More Mwemorial Day memories

After I was married we use to take my in-laws around to the cemeteries. They were originally from Valley Falls so we visited a small cemetery there near Dunavant, Kansas where my husbands older sister was buried and many of their older relatives. We went year and it was a mess. The fence was falling down and the flowers from the year before were laying dead on the graves. The road into was awful. His sister's grave had a peony bush on it and looked good. Ray was covering the legislature at that time and he got some of his Senators and Representatives to pass a bill making counties take care of cemeteries in their own counties. The next year we went back and the cemetery was mowed, a new fence was up a new flagpole and it was very neat. The road was now gravel and not dirt. One of his relatives graves had been by the fence and was not there anymore. It was really quite a pretty one now. Then we would check out the Valley Falls cemetery and go on our way to Topeka. I remember one year we put flowers on a relative's grave only to have an aunt turn up and say we had put them on the wrong graves and throw our flowers into the road. We gathered them up and put them on a grave I hope it was maybe a correct one. The best thing was I got to visit my sister and I loved that. We had lunch and then drove back to Kansas City. My husband was cremated and his ashes are in a place at our church. You can't put flowers on it so have flowers on the alter sometime in the year in his memory.

Memorial Day

I remember one of my first memorial Days I went my mother to the cemetery to put on flowers. When we were done I did not want to get in the car so my mother drove off and left me. She actually never had me out of her sight but I was scared and crying when she returned. As I was growing up we went many places and different cemeteries. Her twin was in one of the original cemeteries in Topeka. Her parents, uncles and aunts were all right together. Later my parents were buried in a new section of the cemetery where you had to climb a small hill but was near a bell tower. As years went by the flowers became plastic flowers. After I was married we went to several cemeteries as my husbands family had lived in Valley Falls, Kansas and we had two cemeteries there. My mother-in-law would pick the buds on her peony bushes and put them in the refrigerator and take them to the cemetery as she did not like plastic flowers. My neighbor still does that and takes them down to Missouri on Memorial Day so it is still being done. One year on Memorial Day weekend our oldest daughter was married. That was really special and we had to pay extra to the florist because of the holiday. It was well worth it.

Confirmation

I was talking to my sister, Helen and trying to remember when I joined the church and she could not remember any better than I could but I know I joined. I think we had classes at the minister's house which was only two blocks from the church and I think we visited Dr. Charles Sheldon who started our church in Topeka. He lived out by Washburn College and was very nice. He ran the Topeka newspaper for one week as Jesus would have run the news. The church was near the black community and they were always involved in his preaching as he believed God and Jesus accepted all of his people. I grew up with very little prejudice about people and their beliefs. So I must have joined the church at some point. Now the group at out church has a very involved path they follow to become members. I know when my husband to be joined the church in college it was much more involved and he was hampered the day he joined because his suspenders broke during the ceremony.

My Mother's birthday

Today is my mother's birthday. She was a twin but her twin did not live long. She named my oldest sister after her twin. She never liked her name much as it was Ethel Bessie. My mother's name was Edna Jessie. I was named after one of her sisters. She lived just short of a hundred so she lived well. She was a very active person. She drove for the Red Cross during the war. She was very proud of her graduation from college and they honored her for her many years before she died. She loved to cook at the church and was good at that. She wanted all her children to go to college and we went to Washburn and all graduated. I was not as smart as the rest but my brother was in my ability also but my two sisters were smart. She taught many women to drive because they had no way else to learn. My sister Helen took very good care of her. She had a great sense of humor.

More history of Johnson County

I have a good friend who was kind enough to share another city in Johnson County-Lenexa. Howard Lee tells me Lenexa was platted in 1869 by a young man James Butler Hickok who had staked a claim of 160 acres on what is now the corner of 83rd and Clare. It was the Santa Fe Trail and wandered through the southeast part of Lenexa on it's way to Santa Fe. Later he became a scout for the Free-State Army and was eventually known as "Wild Bill Hickok". The railroad went thru the town and there was a depot. One of the residents was Blackfoot. She was the widow of Chief Blackhoof, who was the 2nd signer of the 1854 treaty that ceded 1.6 million acres of the Kansas Shawnee reservation.
Legends has it the town was to be called Bradshaw but he refused and the name was Na-Nex-Se. I appreciate Howard telling me why the town was named Lenexa.