Our Families Matter - Past and Present: April 2021

2021 – 52 ancestors for 52 weeks

(challenge by Amy Johnson Crow)

My challenge for 2021, I am writing 52 “stories” about my mother’s parents and their line instead of 52 ancestors. I thought it would be a good way to get those stories onto the page for others to enjoy.

The story about the “Power" of Friendship is what I am writing about for this week’s theme.

My mother, Pat, lived down the road from a family with 4 children. Pat was in the eighth grade when she met this family – Elmer and Mona Cruson. Whenever Mona needed a babysitter, Pat was just the person for the job. She and Mona became really good friends. Even Pat’s little sister, Darlene, played with one of the Cruson’s daughter.

Pat’s parents and grandparents decided to make the move to Ashland Oregon after Pat graduated from High School but Pat wanted to stay in Vale to finish her dental work. During that timeframe, Elmer and Mona, moved to Nyssa Oregon and offered Pat a place to stay. Pat continued doing a lot of babysitting while deciding what her next phase of life would be. One of Mona’s friend needed Pat to stay with her two children while she was in the hospital having her third child. While Pat was there, a man stopped by to see his brother. This man’s name was Robert Kurtz (who went by Bob). After visiting with Pat, he finally asked Pat out on a date. That was in June. By the 18^th of August of that same year, they were married. Guess Pat found what her next phase of life would be.

Pat continued to visit Mona all the time, they even lived next door to each other during the first year of Pat’s married life. The friendship continued even though Pat and Bob moved around quite a bit. Mona’s girls would babysit Pat’s children from time to time.

Pat’s children remember spending many evenings with the Cruson family while the adults would play pinochle, a card game. Cruson’s had a cool house. There was a “secret” door into their boy’s bedroom. Anyway, that is what we thought but it really was a door through a cupboard that entered into a room converted from part of the garage. The girl’s bedroom was upstairs in an attic type sitting with a play area in the crawl space. And the best part was Mona had a drawer full of fun toys that we could play with.

As Mona’s children began having their own children, Pat’s children would then babysit. That’s a three-generation babysitting progression.

The years flew by while Mona and Pat continued to remain the best of friends and visit each other no matter how far away they lived from each other.

The Power of Friendship is great!

While I was uploading Elmer’s obituary to the Familysearch.org family tree site, I discovered that one of other people entering information onto the site was related to us through the Hollingsworth/Patton line.

How interesting! I must research this! We had no idea that the two families could be related!

Here are some pictures I found in our Treasure Box: