While adding to Farmer Gary‘s side of our family tree, it’s a treat to share newly discovered family stories (and family members) with him.

Our conversation the other evening began with, “Your dad was first cousins with her mom. Still, I can’t help but think Joan Wharton and my mom would have been great friends.” It’s been somewhat of a scramble climbing from one side of our family tree to the other, but well worth it.

Joan Wharton didn’t grow up here in Indiana, but her mom did.

Joan’s mother, Lorena, was a Werne. She was a full two decades younger than her big brother George, Gary’s paternal grandfather. Lorena’s obituary states she was a telephone operator in Los Angeles for 20 years, which makes us wonder how she ended up on the west coast. She married James Chester Vaughn Pulliam there in March of 1926 and they welcomed Joan in November.

As you know from reading these stories, Joan is also my mom’s name. But that’s just the beginning. According to her obituary, Joan Wharton loved to read and listen to classical music. She was an elementary-school teacher whose fondest memories included teaching youngsters to read.

With the sweet thought of these two Joans being likely friends, I searched for the word “friend” in Mom’s many poems, looking for inspiration.

Here’s what I found:

Séance

We wait before your friend’s blackberry jam
enamored of it
the golden toast pops up at last
we reach for it and spend the jam
judiciously

~ joan vayo October 6, 2005

The reason “Séance” gave me a chill (and a craving for tea and toast) is because of this passage in Joan (who also went by Joy) Wharton’s obituary:

Joy and [husband] Sam spent summers in the mountains of Coker Creek, Tennessee, where she taught reading at the local summer camp. She loved picking blackberries around their tiny cabin and making cobblers and jams.

How charming to learn that Joy and Sam met in their twenties, while studying abroad in Switzerland.

A-ha! That explains this passenger list I came across on Ancestry.com. Check out passengers number nine and ten:

Joy and Sam returned to America in April 1950 and married two months later. Both teachers, they raised their family in Florida.

Joy passed away in 2019, just two days after Mom’s final birthday. Although they never met here on earth, I have a feeling the two of them have found each other, along with loads of good books, classical music, and a jar or two of blackberry jam.

“Séance” © 2005 joan vayo. All rights reserved.

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