Dearest Isabella, Part 8

Just a few other people to mention. There seem to be so many, but I am going to limit myself. You may continue to receive e-mails over the years of people that I have thought of and want to tell you about. Right now, I will limit it to four more people.

Glenn Davis Broaddus My mother’s brother and prank player deluxe. I have heard more stories than I can count about the pranks that he played on my mom. He loosened the cinch on the saddle of the horse that my mother and Uncle Glenn road to school. Mother would get on and promptly fall off as the saddle came off the horse. He figured out a way to hotwire the seat of their old Model T Ford that they drove to school later on and would shock my mother. He laughed how he would watch her squirm. Again, not a complainer, Mother never said a word. When I ask him to sign my autograph book, he wrote “To the little girl that needs a moving van every time she goes out of town.” Apparently, this characteristic was begun early and one of the first “discussions” Coach and I had was all the luggage that I took on our honeymoon. When the valet man at the Village Inn in Lubbock opened the truck, he looked at Gary and said “All of this?” You never know when there is going to be a formal and I wasn’t going to be caught short.

Luther Earl Sheldon Aunt Evelyn’s husband from Des Moines, Iowa. I could write a book, but will keep it to a few lines. The way he treated Aunt Evelyn stands out most. While he was in the war, he arranged for a florist to send her flowers every week while he was away. He always bought her the prettiest gifts at Christmas and I admired their 50 plus year love affair. One time I remember him drilling Mollie and I on the state capitals while we rode a jeep up a narrow mountain in Lake City, Colorado. Why that stands out, I don’t know. He just expected a lot out of us and helped us achieve it. There were family vacations in Colorado and holidays in San Angelo or Amarillo and a two week vacation to California with six people in a small car. Mollie and I were promised a motel with a swimming pool the last night of the trip. When we would get unruly, my Dad would say “Do you want Uncle Luke to ‘lay down the law’? I didn’t know what that entailed but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to find out. He worked for Phillips 66 all his life in San Angelo, was a elder in the church and was a community leader. I can’t pass a Phillips 66 station without thinking of him.

Dearest Isabella, Part 7

You are now twenty four days old. Soon you will be a month and then six months and before you know it we will be driving to Dallas to celebrate your first birthday. Well, I promised that I would tell you about the people that influenced me after I married. I think I will combine the men and the women. At least for now, I’ll try that. I lay in bed or am driving the car and all the sudden I think of someone else I want to tell you all about.

Probably the two people that I would put near the top of the list would be your other great Grandmother and great Grandfather, Doris Cash Crofford and Curtis Alvin Crofford. They (guess what) always made me feel welcome and loved---are you seeing the pattern to great admiration? Sounds a lot like Jesus’ commandment of “The Greatest of these is Love.” Your great Grandmother Doris has a lot of spunk. Maybe Sarah got a double dose of spunk—Grandmother Doris’ AND Great Great Grandmother B’s (Broaddus). But I rather like the idea of the women in our family being full of spunk. A strong powerful woman is very appealing. That doesn’t mean she isn’t a Godly woman, but she is no push over and knows who she is. There is a difference between being Godly and being squished. But I am rambling and I intended to tell you about Grandmother Doris. Her house was and still is immaculate. We always joked that you could operate in her kitchen if the hospitals ever got full. Every time she came down she would clean out my refrigerator. No one does it better and if she is still around when you get married, I bet she would be willing to clean yours out and show you how. I never was interested in knowing how. She always did it to perfection and you can’t beat perfection. She was always willing to jump on a plane when your Mother and Uncle Curt were little to come babysit. I owe part of my photography career to my total lack of worry when I would go to Texas School, a class that was held each year for photographers, or any other seminar or weeklong school that was offered or even a vacation with Coach. I never worried once about whether your mother or Uncle Curt were well cared for or if the house was running smoothly. Hey, it was probably running smoother than when I was in charge. She was still driving by herself to Oklahoma City or coming in at 2:00 a.m. from a card game with her friends into her 80’s. She says she has the best looking grandchildren in the world and I hear her making those same claims about her great grandchildren.

Curtis Alvin Crofford This is one of the men that your Uncle Curt was named after. (The other was my dad, Thomas Jackson Lynn.) One of the things that I remember him saying was “Nothing good ever happens at the back of the bus.” So he chose to sit at the front of the bus where he could stay out of trouble. I’m afraid that I would have been turned around to at least see what was going on “back there”. He was a very moral and highly principled man. He was on the city council and when the mayoral race was approaching, a group of men talked him into running for mayor due to his high standards of conduct. He was an elder in Southside Church of Christ and later Southwest Church of Christ when it combined with another church. He was a member of the Kiwanis Club and evened booed the Lion’s Club one time when we went by a sign with their logo. Coach can give you all the details, but he worked very hard all his life. He started out working for Pepsi Cola but broke his back when a garage door fell on it while he was unloading the truck. He was confined to a cast from under his arms to his pelvis with a brace on his neck. He couldn’t ever go back to his manual labor job. His boss, being a kind man (and I am betting recognizing quality when he saw it) said he had a new distributorship in Amarillo and needed a bookkeeper. Your great granddaddy began to learn bookkeeping and eventually studied and passed the CPA exam. Coach says it took him along time to pass all the parts, but he preserved. I think perservance would be one of the characteristics that he has passed on to our family. But the greatest lesson that he ever taught me was his faith in God. Not just saying he had faith, but living like he had faith for all to see. One scripture that sums Granddaddy up would be “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.” He lived by that. I bet he was quoting it when he broke his back and I know he quoted it (because I heard him) when it looked like Coach was headed straight for Vietnam. Again, Coach can tell you the long version, but Coach was all but assured that he would be accepted into the Navy’s Judge Advocate program. He had a very high LSAT score, a test that he took to get in law school. He turned down a place in the army reserve to gamble on the Judge Advocate program. He heard a few days later that he was turned down for the JAG program and by all accounts, he was headed for the front lines of Vietnam. Granddaddy pulled that verse out like Dad was just headed for the grocery store. Again and again, he quoted it and refused to panic and refused to not trust God. I’ll tell you the rest of that story in a few minutes. So, one of the verses that you will need to lay claim to is “All things work together for good, for those who love the Lord.” I even bet your great Granddaddy will help you learn it.