It was reunion time again this weekend. We went to Smith Park in Draper to eat and visit with the Smiths. These are the remaining children of Joseph Lauritz Smith and Melissa Ann Fitzgerald. Standing, Wanda and Reva and sitting, Ralph and his wife, Barbara. Ralph and Barbara donated some of their former farm land to become Smith Park.
Reva is the family history keeper and she always brings her books to share for others to update. Glen and his sister, Peggy, look over Elma June Smith Baker's book. June was an older sister of Wanda, Reva, and Ralph.
Uncle Joe Baker greets his Uncle Ralph.
You can tell that they have great respect for each other.
Loraine, daughter of Ralph and Barbara, pulled the reunion together and is giving us the agenda.
Ralph relates the tale of how he became the first man to receive an experimental drug this side of the Mississippi. It was 1940, the drug was penicillin, and it saved his life. He is now 98 years old.
He his a great storyteller with a strong voice. Barbara is also in her nineties.
I love this picture of Melissa Ann and Joseph Lauritz as a young couple. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple in 1906.
They raised their large family in this little three room house on Relation Street in Draper.
Joseph died from cancer when just 61 years old.
Melissa continued to live in that house until 96 years of age. Her daughter June, Glen's grandmother, also lived a long life after the passing of her husband, Raymond Baker, also in his sixties from cancer. June passed away at 93.
I'm hoping that Glen takes after his grandmas and not his grandpas or best of all his Uncle Ralph!
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