My family doesn't have heirlooms either, but our repetoire of family stories, collected from the families of both my father and mother, keeps multiplying. This past weekend, a small contingent of my mother's family, the Slades, gathered in Branson, Missouri to swap stories, tell tales and generally catch up on one another's lives. Luckily for me, several of the cousins I grew up with were also able to attend, enabling me to touch base with that part of our Slade Family tribe.
“The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people – no mere father and mother – as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.” ~ Pearl S. Buck
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| The Slade Family Reunion in Branson, Missouri June 22 -24, 2012 |
"If you don’t recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are. "
--Madeleine Engle
My mother's family can trace their roots in Stafford County, Kansas back to 1886 when Edward Wilkens Slade, a Civil War veteran, filed a homestead claim on SW/4 35-25-12 and a timber claim on NW/4 35-25-12 in Stafford County, Kansas.
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| Barbara Slade Baar, Darryl Raymond Slade and Phyllis Slade McClure |
"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future."
--Alex Haley
My cousin, Darryl Slade, is the only male Slade descendant on our part of the Slade family tree. We unanimously made him the keeper of our four generations photo that shows Edward Wilkens Slade, our Civil War veteran homesteader on the right side. In the center of this photo is my great-grandfather Francis Byron Slade, who is holding my uncle Byron James Slade when he was just a baby. On the left is my grandfather Edward McClain Slade, known to me as Gramp.
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| Four Generations of Slades Edward McClain Slade, Francis Byron Slade, Edward Wilkens Slade and baby Byron James Slade |
I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich.
-- Television show M*A*S*H's Colonel Potter
Perhaps I caught the Baar branch of my Slade family at a bearish moment here in our hotel's lobby. Still, I was very glad to see them at this reunion!
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| Willard & Phyllis McClure next to a locamotive of the Branson Scenic Railway |
My dad Willard McClure is an only child whose family rarely got together when I was growing up, but even he enjoys his wife's Slade family reunions for many of my mother's cousins were dad's contemporaries when he was growing up. Plus, Dad scouts out the railroad scene near the reunion's venue. Here he is shown with my mom standing next to the locomotive of the Branson Scenic Railway. Too bad we didn't have time to purchase tickets and ride this railway. Next time, Dad, we'll do it!
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| Dad's consolation prize was a cup of frozen yogurt! |
“Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.”
--Margaret Mead
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