More Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins

Rats! It's very easy to lose posts in blogger! Let's try this again:

Joyce and Dusty's youngest was Becky, who is just shy of a year older than I am. In her early 20s Becky married Randall Smith, a fella several years older than she was. They had two children, Jordan and Cullen, who were toddlers / babies when Janet and I married in 1982. As far as I know, they still live in Baton Rouge, as do most of Joyce's other offspring.

Dusty suffered a massive heart attack in early 1974. He was only 46 and it came as a great shock to my parents and the rest of that generation of Jaspers. A couple of years later Joyce married Don Elson, who had worked for her in the company she and Dusty had founded, Rhodes Publishing. Don was a great guy and Janet and I enjoyed his and Joyce's company the few times we visited them when we were living in Louisiana in the early 1980s. He died of prostate cancer a few years (after?) my dad passed away in 1989.

Joyce married a third time, to Gordon Woodburn, in about 2000. The year after Roy passed away (2001) Gordon and Joyce were driving from church to their new home in Pelican Point, Louisiana when Gordon -- who was driving -- suffered a major heart attack or stroke. The car careened across the median strip of Interstate 10 and down an embankment on the other side of the highway and into the bayou. Gordon was pronounced dead at the scene and Joyce, who was in her late 70s by that time, was in the hospital with broken bones etc. for at least a month. At this point she's the last of my father's siblings still living.

Joan and Carol

Aunt Joan (b. 1927-d. 2002?) married Carl James, a businessman (?) from Chicago. She and Carl had a daughter, Carol (b. December 9, 1957), who is the closest to me in age of all my cousins. Joan and Carl divorced when Carol was about two years old and Joan and Carol returned (from Chicago, where Carol was born) to West Monroe to live with Papa. They did so for about 10 years, then Joan began a long series of moves associated with her job at Southern Bell (as it was then known) and other Ma Bell permutations. First to nearby Ruston, then back to Monroe, then Birmingham, Alabama and Nutley, New Jersey before returning to New Orleans, where she and Carol were living when Joan retired in about 1990.

Carol has married twice but divorced both times and for all practical purposes lived with her mother her entire life. After Joan retired, they moved to Houston for a while (before I was there) with Carol's 2nd husband, Mike. When that marriage went south, they moved to Atlanta (about the time I came out in 1993) and later on to North Carolina, which is where they were living when Joan suffered her fatal stroke. I don't know what Carol is doing these days or where she lives.

Next up: Roy, Betty and Jeff