My Other Grandmother’s Sisters
I keep thinking about this picture in conjunction with the one of my maternal grandmother’s sisters on the horse at Knott’s Berry Farm.
I believe this picture was taken about 1951 when many of the Cooper family gathered in Lubbock for what must have been my great-grandmother’s 80th birthday.
Or, it might have been taken Easter 1950 because I have this picture of my great-grandmother and my grandmother, her daughter, has written on the back “Mother Cooper, Easter 1950.”
The recurring theme in the two pics seems to be the corsages and the taking of pictures in the backyard in a straight-backed chair.
These sisters all lived in Texas. Aunt Marge lived in Houston, my grandmother Rachel lived in Perryton, Aunt Mary lived in Tulia, and Aunt Bettie lived in Amarillo. Aunt Jo lived in Lubbock where all these sisters had grown up and where their mother also still lived. The father of the family had been a school teacher (also a cotton farmer and a freighter) and many of them had followed in their father footsteps. With the exception of my grandmother, the oldest of these daughters, they all had college degrees. Aunt Margie, in fact, would go on to earn a doctorate. There’s a school in the Lubbock school system named for my Aunt Jo who did early work with special needs children. My Aunt Mary has a wing of a hospital in Tulia named for her. Since my dad’s death, I receive about $.12 a quarter from an inheritance Aunt Mary left all her nieces and nephews. My dad was one of 8–Aunt Bettie had 3 children and Aunt Jo had 1. Aunt Margie did not have children, and the family lore is that my granmother was wishing for “just one” of my aunt Margie’s college degrees, and Aunt Margie siad she would trade one for “just one” of my grandmother’s children. I’m sure it wasn’t meant literally, but it does provide a little insight into their lives and how much they valued family.
Aunt Margie wrote in her memoirs that when the “Cooper Girls” got together at their mother’s home, they would go into the bedroom and exchange clothes. I wonder if they are wearing their onw clothes in this photo–somehow, I think they are. I wrote here about my grandmother Osborne’s fabulous sewing skills and I’d be willing to bet she made the dress she is wearing.
I can’t imagine these girls astride a stuffed horse.
