And she'd send us grandbabies three dollar bills.
Mama likes to tell the story of Betty getting off an airplane in New York from Michigan with a gigantic jar of pickled boloh-nie. Betty rode with it on her lap the whole way across the country because it was fragile and it was the one thing Sherry missed about Michigan. See, as mother and daughter Betty and Sherry had gotten separated several times in their lives so by the time Sherry was having her own family they'd fallen out of touch. Well, until Mama called up Betty and they had a flurry of phone calls to make peace. The back and forth ended in a friendship that started with that jar of pickled boloh-nie. And homemade fudge. There was a fudge-making showdown as the women went toe-to-toe in the kitchen. We got to sample several kinds and see that distance can be overcome. And I think we wrote down the different recipes...Betty knew how to make Grandma Pearl's kind too, so it was like Grandma Pearl was on that visit too.
And when Jess died, Grandma Betty moved back in with Pearl. They took care of each other.
And then Pearl passed on, too.
Betty was living in Dimondale at that time. She always felt like the kid amongst the elderly people in the trailer park where she'd put two trailers together to make her and Pearl a home. One of her favorite things was cruising around in her convertible car when it was summer in Michigan. And visiting.
And then one day, Betty met Mr. Lyle Allen.
Lyle could make her laugh and this may have been the most precious thing left in a long string of things not working out.
He was a pleasure to meet and when I was young I wanted him to be MY Grand Pop. My Pop-Pop was already gone and we never got to know Grandpa Grover because Mama hadn't known him real well.
I don't know an awful lot about Lyle. He was gentle and kind. And he...
He may have been the last living man to earn a gold watch from the American Automobile industry when he retired. Fifty YEARS, that's what that means.
One more story in here right now?
All right, let's see...there was that Christmas, the weather'd been dreary and cold in Michigan, and this was a little while after Betty went "to the Great Spirit in the Sky," as they say, and everybody was missing her.
Mama had been saying special prayers in New England and discussing with her sisters how...well in the prayerful circles people believe that if you say Hail Mary's (that's a prayer) it helps all Souls get from earth to crossing over successfully.
So Mama had been saying her special prayers and some of us had lit special Church candles (Christmas tradition) and as Mama's sister pulled into the cemetery where Betty is resting to bring flowers or a wreath or something, there was a "light" upon her grave!
Even when they shut the headlights off and got closer to see...
It was still shining.
Someone had put a special Christmas ornament on her spot.
Everybody loved Betty. And Betty loved everybody back. She called us all doll babes and honey and brought sweetness to any situation with her sense of humor and love.
Mama says it was a sign, you know, like an angel getting wings.
It's true! It's one of our special Christmas stories, forever.
.......... .......... .......... ..........
Betty Allen
May 28th 1927-September 15th 1993
Betty left us missing her sorely.
A bright star even in darkness,
and her loving heart reaching all of us all across the country no matter where she or we went.
At the end of her life she'd happily married Lyle Allen and they were enjoying life in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Her final resting spot is in Dimondale, Michigan with Grandma Pearl.
.......... .......... .......... ..........
In the 1980's, Betty and Lara (that's me, the blogger here at the moment) carried on a consistent correspondence through the snail mail. She'd send postcards and letters from when she went on vacations. She loved to go out west, and she sent me lots of turquoise jewelry from her favorite stops in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. I re-read those letters years later when I was living out in New Mexico myself. She'd passed away by then, but it made me feel like she was always close by.
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| Betty June Kughn |
Grandma Betty's genealogical story is even more complicated than Pearl's. Really.
She never was sure if her biological father was Glen or Ben Wilson, or Charles McVicker. She couldn't get the whole story out of her mother as to whether or not she really was a twin. Her first marriage to Grover Candy was "puppy love," that's what Sherry says.
And Betty got married a lot. But she didn't have any children after her marriage with Paul Kughn.
So she was mother to Johnny Ross Candy and Sherry Lynn Candy by Grover. And Betty and Grover were married for about two years. Grover was in the military after high school and his being away at training and bases seems to have been stressful on Betty as a young mother. Things fell apart for the young couple and Betty decided to marry to Paul Kughn. They had two children together, Gail and Paula. But eventually they got divorced.
