Then There Were Two

 There are now only two remaining Ridnour cousins of the original seventeen. Leona was the last of Uncle Guy and Aunt Lottie Inman's children. She died on Valentine's Day - three days after her and Walt's 57th wedding anniversary.
Mom was closer to her Haley cousins than she was to her Inman cousins and the Inman cousins didn't come to the family reunions as often as everyone else, so my memories of them are fewer. And most of them are sad.

 Leona had an older brother, Ray Leroy, pictured here with Leona and their parents, Guy and Lottie. I never knew Ray, but I remember Mom telling me about him. When he was almost eighteen years old, he was kicked in the stomach by a colt. He died two days later. That was in April of 1940. The previous August, Ray and Leona's little sister, Macey had died. She was six years old. Mom was one of the pall bearers at her funeral.
Uncle Guy and Aunt Lottie lived north of Corning; west of where Lake Icaria is now. We went there once to see them and my great-grandma Kate Ridnour who was living with them. I was always fascinated by Uncle Guy because Mom had told me he was one-quarter Cherokee Indian. I believed that was where the girls got their beautiful dark eyes and lovely cheek bones.
In 1945, Leona married Rex Kirkman. They had two daughters, Jeanie and Janice. I don't remember Rex, but I do remember his death in 1953 - how sad it was for Leona and the two little girls.

 Finally, some happiness when Leona married Walter Veatch in 1955. I remember going to visit them when their son, Johhny was born. A daughter, Julie, followed, completing their family. In this picture from their wedding day, Walt and Leona are flanked by Walter and Lola Brokaw - Leona's sister and brother-in-law. In front are Jean and Janice.

 I found this Christmas card from when Jeanie was a year old among Grandma Ridnour's pictures. I returned it to her when I attended visitation. I hadn't seen her in many years. Julie was the only one of the kids I had seen recently. (Johnny died in 2001.) I reminded Janice of the time I had stopped to see her when we both lived in Des Moines; something she had no memory of and I only have a vague memory of a house somewhere on the south side.
What I do remember is a family dinner in the mid-50's at Reldon and Lois Ambrose's near Lenox. Les and Mark were little. Some of the older cousins walked down the road a short distance to an old house. We went in and started exploring. I saw what I thought was a head in a bucket and ran screaming out the door. It turned out to be a horse tail. I remember someone saying that the house was "where Rex and Leona had lived." When I was talking to Janice, she mentioned that she and her husband live on the home place. One of these spring days I am going to drive down there to see if any of those childhood memories return.

In this picture, Leona's mother, Aunt Lottie, is the girl on the right. She was the youngest of the Ridnour kids. Aunt Florence is on the left and Grandpa Joe is in front. Aunt Lottie and Uncle Guy had five children. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Delphia had three girls. Aunt Florence and Uncle Tom had nine kids. Two of their girls, Darlene and Doris, are the last living of the cousins.