This is a rare photograph in mom's collection for a few reasons. Most significantly, there aren't that many photographs of Grandpa Breeze, let alone of Grandpa and Grandma Breeze together. Second, this is the only one that I am aware of that has our two grandparents and the two of us. Third, this is one of the very few photos we have of our cousin Doug in this era, and only one of two of him in the two albums with the two of us. This is also the only one that features the grandparents and the three cousins.
My Aunt Jean recalls that she and Doug came down from San Leandro, CA, by train. Her parents picked them up at the train depot in downtown Los Angeles. They all drove to the Santa Ana house for Easter weekend, probably in 1953, judging by our ages in the photograph. Only a few pictures were taken that weekend.
Grandpa Breeze and Grandma lived in Santa Monica, CA, in the early 50's. They would soon return to White Cloud, Kansas, where Grandma would take over running the restaurant from Doris and Hap (their third daughter and son-in-law). Grandpa Breeze would manage the gas station down by the highway that runs along the Missouri River. He had been having health issues, and Aunt Jean would tell him that he needed to see a doctor. At first they believed he had an ulcer. But he would take ill down at the gas station, be found by a neighbor collapsed on the ground, and be taken up to the restaurant. He was then whisked to the hospital where they realized that he had had a heart attack. He would soon die. This was the summer of 1954.
So, this photograph likely represents the only time we ever met him before he died, perhaps just fourteen or fifteen months later. Mom left us in California with dad when she joined all of the other Breeze children (mom, the oldest; Aunt Jean; Aunt Doris; and Uncle Robert, the youngest) and relatives for the funeral in White Cloud. He was buried in the White Cloud cemetary where his wife would join him many years later, in 1989, thirty-five years after his death, and where mom would join them both in 2002. Less than a year later, Aunt Doris and Uncle Hap would die within a couple of days of one another and be buried there together, too.
The White Cloud cemetary is featured in the final book in the Rainbow Arc of Fire series, Olive Branch, named for the cemetary and for events in the book itself. The cover photograph of a carved dove of peace is from the marble sign at the entrance to the cemetary. The cemetary is filled with Hooks and Nuzums and Breezes and all of the other families who lived and married and had offspring and then died in and around White Cloud over the hundred and a half years of the town's existence.
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