June 22

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO...

Beverly Jean Jones Radde

1944-2005

Beverly was a first cousin once removed -- her mother Evalee and my grandmother Cleffie were sisters. They had a close relationship, and at one time their families even shared a house that was divided into two apartments. 

Evalee and Charles had two children, Buck and Beverly. Cleffie and Lester had four children, Wathada, Morris, Bob, and Ron. 

Beverly married Ted Radde soon after graduating from high school and they had four children. 

Beverly passed away in 2005, at age 61, as a result of complications of surgery for breast cancer.

BONUS: 

Here's what Wathada wrote about living in the house shared with Evalee's family:

"1656 Territorial Road ...  After school was out that year, we moved from the farm to Sister Lakes for the summer.  It was a good summer.  We rented a big old summer house right by one of the lakes.  But when it got to be about the first of August, Mama said we better find somewhere else to live before winter came.  So we moved to another big old house at Consel’s Corners, which was the area where Napier and M-140 Hwy intersect.  The house was on Napier, not too far east of that corner.  We lived there for that month and when it was time for school to start, we found that we had to go to a little old country school that was only a one-room school and it was two miles from where we lived down a little gravel road, and there wasn’t even a school bus to pick us up.  So Mama said we were going to have to find a different place to live because Bob couldn’t walk that two miles to school and back every day because he had asthma.  So that day, we went in search of someplace else to live and Mama spotted a big old empty house directly across Crystal Avenue from Hull School, and it was empty.  So we asked around and found out that it was owned by the House of David, and it was for rent.  So that’s where we moved.  It was a two-story house and had a complete apartment upstairs including kitchen.  So we sublet the upstairs to Mama’s sister and her husband and their two kids (Evalee and Charles and Buck and Beverly).  We had family close around us again.  It was my favorite place we had ever lived since leaving Judsonia (but I still felt that I didn’t have a “home” to go back to like normal people have.  I have always missed having a hometown.  I still do).  But Grandpa and Grandma, and all their kids – grown up, married and with children of their own, were all around close so we were in the middle of the family again and I loved that."