This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Eanes/Keatts Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/3AC.2ACE/1385.2.1.2.1 Message Board Post: Hi there cousin Betty, I am so glad to find you looking too. I was at my grandfather's funeral, but since I met so many people there my memory is overwhelmed as to all of them. I am so glad you all remember my grandfather so fondly. I know he was not perfect but I loved him dearly, even if I lived so far away many times and didn't get to grow up so close to him. He was always so good to me as a child and he so warmly welcomed my husband and adopted daughters whenever I brought them home to the farm. I am in no way a farmer and never will be but still to this day I love farms. Of course I still worship the ground my daddy walks on, he will always be my hero and a legend whose shoes none of us could ever fill. I definitely know that my grandfather and father loved me, I never suffered from lack of that love. Times with Grandpa are some very wonderful memories for me. I was not raised on the farm or in the country but I still hold touches of it in my heart. I am a lucky girl to have had all these warm memories to keep me for life. My fondest hope is that I can leave this world leaving warm memories of me to another generation like he did for me. I can't wait till my little grandson Aidan gets a little older and I can share my memories with him one day. My daddy is on travel in Dallas this week but I can't wait to tell him who else I have found searching. He still gets pleasantly amused with my crazy searching in our past. Did you know all the time when I was growing up my daddy could never stand to go into his parents living room at the house on South Hunter St because he said that they laid his Grandma Nora out in that very room when she passed? I can tell you I can barely remember him spending much time at all in there, then again not many of us did. I always remember it being so dark with the curtains drawn tight. But I do remember Grandpa sitting there in the dark watching HeeHaw and Grand Ole Opry, he never said much then, he often scared me because he looked so dark and depressed then. I can remember Grandpa Archie but by then he seemed so small and frail to me, bald, thin and soft spoken with age I reckon. The one memory that sticks with me was that he would always split a stick of Juicey Fruit Chewing! Gum with me. I also remember some type of birthmark on his little bald head under that hat he used to wear. I swear one of my cousin Little Jimmy's boys was born with that same brithmark. I remember that little old "cottage" as one might nicely call it that Archie used to live in next to the hen house at my grandparent's pink house. I remember once someone told me he used to have the front bedroom in the main house until Jerry, Doris and Annette came back from Florida. When I used to visit they would let me play in the back porch room with the piano and I would sleep back there or on a cot in their room near the stove when it would get cold. I would walk past his "cotttage" to collect the eggs. I never got to know him until he was very old and sweet but I did love that little old man who I seldom got to see, he was so sweet to me too. I was sad that I was overseas when he passed and couldn't be there. I also so wished I had gotten the chance to meet Grandma Nora but I know her family loved her and worshiped the ground she walked on too. I have pictures of the old house site near your family plot, as well as the plot itself, that my daughters made me take when I brought them out there to the farm to visit. One day I will explain more about that to you. I will try to copy whatever pictures I can find and will shared them with you all. I am hoping to get a chance one day to relocate those that my grandmother has "not been able to locate"for me in the past. I have to say, I very warmly remember your mother she has always been such a sweetie putting up with my unceasing questions about the family whenever I have had the chance to see her a weddings or funerals. She was so welcoming and patient and always such a charming lady. I only wish I had more of a chance to know her better when I was growing up, maybe then I would have had the chance to know the real her instead of using her memories to help fill in the gaps in my life. Please keep in contact with me, I would love to connect more with the family in the time we all have remaining. I want to pass my heritage on to the daughters that we raised as our own and whom the family welcomed so warmly and our sweet angel of a grandson who is the apple of my daddy's eye as well as all that meet him.