re: Tell us an interesting family story

My grandfather knocked up a girl named Audrey Sheppard in high school around 1939 in Banks, Al. They had a daughter and my grandfather went to war in 1941. When he returned, he found Audrey had run off with Hank Williams. They got divorced and shortly after she married Hank. And they all wound up moving to Shreveport, including my grand father.

My grandmother didn’t tell me this story until after my grandfather passed away because they were embarrassed about it. But she said they always laughed and said he gave Hank his start by sending his paychecks home for Audrey and his daughter while he was off to war.

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So I’m guessing the little girl is your grandmother? Or great Aunt?

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She would be my mom’s 1/2 sister, my aunt I guess. Hank raised her as his own as Audrey lied and said my granddaddy had abandoned them. No one in my family has ever met her and I don’t believe Audrey would let my granddaddy have any contact with her.

I've got a few that I'm very proud of:

My great-great-grandparents, on my father's side, were among the 1st residents of Pilot Point, TX. In the early 1850s. Great-great-grandfather was the town pharmacist.
My great-grandfather was in the first graduating class of the civil-engineering co-op program with SMU + Cotton Belt Railroad. My great-grandmother graduated from SMU to be a career long teacher until retirement. They married at University Methodist shortly after it was built & almost made it to 75 years together. He retired as City Manager of Dallas in the early 70s. He is credited with such projects as the Turle Creek modernization, the land purchase + initial land layout/design of DFW Airport, & oversaw the very modern design & construction of Dallas City Hall. He lived until summer 2006. His funeral was standing room only at that beautiful church on SMU's campus & Dallas City Hall lowered its flags in his honor. The city manager at the time spoke at his service & joked that Dallas could finally experience a surplus budget since it would not longer have to keep paying his retirement, which was 34 years worth of payments up to that point. That got a good laugh.
His eldest son followed in his engineering footsteps at SMU & went on to design the first airport overpass bridges for airplanes, the first of which were implemented at DFW then all over the world. The 2nd son, my grandfather, went into law at SMU & was the Asst. DA for Sherman, TX among other legal jobs. He also worked for BCBS in the 80s as their legal representation in their downtown Dallas office. That office was in the Book Depository building where Oswald shot Kennedy. I got to tour the 6th Floor Museum all the time as a kid. Always so much cooler to me with my grandfather working a floor below in such a historic building-eventhough he wasn't working in the building when Kennedy was shot. Incidentally, my great-grandfather was at a big luncheon awaiting the arrival al of the Kennedys, as he was Asst. City Manager at the time. Apparently dozens of very thick Texas sized steaks were thrown out upon learning of the shooting. He always hated remembering that part...ha!

I recently learned that my great-great-grandfather's home was purchased by some folks & beautifully restored. I have made it my new mission to save up to buy the home to get it back to our family lines.

On my mother's side, my great-grandmother lived her entire life 8 houses down from the Dr. Pepper pharmacy where the sender beverage was invented. She collected every single piece of DP memorabilia you can imagine. When she passed, at 103, in the early 2000s-the family members in charge just sold all the memorabilia in bulk instead of keeping it in the family or actually pricing it out properly...(still irks me to my core to this day).

My mother's father was a Rhodes Scholar. He was also an engineer with the specialization of installing air conditioning into multi-level existing buildings. He & his business partners perished in a plane crash in Lake Ponchartrain attempting to fly back to Dallas for a scheduled meeting with President Kennedy, the day before he was shot, to discuss updating the White House air-conditioning system. Alas, that meeting never took place.

My great-aunt is on a plaque at LSU's Long Fieldhouse Pool as one of the first female & lomg time physical education instructors of the university.

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Tell us an interesting family story

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If I wrote it and I were to be doxxed, it could be very bad for a family member and probably for me, too, just for writing it.

That's all I can write about it. It's like, somebody pissed in the wrong person's cheerios. The worst person to piss off you can imagine.

My grandmother was always afraid of cougars and especially black panthers. Like deathly afraid. Anytime my grandfather and I went rabbit hunting she always told us to look out for panthers, and to shoot them if we saw one.

The root of the story was that her older brother killed a black panther when he was a teenager and she was a young girl. The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will tell you there is no such thing as a North American black panther, but my great uncle apparently killed one, and the thought of more of them being out there terrified my grandmother for her whole life.

My father's side of the family (my grandmother's side) was all Sicilian in New Orleans. His grandparents were so freshly immigrant, they could not speak fluent English. Lots of mafia on that side. I recently found out that my grandfather (who was in mafia) had a mistress who fell in love with him and was about to spill the beans to his wife. He killed her and kept her body in a car trunk while deciding how to dispose of it. He was caught and arrested - spent time in prison behind it. Lots of other stories just like that. All Sopranos type shite with that side of the family.

Same guy was good friends with old man Brocato (of Brocato's on Carrolton).

My wife's uncle and his family we're in Iran in the late 70s early 80s when the revolution happened. The were taken Americans as hostages. He and his family had to be sumuggled out of the country. They we're not heard from for a couple of weeks until they showed up at my wife's family house.

All they had were the clothes on their back since they had to leave right away to get out before being captured.

I cannot imagine going through that with a wife and small child. Reminds me of the Owen Wilson movie

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My grandfather served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam, then died at 49 of a heart attack while having sex.

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old codger went out with a bang

My great uncle was a P-51 pilot in WW2. Based in Sian, China, (529 FS, 311th FG, 14th AF) he was shot down in 1945 strafing a train yard. Explosion from a locomotive engine sent shrapnel into the underbelly air cooler. He pulled up and bailed out at approx 2500 feet. Hit his head and was knocked unconscious by the tail of the aircraft. Somehow woke up coming down in the chute just before hitting the ground.

he landed in a rice paddy, which at that time was fertilized with human feces...so covered in shite and bleeding, he ran and was able to hide from pursuing Japanese ground troops. Later was captured by Communist guerrillas who smuggled him back to allied lines. A walk of some 200 miles on foot. USAAF pilots had a patch sown into the back of flying jackets that promised to pay 25K in gold for the return of allied pilots. So they treated him pretty well, though he was often hidden in caves.

The return walk took 2 months. He returned to Allied lines on the same day the dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima, 7 August 1945.

Meantime, in Americus Georgia, where my great grandparents lived, he was reported by the Army as MIA, and probably KIA. He returned stateside and walked into my great grandparents house on Christmas eve 1945. The greatest present they ever got. The return of their son. My great grandmother fainted. She literally thought she was seeing a ghost.

Today Uncle Paul is 94 years old. Spry as can be and still my fishing partner a couple of times a year down on the gulf.