Whipple Memorial

Thinking of Ray.
This will be the first time for Taylor and Evan not to spend special time on Christmas day with Uncle Raymond. He’d be in a Santa outfit or with some great surprise. It was a major part of Christmas for all of us. Often he would come in he middle of the night and set something up so it’d be here for the boys in the morning. They’ve learned a lot about caring for other people from their precious Uncle Raymond.

This was a posed picture taken at Paul Anderson (Dad says Ft. Sam and he’s probably right) to represent artists being hard at work for a brochure or something. I can tell it was used for printing because it has red printer’s pencil cropping lines. Maybe somebody else knows more about it. Granny had several from this photo shoot and gave me one when I was a teenager, she was really proud of it. Raymond thought he might follow Granddad as a fulltime commercial artist and he did for a while until he realized that he just couldn’t take being locked up in an office all day. When talking about it Raymond always modestly said that Uncle Bill and John Sr. had more natural talent. That may be so but Raymond had plenty. Of course Bill and Dad weren’t going to sit behind a desk either. Anyway, isn’t Raymond particularly good looking in this photo? No wonder Granny was proud.

about Raymond showing her around Santa Fe. I was telling her about this. Jimmie, Uncle Bill and I drove up there with Raymond in a VW bug for Fiesta one year. He timed the trip so that we could see this, the burning of Zazobra. It’s a local ritual where “Old Man Gloom” is set on fire signifying a couple of weeks of being able to celebrate without worry. Or something like that. It was amazing to see.

It’s a Polaroid so I bet my Dad took it, he was the family’s king of the self developing Polaroid photos in the 60′s. This is Raymond and his dad, our beloved Granddad, in 1965 right after the historical maker was awarded to the Square Nail.

our 23 year daughter who is now out of college and living on her own for the first time. After our talk I went into our family photos and found these with her great uncle Raymond. The house Casey lived in came from Raymond, her first car came from Raymond. The attention he gave to Taylor and Evan was constant and “one on one” but he did his thing a little more in the background with Casey. With the boys he would quiz them directly just about everyday, in person or over the phone, about how they were doing and what they were thinking and what was happening but with Casey he would mostly keep track of what was going on with her through Jimmie and I. She was a huge source of pride for him. He watched her from the time she was born and helped us care for her all though her life. He told me all the time that he thought she was very special. Women have always been held in the highest respect in our family, again going back to Granny, Aunt Phyllis and Aunt Inez; they ran the show. He didn’t have any of his own but he was absolutely great with kids. He used to say he had the best deal because he could enjoy them them but not have to hang around for any fit throwing. Like everything, he did it his way and it really worked for him.