‘A devoted husband, a kind father, & a true friend’

Today while connecting up relatives on Find A Grave, I discovered a copy of my great grandfather‘s obituary. It’s probably from the Lake Preston Times, the paper serving the community where he lived and farmed. His son Everett, my great uncle, is still living, going strong at age 100. He looks just like him.

Unfortunately, his father George, as Everett explained to me a few years ago, had taken up a bad habit, passed on by his father Frank: chewing tobacco. Of course, today there are warning labels and such. But back then who knows how much they knew about the terrible consequences of tobacco. Sadly, the habit caught up with George Hay in 1941. It had taken his father Frank prematurely, too, in 1903.

In 1939, Everett had moved west, to Seattle. He was chasing after a girl, Grace, whose family had moved to Oregon. They were married the same year his father died. One day he got a call from his older sister Lois. She explained how sick there father was. So Everett packed up and returned home, taking over the family farm after his father had passed.

The move west would have to wait.

ajh

June 3, 1945

This is a photo I’ve never seen before. I wonder what other gems are lurking out there long forgotten in someone’s attic that I’ve never seen and don’t know about. It’s a photo taken on my grandparents’ wedding day.

According to what my mother wrote on Facebook, starting with the back row, left to right, pictured are Betty — a good friend of my grandmother and the maid of honor at the wedding, her older brother Everett — who just celebrated his 100th birthday, the bride and groom — my grandparents, Ray and Marilyn, Everett’s wife Grace, and the youngest sibling of the five also named Grace. In the front row are my great grandmother, Geneva Estella Darling Hay, Marilyn’s older sister Azalea — known to some as Kay, and the pianist from the Lake Preston Methodist Church.

Apparently the wedding took place at the family farm just south of town, what their father George named Fair Haven Farm. The oldest sibling of them all, Lois, was pregnant at the time and didn’t attend.

ajh