I love my family. I always have loved family. Through the years the family has changed. My grandparents and the greats disappeared first. All of a sudden I realized that I no longer had great Aunts and Uncles. But then I still had all my Aunts and Uncles. Slowly one at a time they also were gone as well as my parents. Now my family consist of my brother, my sons, my nephew and his family and my cousins and I am the oldest..
Cousins are the next thing to your own siblings. We grew up together. Being the oldest of all my cousins, I watched each one grow from their childhood into the adults that they have become. I don't see them often, but that does not diminish the love that I have for them.
There is that family history that we share. I was lucky enough to have know two great grandmothers. My mothers grandmother actually lived with us in my grandparents home. I knew both sets of grandparents, and lived at one point with three of them. I feel the responsibility to some how tell about this part of our family that the others missed. My brother and I were the only grandchildren to know my Lewis grandparents. My Porter family was luckier and all the grandchildren were able to know their grandparents.
I knew my grandfather Lewis, but failed to ask the questions about his earlier life. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1913. I am not sure why he moved to Virginia. He was invited to the Sykes home with the idea that he might like Nell Sykes, however, he was taken by her younger vivacious sister Adelaide. Walter Judd Lewis traveled with the Penn State Glee Club out west on tour. I only found this out from photos after his death. I knew that he was a tall slim balding man. He was kind and considerate. My grandmother Lewis was also thin. They were both very thin. Having lived part of their adult life in Pittsburgh during the depression might have had something to do with how thin they were. My grandmother had very bad arthritis. She would have the family over for dinners, but did not want anyone else in the kitchen. She seemed to be very up tight, possibly because she was in pain. I do remember that one day I spent the afternoon with her and we sat together and played cards. I think that that was the closest that I ever got to her. I also remember that she did have some artistic talent as she painted water colors of Camellias that were quite good. Her father was a gentleman farmer who would have liked to have become a sculpture. They moved from their home in the country to a house in the city of Norfolk on Warren Crescent.
Both my Lewis grandparents died in their 60s. I think my father worried about this. He on the other hand lived to be 85 and died a few days after that birthday. My Dad and all his siblings died of cancer of one sort or another. I blame this as well on having lived a good part of their youth in Pittsburgh. Each one had a different kind Dad's was thyroid. He had a goiter and did not want to have it removed until it grew and he had no choice. Judd had prostate cancer and Bevo (Beverly) had brain cancer. Adelaide had lung cancer.
Mother's family the Porters were healthier. They also lived through the depression. I remember my Porter grandmother, telling about seeing people living in Piano boxes, as she passed through New Jersey on her train ride to visit her parents in New York. Granddad Porter was the youngest of nine children. His father was a Methodist Minister out of Ripley, OH. They moved to Virginia when he was still a young man. A wealthy man decided to help him out and send him to banking school. When he first saw my grandmother Lillie Maude Jones, he decided right then and there that was the girl that he was going to marry. There was 5 years between them. By the time that she was old enough to marry, her father had accepted a job promotion from Camp manufacturing as their agent in New York City. So Ralph after establishing himself with the bank, traveled to New York to marry his love and to bring her back to Virginia. They started out living in Berkley Virginia, where both my mother Beverly and her brother, George were born. They later moved to 931 Graydon Avenue, where they lived for many years.
My Lewis grandparents also lived on Graydon Ave, on the 700 block in the Graydon Park area. I remember walking from one grandparents home to the other.
