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Sunday, October 2, 2022

Smith Family - Laton Smith - December 2002 letter

This letter was sent to my Mother, Lorna Lee Triplett Winch in December of 2002 as a Merry Christmas letter. This letter reads as:

December 26, '02

Greetings, Lorna & Myron:

We received your appreciated Christmas Card which contained your note of concern. Not having heard for a long time from Florida or Ontario. For this and last Christmas we've not been able to mail thee usual greetings. Charge it up to getting older, I guess.

Last year Mary had her occasional ""depression" that lasted some weeks in Nov - Dec. The "manic" portion is not there but a severe e let-down cripples activity and causes much of my focus on her care. Then, Easter Sunday, in the crowded church foyer she was jostled and fell on her left side cracking her shoulder and and femur. So, surgery and weeks of therapy delayed our return north until early August. Except I did spend June for business reasons in Simcoe while Mary was at her daughter's here in Titusville.

We had three nice months in Simcoe and returned here October 31st. Then she had another "spell" but much briefer fortunately for then it was my turn!! Just a month ago getting out of the car in the garage I went blotto. fell face downward to the cement. With likely head injury they helicoptered me to a trauma center hospital in Melbourne 45 miles south of here. I thought it was diabetic low-bloodsugar but the ambulance people tested it and found it was in the normal range. I spent 5 days in that hospital and my face looked like it has been in a prize fight with me losing!

So, a time of recovery since then and no Christmas cards outward again. And, do bad things happen in threes?? sister Janet (91) died from a severe stroke in May, 2000. Then brother Fred, also 91, died in late November AND our nephew (Janet's second son) died just 10 days ago, age 60. douglas Hoeft, a noted educator from Elgin, Ill. and long time member of the Ill. legislature had a routine carotid artery repair BUT then suffered a stroke. They slowly achieve partial recovery and he was on his way to his first therapy when a seisure of some type took Doug. My son (Donn) and daughter (Marcia) and spouses and Fred's 87 year old wife all attended the ceremonies in Elgin.

They said around 1,200 attended the "viewing" on that Friday and over 2,000 at his funeral on Saturday. Many from Elgin but many colleagues from both parties attended. Doug was a noted achieverr in many areas but especially in education in ~~education~~ Illinois. Enough of those happenings!!

Mary and I both hope to mark 85 in a ffew months and hope to continue our pattern of activity in Ontario and Florida. Itt has bbbeen an n intereresting life with many very interesting frieinds and relatives like you. what would it have been life if we had "known" each other 50 or so years ago??? I think it was about 1951 that my parents took a train to Cal. to visit aunt Ida. I wonder if they contacted you?

Maacia (blinking electric did the double "a" as the little finger slept too long on that key!!) (I would really mess up a computer) and two second cousins are still working on a 300 page "SMITH" genealogy. A compilation of memory stories from a scad of descendants many of whom have nevr

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

met or knew the others existed!!! Pluss scads of pictures. The starting point is Charles M. Smith, my Civil War Grandfather. 1846-1897. I hope to be around to o read all the fibs I told about myself!

She has started to compile the Greene story and I'm not sure if she ever achieved E-mail contact with Myra or yourself???? I believe she said that she had tried quite a while ago. Anyway, if Myra had time to contact Marcia MacKinnon here is their lower case, revised address: mackinnon @ cablerocket.com

There might be a - between

the "1" and "e" in "cable"

Or my pencil put it there by accident.

We keep active with church contacts, Mary's daughter and son families close by, watching shuttles go up and land here (with sonic booms) (and straighten pictures on the walls) and with occasional visitors. Also, Janet's surviving husband (91) is 75 miles south in Vero Beach. We try to see him once or twice each winter. Bill was a Rochester boy whose mother ran a board & room house near the Mayo Clinic for patients. In the 1930's he [a] business manager for Henry Luce's Time Inc. Has lots of tales to tell about the publishing industry. At least as it was back then.

Thanks to both of you for keeping in contact. And extend my greeting to Myra and Brian. I assume he is still poking computers at Vandenburg?

*Becacame

(Okay, I'm 84 1/2!

From your sincere cousin

one or twice removed.

Layton

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Smith Family - Laton Smith - Extraneous Thoughts about the Tripletts - page 3

-- 3 --

(Spread out the typing) Mother didn't drive so quite often it was my duty -- not reluctantly -- to come to the place, pick up Mother and three or four of the girls ( all thin back then so the '28 Packard held 'em). Took Mother home first -- naturally --, then the girls. But not necessarily in order of closest-to-home.

I seemed to get lost a little bit in dropping them off. The result being a certain girl would be take home last. Before she departed I'd ask for details of the meeting and anything else for chit-chat. And this is Methodist Gospel truth; from about '22 to '35 (when she left Rochester) Mary was one of the "last home" and in '36 was succeeded by Kit, just arrived from South Dakota. I figured all of this was Home Missionary research.

