Great Aunt Mary has died. We went to a memorial gathering and I took a few pictures of some historic pictures.
Here are 13 of the 15 Whitmore children, on the occasion of their parents’ fiftieth anniversary. My grandmother, Helen, is in the second row, second from the right.
My mother was a champ and told me all the names and even included their birth order (in parenthesis) (11/12 are twins)
Back L-R: Raymond (11/12); James (2); Raymond (father); Beatrice (4)
Middle: Dorothy (5); Robert (12/11); Helen (mother); Janet (13); Helen (1) Mary (7)
Front: Elizabeth (6); Margaret (10); Thomas (14); Joanne (15); Luecreita (9)
Missing: George (3); Harold (8)
There are currently two of the original fifteen still alive: Aunts Margaret and Janet are still hanging on.
Aunt Mary was the other one of the Whitmores–aside from my grandmother–to marry a Greek. Here’s Aunt Mary and her eventual husband Art Demetrikikus.
And here’s a picture of my Aunt Janet at the first big family picnic we had in 1988 or so. She was walking around in a bikini saying, “Don’t you wish you looked like this at 60?” Reactions to this photograph varied based on people’s view of Aunt Janet and exhibitionism in general. I think it’s a great example of how much of one’s weight is genetic, as one of Janet’s sisters is the woman in the striped muumuu. The Whitmore children had a skinny dad and a plump mom and they took after one or or the other.