Dad – who is this? Do you recognize her? We were going through old black-and-white photos yet again. Dad‘s voice softened, “Oh yes, that’s my Aunt Alice. She was so soft and cuddly. A good hugger.” Alice Plante was one of my paternal grandma‘s younger sisters. Ten years younger, to be exact. As I ticked off the names of the nine Plante siblings from our Ancestry family tree, Dad did the math. What an accomplishment for his grandma; she kept…
There’s so much to know about my paternal grandfather. Grandpa Vayo was a humble guy, though, so it’s taken a lot of research to piece together the story of his life. Lots of conversations with Dad, emails to my brothers, and searches on Newspapers.com. And here we are. Harold Edward Vayo was born on this day in 1899 in Brewer, Maine. His parents, George and Alice, had already lost a child to cholera. Little Gladys Alice was only 15 months…
My paternal grandfather played piano by ear. He also played guitar. Incredibly, he had a Martin guitar from the 1870s. My brother Bill “found” the guitar in a coat closet the last time he visited our grandparents in Lowell. (Grandpa Vayo passed away in 1993; Grandma two years later.) Bill’s daughter, Lucy, wrote a school paper about the guitar a few years ago, when she was a junior in high school. She’s a freshman at the Fashion Institute of Technology…