Hap and Doris Rowe's House, White Cloud, KS, Summer 1983

The top photograph is of the front of the house, with the picture window that is featured prominently in the opening chapter of RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE:  OLIVE BRANCH.  Cousin Jim's wife, Ruth; my mom, Aunt Doris; Jim's daughter, Tammy, who is all grown up now with children of her own; and Grandma Breeze on the front sidewalk.

The second photo shows Uncle Hap, Ruth, Tammy, Grandma Breeze and Cousin Jim.

I included the bottom photograph even though it is of Uncle Robert and Grandma Breeze in her kitchen of her house on the main street of White Cloud only because it features a telling calendar on the wall behind them.  That calendar is dated 1983, hence the only way I was able to discern that all of the related photographs were taken that summer.  (I was also able to realize that the other aged photographs of White Cloud where Gary Kinateder was included were taken the summer before he was laid up with appendicitis in Topeka in 1983.)

Jim waited several years after his parents' death in 2003 before eventually selling the house he inherited.  That, in a way, became the final gesture that ended the direct connection all of us had to the legacy of White Cloud.  Many of the Hooks and Nuzums and Kellys are buried in the town cemetery, most of whom we never met or knew, except from the stories one or more Uncles and Aunts or my mom told us of their youth in such an out-of-the-way small town.  It was once a thriving burg, but that was a century and more ago.

Grandpa and Grandma Breeze, mom, Aunt Doris and Uncle Hap, and Uncle Robert are buried in the cemetery.  Cousin Jim intends to be buried in a cemetery in Topeka, next to his late wife Ruth, who died after repeated battles with cancer through much of her adult life.  Uncle Robert used to place flags and/or flowers on the graves for Memorial Day when Aunt Jean would send him the money to do so.   He mowed the cemetery grasses for the town, I suspect getting a modest stipend for doing so.  But since his death, no telling who tends the quiet cemetery now, disturb only by passing cars on the way to Highland or Hiawatha or the clanging casino beyond sleepy White Cloud.  

My sister and I accompanied our mom to Kansas in 1957 on the Santa Fe Railways Super Chief train.  (We were there as infants in 1950 or 1951, on the way to California; but we certainly have no memories of that visit.)  We again visited in 1966 when Uncle Robert decided to return and live there for good.  I stopped by in the summer of 1978 when I was finished with my Air Force tour in missiles in Minot, ND, and was on my way to Colorado Springs, to teach at the U.S. Air Force Academy, that fateful assignment that set me on a completely different path.  I was there again in 1982 and 1983.  In 1988, we were all there for Grandma Breeze's 85th birthday reunion.  In 1995, for Doris and Hap's and Aunt Jean and Uncle Lloyd's joint 50th wedding anniversary celebration.  In 2002, for mom's funeral.  In 2003, for Doris and Hap's funeral.  In 2012, for Uncle Robert's funeral.  And then, for me, the visits stopped.