Henry “Bud” Tarver, across from his great-grandson Joshua Vaughan, and brothers, Jessie R. and John Rubin Tarver, playing dominoes on our back deck at Lake Sam Rayburn, our home on Thanksgiving Day  2013.

I remember feeling very blessed, when I took this photo. We lost my Uncle Jessie on Christmas Day 2014. He was special to me, and we loved to share our family’s history.  He shared with me much of the rich contend of my writings about our Tarver, McKeithen lineage. The memories dearest to my heart are when he talked about his little brother “Bud” my daddy, he was in WWII  when they received the telegram back home saying he and 3 others soldiers  were missing in action, in the Battle of the Bulge, the tears sled silently down his face. Eight days later they received a letter from his Sargent telling his family they (and all Americans), should be very proud of his valor as he came marching back to his unit with 91 German pensioners. They had been cut off behind enemy lines, the polish people had hidden them under their barn where their cows were, and at night  fed them boiled duck eggs. While the Germans were looking for them in their houses and beet fields. Uncle Jessie told me, my little brother, and your daddy was a true War Hero!  He was in St. Elizabeth hospital in Beaumont, Texas 6 days after heart surgery. My home was only five minutes away, his only son Bobby Lee, my first cousin had ask me to check on him while he returned to Dallas where he lived to take care of some  business.

 I wrote full notebooks of Uncle Jessie’s memories those days. Each morning I ran by to visit him at breakfast, after my first sales call at one of the local Industrial Plants. Most days I had lunch appointments, but right after, back to the hospital to visit with Uncle Jessie most all afternoons. My husband Wesley would come by to visit after work and we so enjoyed Uncle Jessie’s stories about his and his siblings growing up in San Augustine, Texas.