A Photographic Record Of The Spillard Family

Looking through my photo albums, I realized that my mother Mary's family, the Spillards, have photographs taken of them all together throughout their lives. How wonderful is that? I myself have been hard pressed to find hardly any photos of our family together. I have one of us all taken at Christmas, when I was a kid in the Brainerd neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, and one taken when I was even younger at a resort called Lumina, on the Lake of Bays in Ontario, but that is it. I have to wonder why? But in any case, the photo on the left shows the Spillard family when they were all quite young. In the back row of the photograph are my Grandmother Louise and Grandfather Will, and in the front, from left to right, are my mother Mary, my Uncle Jack, and Uncle Bill. And where was the photo taken? Sadly, I haven't a clue. It definitely wasn't in front of their apartment building at 57th and Prairie on Chicago's South Side.

The photograph on the right shows the family standing in front of their apartment building on the South Side of Chicago, possibly in the Brainerd neighborhood. From left to right are my mother Mary, Uncle Jack, Grandfather Will, Grandmother Louise, and Uncle Bill. I suspect this photo was taken back in the 1930s.

I myself was actually around when the photograph on the left was taken of the family on the occasion of my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary, back on October 5th, 1968. This celebration took place at our house in the Southern Chicago suburb of Country Club Hills. As I have often bitterly remarked, there was neither a country club, hills, or for that matter trees in Country Club Hills. But on the plus side, the family was all still alive and together, and that was truly a wonderful thing indeed. And in case you have not yet become familiar with the usual suspects, my grandmother and grandfather are in the back, and on the couch from left to right are Uncle Jack, my mother Mary, and Uncle Bill (from over the hill, as my father Nelson aways liked to say). Good times indeed.