As I've slowly (and chaotically) pieced together the Henderson Reunion Web site, there are items that take us back 100, 150 or more years in our family's history. But also there are others that don't go back as far -- items that I remember. (I hope you'll excuse the personal nature of this blog entry, but it's going to mostly be told through my eyes, my memories.) When I was young, the things that I remember affecting me the most were family deaths and funerals. The first was my Aunt June's, and the next, three or four years later, was Grandpa Henderson's.
Those two probably hit me so hard because I was so young, and because I spent so much time with both of them. June and my mother, Helen, were pretty much inseparable -- at least that's the way it seemed to me. Not long after I was born, Mom, Dad and I lived for a couple of years on the farm with Grandpa, June, Neil and Crockett; Dad helped Grandpa run the place while Reanous was away serving a mission in Norway (ironically, where Dad had served his mission). I was too young then to remember a lot, except that Neil and Crockett hauled me with them a lot while playing around the farm. Grandpa and June just always seemed like they were part of our family unit, too.
I'm not sure as to the timing, but roughly the same time we moved off the farm to Greybull, June -- whose husband Neil (Sr.) had died just before Crockett was born -- remarried and lived on a farm up Shell Creek, only a few miles east of where we lived in Greybull. So we were always there, it seemed, or she was always at our place. During those early years of my life, she seemed like a second mother to me -- that's how much I loved her, since she always treated me so well, and since she and Mom were so close. She was also someone to be proud of in a public sense, since she held elective office in Big Horn County.
As for Grandpa, it was not until he retired from the farm -- after Reanous returned from his mission and married Merla -- that I got to know him very well. He would stay a while with Marie and Spud in Cody -- longer periods with them, I think -- and then stay a couple of weeks in Burlington, a couple of weeks with us in Basin (where we moved after my father became town marshal) and back up to Cody. Grandpa loved to tell stories, and I looked forward to sitting and listening to them. We watched the "CBS Evening News" (he would ask if it was time for the news, then declare, "I like to watch Cronkite"). He'd tell me stories about his youth -- riding his horse to Table Mountain outside of Burlington; as a boy in Idaho seeing Native Americans in their element, on what was left of the frontier; driving the stagecoach between Burlington and Meteetse -- and life in the Big Horn Basin (he was acquainted with, and didn't have a high opinion of, "Buffalo" Bill Cody.
Most of those stories are mere fragments in my brain now. And when he got the urge to walk to the grocery store to buy a sack of groceries, Mom would send me out on my bicycle to shadow him. Once in a while he'd get turned around and head off in the other direction after coming out of the store; I'd ride up to him, he'd figure out that if I was there, he must be confused, he'd be a little embarrassed, ask me which way was home, I'd tell him, then he'd bark at me to get lost because he didn't need any help from a kid. It was a ritual played out almost every time he stayed with us during the warm-weather months.
I loved them so much, and still do. Take a moment and see the pages devoted to Grandpa Henderson's and June's funerals. And, as always, please e-mail me or click on the comment link below to add your stories and memories of June and Grandpa.
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