And that's pretty much all that's been "discussed" about that.
After divorce and "didn't work out"... Betty ...
Well, there's some gray areas in everybody's sixties and seventies. Not only was the greatest generation beside themselves that things weren't quite as iconic as advertised...but then wars went the way of liberating and much smaller scale "theatres." Only, the impact on peoples' lives was full blown, large as life, and, generally of devastating proportion. Most things from family to nation seemed...scattered.
I know she married an Ash. Carl, I believe.
Mama says they built a house together, but it didn't work out.
That's when Betty's heart got broke and she got sick of love and she was ready to be independent; a "career girl," Mama says.
She went to work at a bank. And she'd send us grandbabies three dollar bills.
Mama likes to tell the story of Betty getting off an airplane in New York from Michigan with a gigantic jar of pickled boloh-nie. Betty rode with it on her lap the whole way across the country because it was fragile and it was the one thing Sherry missed about Michigan. See, as mother and daughter Betty and Sherry had gotten separated several times in their lives so by the time Sherry was having her own family they'd fallen out of touch. Well, until Mama called up Betty and they had a flurry of phone calls to make peace. The back and forth ended in a friendship that started with that jar of pickled boloh-nie. And homemade fudge. There was a fudge-making showdown as the women went toe-to-toe in the kitchen. We got to sample several kinds and see that distance can be overcome. And I think we wrote down the different recipes...Betty knew how to make Grandma Pearl's kind too, so it was like Grandma Pearl was on that visit too.
And when Jess died, Grandma Betty moved back in with Pearl. They took care of each other.
And then Pearl passed on, too.
Betty was living in Dimondale at that time. She always felt like the kid amongst the elderly people in the trailer park where she'd put two trailers together to make her and Pearl a home. One of her favorite things was cruising around in her convertible car when it was summer in Michigan. And visiting.
And then one day, Betty met Mr. Lyle Allen.
He was a pleasure to meet and when I was young I wanted him to be MY Grand Pop. My Pop-Pop was already gone and we never got to know Grandpa Grover because Mama hadn't known him real well.
I don't know an awful lot about Lyle. He was gentle and kind. And he...
He may have been the last living man to earn a gold watch from the American Automobile industry when he retired. Fifty YEARS, that's what that means.
One more story in here right now?
All right, let's see...there was that Christmas, the weather'd been dreary and cold in Michigan, and this was a little while after Betty went "to the Great Spirit in the Sky," as they say, and everybody was missing her.
Mama had been saying special prayers in New England and discussing with her sisters how...well in the prayerful circles people believe that if you say Hail Mary's (that's a prayer) it helps all Souls get from earth to crossing over successfully.
So Mama had been saying her special prayers and some of us had lit special Church candles (Christmas tradition) and as Mama's sister pulled into the cemetery where Betty is resting to bring flowers or a wreath or something, there was a "light" upon her grave!
Even when they shut the headlights off and got closer to see...
It was still shining.
Someone had put a special Christmas ornament on her spot.
Everybody loved Betty. And Betty loved everybody back. She called us all doll babes and honey and brought sweetness to any situation with her sense of humor and love.
Mama says it was a sign, you know, like an angel getting wings.
It's true! It's one of our special Christmas stories, forever.
.......... .......... .......... ..........
Betty Allen
May 28th 1927-September 15th 1993
Betty left us missing her sorely.
A bright star even in darkness,
and her loving heart reaching all of us all across the country no matter where she or we went.
At the end of her life she'd happily married Lyle Allen and they were enjoying life in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Her final resting spot is in Dimondale, Michigan with Grandma Pearl.
.......... .......... .......... ..........
In the 1980's, Betty and Lara (that's me, the blogger here at the moment) carried on a consistent correspondence through the snail mail. She'd send postcards and letters from when she went on vacations. She loved to go out west, and she sent me lots of turquoise jewelry from her favorite stops in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. I re-read those letters years later when I was living out in New Mexico myself. She'd passed away by then, but it made me feel like she was always close by.
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