- - - - - - - -

We arrived here in Mid-May and pitched into flower and vegetable gardening, sprucing up the place here and there and renewed church and contacts with close friends. Oh, marked my 82nd year in June. As you may recall, daughter Marcia and husband Don MacKinnon, live just nine miles away in Port Dover right on Lake Erie. We're six miles inland.

Son Donn and wife Nancy came down from Ottawa/ home-in-Quebec for my birthday and later for Don MacKinnon's birthday bash (clans of Scotch relatives arrived from parts of Canada), then we drove to Donn's home in Quebec near Ottawa in late September for the blazing leaf displays in the Gatineau Hills. Where Kit and I roamed during the dozen years we were in Ottawa. So, it was nice to have those in-family meetings. Also, last winter Donn and Nancy came south see us.

Marcia is still deep into computer genealogy and having finished a nice publication on her mother's more-or-less Norwegian family (Hommedal), she's far into a "Smith version she things may run 300 pages with text and a myriad of pictures. I hope I'm still around to see it!

Well, Lorna, I guess you are the "Gore" as all women are while Myron is for "Bush" because chances are Bush plays golf. I'm right on, right?[!-no my parents were both died in the wool Republicans.] The Canadian government declared a national election last week and it will be voted on November 27th. Why can't Canada have the American fun of a year and a half of campaigning??0

All the best to you,

Your humble "cousin", Laton

Smith Family - Layton Smith - Extraneous Thoughts about the Tripletts - page 2

March 9, 1943:

"To my surprise I had a long letter from my Aunt Ida today. She is 87 years old -- had a slight stroke once and spent a year or more in a wheel chair; also had a cancer cured with radium. And this is what she did last week:

She took her letter to me, out to her mail-box in a pouring rain and the postman had been there, so she brought the letter back and found herself locked out of her house! She finally remembered she had put a small piece of lead pencil under one window, so went to her garage, got the step-ladder and climbed in the window! She was soaking wet, but changing to dry clothes, suffered no ill effects.

So the letter had two parts -- the second to tell me about her escapade and here I had no idea she could even get along without her wheel chair! I did not hear from her at Christmas time, so thought she must be worse." {this would be about Latons mom?LLW}

Then the letter continues about herself. {Stella} Briefly, let's see what she's doing in March, '43:

"It must be after ten, so I must go to bed. Tomorrow we have D.A.R. meeting at Mrs. Gooding's. And church services three nights in a row and Thurs. evening our Business & Profesional Circle meets, too. I have a committee meeting hours. afternoon to plan the Mystery Mother & Daughter dinner for Mar. 30th. A busy week. It was 10° below yesterday morning; 20° above this morning with snow and colder predicted."

EXPLANATIONS:

Stella/Mother is 63 at this time.

The mystery Mother Dinner concerns the Methodist "Standard Bearers" program for high school girls. Their focus was mostly on home and foreign missions pls some socializing (Stay away from boys !") Mother directed this program from about '32 to '42. Now, each girl had a "Mystery Mother" who had various secret contacts with the girls during the year; then at the May banquet the girls met their Mystery Mother.

Both Mary and Kit were in the group but at different times and didn't know each other then. The monthly meetings were at the church and at various homes as I remember.

Smith Family - Layton Smith - Extraneous thoughts about the "Triplett Family" - page 1

October 27, '00

Dear Lorna & Myron;

No, This is not for Christmas ! But for something I've been trying to get at for a LONG time. Sending you excerpts from my Mother's letters to my sister, Janet, in New York.

These excerpts are about the then current doings of Mother's aunt Ida, your great grandmother, Lorna ??? I haven't the family chart in front of me.

Leading to this was the recent death of Janet last May, age 91. She had a severe stroke and demanded (by printing that extra efforts not be made to extend her life. We agreed and she survived about a week or so. Ashes taken back to Rochester [Minnesota] where she is by my Kit.

She had boxes of Mother's letters (hundreds) and I took several to peruse from the early '40's to the '70's. Thus I've seen the "Ida" references. And there may be even more that I haven't discovered.

So, here they are:

Sept. 14, 1941:

"I wonder if I wrote that I had received a letter from Aunt Ida -- she is somewhat better -- gets her own meals. Her son, Harry, stays there nights and his wife comes each day to clean up the house, so she gets along. She is 85. Her grandmother lived to be that old."

Jan. 3, 1942:

"I received a letter from my step-mother (Lucinda - 'Cindy" - Greene, Lorna) and she had heard that my Aunt Ida has had to move from her little house in Burbank because it is so near the Lockheed plant. Of course, she will be paid for it, but it must be a great hardship for her to move, as she is a semi-invalid anyway. Some distant relative (who, Lorna??) had invited her to her home."

Feb. 24, 1942:

"I had a letter from my Aunt Ida. She has not left her house and does not intend to. Is feeling fairly well and manages to take care of herself. She wrote with a pen and her penmanship is marvelous for a woman 86 yeas old -- not much different than it has ever been."