Remembering Dad

Father's Day is very difficult for me. I lost my dad to pancreatic cancer on August 4, 2010. I would give anything to celebrate this special day with him one more time.  

I've been feeling nostalgic, and as I sat down the other day to go through pictures, I came across these of my dad. I wanted to honor him today and share these with all of you.  

This is a picture of my dad and sons. It brings back a lot of memories. Dad made one or two trips a year up from Corpus Christi to visit us in Dallas. This picture was taken in 1994.

My children would get so excited when he would come for a visit. They loved being with their Granddaddy. While visiting, my oldest son, TJ, would beg for him to make his Donald Duck voice, or to sing the songs, "A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" and "The Green Grass Grew All Around." Dad never disappointed. By the time he finished the songs, they were all laughing so hard they were crying.

This picture of my dad and me was taken in Cedar Hill, Texas in 1978.  

Dad loved jokes and playing around. We were throwing snowballs at my sister and grandmother.

I loved being close to him whenever I could, and I am so grateful my children got the chance to know him. 








This last picture still brings tears to my eyes. It is very special and I will treasure it forever. 
It is one of the last pictures I had taken with my dad. It was taken on July 6, 2010 - just a few weeks before Dad passed on in August. 
Although my parents divorced when I was seven years old, my Dad wanted my Mom to be a part of this day. In fact, she was around quite a bit in the last few weeks to help. I have only one other picture with me and the two of them together after the divorce. 

Daddy, you may be gone, but you are not forgotten. You are always in my heart. I love you.


Clay Ford 1934-2010

Reconnecting with Family on Collateral Lines

Growing up, my sister and I never really got to know any of our extended family very well, especially the children our ages. I only had one aunt; her two children were the only cousins I knew and they were 10 and 12 years older than me. I have fond memories of shooting hoops with my cousins when I was about 4 or 5, but soon after that, they were too old to play with us. They were heading off to college and getting married. All my friends in school would come back from summer vacation or Christmas holidays, talking about all the fun they had with their grandparents, cousins, and other family members. As I listened to all of their stories, I longed to have that type of family.

My grandmother was a major part of my life. My parents divorced when I was young, and she moved in with my dad to raise me and a younger sister. She was the only grandparent I ever got a chance to know. The others were all deceased. She would take me to visit her sisters whenever we could make the trip. I got to know three of them; Mary Wickliffe Burnside, Lela Wickliffe Dunnahoe, and Lola Wickliffe Richardson. When we lived in Corpus Christi, we visited Lola. She had one son and I do not recall ever meeting him. Later, we moved to Dallas and Lela and Mary lived in Terrell - only about 40 minutes away. Lela never had children, and we visited with her the most. Mary had three children and several grandchildren. I only met them a few times over the years on these visits. This is a picture of my dad with my grandmother and my grand-aunt Lela.

I remember listening to my grandmother and her sisters as they recounted stories of days gone by. I remember my dad talking about his cousins and how they played marbles, went crawdad fishing and other exploits. They had all been so close in their younger days. Why didn't my generation get a chance to know the other cousins? Maybe it was the physical distance that prevented us from being close to the younger members. I always assumed they moved away from the area. Maybe it was the fact that the older generations, having all ready raised their own children, would rather reminisce with kin their own age, or maybe there was another reason. I never questioned it when I was a child and now it is too late to find out the answers.

The other day, while doing research on collateral lines, I came upon an obituary for the daughter of Mary Wickliffe Burnside. Her name was Helen Josephine BURNSIDE. I remember seeing her maybe three or four times in my life when I was young, but I recognized her picture immediately. She still looked the way I remembered her. She passed away 5 weeks before I discovered the obituary. She was listed as living in Forney, Texas - that is only about 30 minutes from me. I never knew that she had lived so close. The obituary also listed her children and they are all in the area. In the last couple of years, I have found numerous records for extended family within a short driving distance of where I live. Unfortunately, most of the records show it is too late to connect. They have gone home. If only I had researched the collateral lines earlier. It would have been nice to have sat down with my relatives and learned more about them. Instead, I have spent years only working on my direct ancestral line.

Genealogy isn't just about researching the ancestors who have gone on ahead of us. It is about connecting or reconnecting with family. In so doing, we learn more about ourselves. Today, I am more determined that ever to work on descendant research of the collateral lines. I want to reach out to those long-lost cousins to learn more about my heritage and to swap and preserve family stories.

Do you have collateral lines you know nothing about? I challenge you to research those lines and see what you can discover.

My Immediate Ancestors

             Back row (left to right): Lola Wickliffe, William Ezra Ford, Daisy Ruth Ford
         Front row (left to right): Ethel Wickliffe Ford, Clay Franklin Ford, Arthur Elisha Ford

Arthur Elisha Ford (my grandfather) was born in 1896, the 5th of 6 children. His father, William Preston Ford, died in Arkansas when he was 12 years old. He moved to Quinlan, Texas with his mother, Sarah Elizabeth (Dodd) Ford and younger sister, Mary, when he was about 17 years old. There he met, and fell in love with, Ethel Wickliffe. They married on 14 Mar 1920 in Quinlan, Hunt County, Texas.

Ethel Wickliffe, born in 1903 in Mountain View, Arkansas, was the oldest child of Richard Franklin Wickliffe and Estelle Lynn.  She had 4 younger sisters and a young brother who died when he was about four years old.

Ethel and Elisha had four children. William Ezra (1922-1950), Daisy Ruth (1925-2012), and identical twin boys Clay Franklin (1934-2010) and Clayton Richard (1934-1941). After Clayton died in 1941, Ethel struggled to overcome the depression. She would sit at the cemetery every day and cry. In order to help his wife, Elisha decided to move his family to south Texas to his sisters' ranch. They eventually settled in Corpus Christi, Texas.

As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Elisha dug ditches for the government, and Ethel worked in a sewing room. They became members of the Pentecostal Church of God, 501 Cheyenne Street, Rev. CC Hurst, in Corpus Christi. Elisha started having numbness in his feet and eventually was paralyzed from the waist down. Ethel would put him in his wheelchair before she left for work, and he would wheel about the house, cooking, sweeping, and cleaning. Many different doctors checked him out, but couldn't come up with a medical diagnosis for him. He died two years later on 19 Oct 1946.

They are all gone now. I miss them all so much. I never knew my grandfather or my uncle, as they died before I was born. My grandmother’s stories about them and her life are what got me interested in doing genealogy. I never tire of searching for an elusive ancestor and I have several of those.