Mothers' Day - 1940

From the left: Ruth and Ronald Lynam, Lila Roberts and Lois Mitchell.


Seventy-one years ago today, Mom's sister and brother-in-law, Evelyn and Howard Roberts, had their third child - their first daughter - Lila Mae. The very next day, Ruth and Louis Lynam had their first child, Ronald Earl. He was born the day after his father's 23rd birthday - Lila being born on her Uncle Louis's birthday and beating her cousin by one day.

Mother's Day was May 12th that year, so the sisters got to celebrate it with week-old babies. Although with two little boys plus the new baby, I doubt Aunt Evelyn had much time for celebrating.

I don't know why Aunt Lois is in the above picture instead of Lila's mother. Perhaps Aunt Evelyn was taking the picture. They were all arrayed on the front lawn of the house where the girls had spent their teen years. It was a large home we referred to as "Walter Johnson's" for the family that lived there after Grandpa and Grandma moved to a farm west of Iveyville.

Mom was always fond of this place - telling us about the large fish pool, climbing atop the barn with her sister, Lois and keeping baby lambs in the basement during the severe winter of 1936. When her dementia worsened and she talked of "going home" all the time, I thought this was the place she was thinking about going to.

The same day Lila was born, John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Eighty years earlier in 1861, Arkansas seceded from the Union. Three years earlier, in 1937 while the newly engaged Ruth was planning her October wedding, the German zeppelin, Hindenburg, caught fire and was destroyed while trying to dock in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

On May 6, 1877, Chief Crazy Horse surrendered to US troops in Nebraska. King Louis XVI of France moved his court to the Palace of Versailles on May 6, 1682 - 235 years before the aforementioned first-time father, Louis Lynam, was born on May 6, 1917. (I have often wondered if Dad was named for those French kings.)

Lila, Dad and Ron will probably never appear on any 'this date in history' lists, but they will always be the ones I think of on May 6 & 7 - and Mom, of course, because it is almost Mother's Day again.