My story... How I came to be...



My mother had three ornery brothers who tormented
and teased her relentlessly.
They would hold up a toothpick or a piece of string
and taunt her.

"Juleen!!" they'd whine indicating this was how she looked.
She was always quite thin and was tall for her age.
Because of these brothers,
she thought she was unattractive, ugly.

She could have been a model
had she been born in a different place or age...

she was beautiful.
This is the reason she never wanted any ornery boys
of her own...

because of these three ornery brothers.

My father & mother met at a dance
at the Glovera Ballroom in Grand Island.

Two weeks after they met
he went to California with a girlfreind he had already,

but he wrote to mother and soon came back
because he couldn't stop thinking about her.
They started dating and sometime later
when my father asked my mother to marry him, she said,
"on one condition... I don't want any boys...
I want 2 girls, 2 years apart!"

He said, "I can do that!"
I don't know where that confidence came from
since his own parents had six sons
before they got their first daughter.

So they were married... October 19, 1941



And two years later...


I was born...


And two years after me...

came my baby sister...
Jerrilynn

My sister and I are 2 years and 22 days apart.
My father had indeed done it as he said he could.

This is Mother & me on her first Mother's Day
when I was 11 months old.
See how beautiful she was...
she still is...


When I got pregnant,
my mother wanted me to have a little girl...
no ornery boys!!
But, of course, I had Matt...
and she loved him so much.
My mother learned that all little boys were not like
her ornery brothers...
when later Wade and then Phillip joined Matt, Marci & Jill
in list of grandchildren.
She loved them all.
She also loved her brothers...
they were quite close in later life.

Mother: Phyllis Juleen Sipple
born June 10, 1919 in Grand Island, NE
Father: Bernhardt Ferdinand "Barney" Reher
born March 7, 1912 in Hall County, NE
Me: Joyann "Jodi" Reher
born June 11, 1944 in Urbana, Illinois
My sister: Jerrilynn Reher
born July 3, 1946 in Grand Island, NE


2 comments:

Matty G said...

Good job on your first post - pictures and all! I loved reading it.

Phil said...

Great idea. 3 very neat ladies. I hope Grammy can access and write from her setup too.