I should perhaps have mentioned more about my oldest sister, Alice Catherine ("Nan"), but she was married and living in Texas with her husband, Eric A. Broussard, before I even started school.

Nan was a beautiful young woman (she was still pretty after she got old!) with large soulful-looking eyes that I remember as being more gray than blue.  Her hair was light brown when she was young. When she was born in Abbeville in April of 1907, I think it was, the midwife who helped my mother with the birth was a woman named Catherine.  That's how Nan got her middle name. 

After Dee was born, there was a natural sibling rivalry between them.  Once when Nan spent the night away from home with a friend from school, Dee dared to wear her nightgown, thinking no one would ever know.  But Nan had a sensitive nose, and she smelled that gown and knew on the spot that Dee had worn it.  She recognized her scent! Nan attended school in Kaplan and after high school graduation, she went on to SLI (now U of L at Lafayette), and got her teaching certificate.  She taught less than one semester at a small rural school near Kaplan, and then Dee had to substitute for her for the balance of the semester, because Nan up and got married!  She and Eric went to live in Texas, because Eric was an oilfield worker, and that is where the work was. 

Their first child, a girl they named Alice Kathleen, was nicknamed "Dimples," because that is what she was - all smiley and dimpled.  I still call her "Dimp" today, and she is now getting her Social Security check!  Dimples was born just three months after my baby brother Jerry.  (If Jerry had been full-term, they might have been "twins.")  We have a picture of my mother sitting on the front steps of our house, with her little son on one knee and her little grand daughter on the other.  They were about three years old at that time, and about the same size. 
 Nan came to stay with us for a while just before we moved to Perry, because the Depression had already hit the Texas oilfields, and Eric was unemployed.  As soon as he found a job, she moved back to Texas.

Seven years later, again in September, Nan's second child was born.  This baby was another girl and they named her Shirley Rose. Both girls were (and still are) beautiful like their mother was.  Dimp has several children and quite a few grandchildren.  Shirley has two sons and some step-children and some grandchildren, too. Dimp lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  Shirley lives in Groves, Texas.  They make me feel special by calling me often and by driving over to visit me sometimes.

Seven years after Shirley was born, Nan and Eric's only son was born - another September baby.  He was named Eric Anthony Broussard, Jr. (and we called him "Ricky," of course.)  Ricky looked like his father, sort of James Cagneyish, and grew up to be one of the most handsome men I ever knew.   He was in the Navy for a while, and when he came home after discharge, he brought with him a girl from New York State whom he planned to marry.  Things did not work out, the marriage did not take place, and whatever happened must have soured Ricky on the idea of marriage, because he remained a bachelor for a long time.  He dedicated himself to taking care of his widowed mother until she died, while they lived in Beaumont, Texas.  Ricky then moved to Houston, and after some time, he met and married a lovely widow named Sue.  I get email from them almost every week.

~MizMo