On This Day in Family History - March 29

 Ronald Gene Burford was born 29 March 1944

Ron was the youngest of my mother's three brothers 

Here is what Mom wrote about Ron -

My youngest brother, Ron was born in 1944 while we lived on South Fair Avenue.  He was born the day before my eighth birthday just a couple of hours before midnight.  Mama told me he was my birthday present and I took it seriously.  He always ‘belonged’ to me.  Mama and I had some trouble over that later when he was a toddler and I just wouldn’t put up with her punishing him in any way.  If she scolded him, I would pick him up and love on him.  She gave me to understand that I had to quit doing that.  So from then on, when Ronnie got into trouble I would just walk outside knowing that he would follow me, and then I’d pick him up and love on him somewhere out of Mama’s sight.  Ron always said he grew up with two mothers, and that was true.

Here is what Cleffie (Ron and Wathada's mother) wrote about him -

And then one day, when the baby was about a couple of months old maybe, why we had company -- my husband’s sister and her family came over to visit for a few hours, and the baby was laying there on the bed, but he was awake and so my husband’s sister was kinda playing with him there a little bit, and he was laying on his stomach and kinda like he was going to slide off the bed or something only we was hold of him.  Anyway she patted him on the bottom pretty good several times you know, just petting him, and sounded like she was spanking him and my daughter said, “Don’t -- don’t do that! You’ll hurt him, he’s tender!”  

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By the time the next one, the second son, was a year and a half old why we came to Michigan.  My parents had already moved up here by that time, so we came and we were sitting there in the house one day and my mother -- I hadn’t paid any attention because I was used to it -- the youngest son, the baby, was sitting there in the little rocking chair and he was just humming away.  He couldn’t talk yet -- he had a little difficulty getting where he could talk where you could understand him, but he finally did.  Anyway, at that time he just couldn’t talk very good at all.  So he just hummed.  And he’d sit there in that chair and just hum and hum every tune that he knew, and that was all of them that the kids sang.  But this one was, one certain one was “A Bicycle Built For Two”.  And he sat there humming that and I wasn’t paying any attention because you know, I was use to him doing it, he’d done it so long.  And my mother noticed and she said, “I want you to listen to that kid.”  I said, “What?”  She said, “He sang that tune just as good as a grown person.”  And I said, “Yeah, he’s been doing that a long time.”  She just thought that was something else.     

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The following 2 photos were taken in 1974

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Ron Burford died in 1981, at age 37, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.

We sure do miss him.