My Family......

The Sepia Saturday bloggers are celebrating the fact that they are still being on board after 199 posted blog weeks. To remember the past as well as to honor it, we have continued to post pictures and words for everyone to enjoy.

This is a reposted blog from the year 2010.  I joined the Sepia Saturday group in February of 2010.  It is entitled "My Family..." which is a posting of everyone before I was born.

My older brothers doing their thing in the front yard.

Ronald James Burgus looks into the camera while his younger brother Rex Thomas Burgus checks out the person taking the photo.  While my dad was in the service in Washington D.C. and then in Europe, these guys and mom lived with Grandma Brown, mom's mother.  This is in Murray, Iowa and I suspect the year is 1945.  Ron would be 16 months older and I think he looks close to being four years old here. The house in which they are sitting still stands today, except some time after they lived there the owner removed the second story and made it look like a ranch house.

Back row: Zella Marie Brown Burgus, Dwight Burgus and Jesse Thomas Burgus

Front row: Rex and Ron Burgus

After dad returned from the war,  Dwight Lee  was born in Feb. 1947.  At first my dad worked as a mechanic, repairing tractors.  He then made his move to become a farmer.  They rented a farm in which dad would give up half of the crop for the rent. This photo is taken out on that farm, south of Murray, near a little town called Hopeville.  Someday I will blog about Hopeville. 

Click on the picture and enjoy the chicken in the background. One also can see the photographer and friend is in the picture by checking out the shadow.

 Dwight, Rex, the border collie, and Ron

This photo was taken out on the rented farm in 1949 or 50. It was south of Murray, Iowa. I was born in 1950 and I think Dwight looks almost three here. I could have been born by then but I really didn't remember living on that farm except for a few times when I was three years old. One story I have heard from the family about the dog was that he was so protective of his family and no one else was welcomed on the property. A border collie is such a loyal dog and he was lost when we moved to a new farm in 1953.

Today Ron owns a printing company in Mesa, Arizona and Rex co-owns with two partners a company that make trailers for recreation vehicles in California.  Dwight started his working life as a construction worker, working as a contractor for building companies in Mesa, Arizona.  As his addictions continued in his life he demoted himself to being a drywall installer and then a part time carpenter. He had to start living with my parents back in Osceola, Iowa in his later years.  My father died in 2000, age 82 and my mom passed away in 2008, age 89 years, three months after her death my brother Dwight died. He was 61 years old.

As I create these blogs I find it difficult to edit and cut them to a reasonable size.  Of course I know so much more about this era and I can't begin to touch it.  And yet it is satisfying to put it down and to share it.  The photos do speak volumes and that is what makes Sepia Saturday so fulfilling. If I am weak in spirit on the day that I write, the photos help me save face.  I do so enjoy being a part of this process and have grown so much in my ability to observe and to express the past world around me. 

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Click on the icon above and visit all of the ones who participate in Sepia Saturday.  They too are reposting on this day.  It will be a special blog from their past blogs.  It is a classic selection of our best of our best. Thanks for stopping by today.