Sepia Saturday: Reunion

(Here is our contribution to Sepia Saturday. Check the others here.)

Memorial Day weekend and June herald the onslaught of family and high school reunions. I won't be attending any this year, but thought I'd feature this one from 1922 of the Biggs family. The older pair on the right are my great-grandparents, John and Mattie Biggs, visiting Oklahoma from Torrance, California. My grandparents, Acy and Cassie Biggs, are the man in the flat cap with the baby (my father who was born that February) and the dark-haired woman in the center with her head turned. I am fairly certain that the young woman in the white hat is my second cousin, Jewell Biggs Castle. I had never met her until last April when she shared her journal from the family's journey from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in 1920 when she was 12. It was a poetically vivid account filled with detailed descriptions of sunsets, the new Broadmoor Hotel where she saw a polo match and the first discovery of the West. She died two weeks later at the age of 98. I look at this photo and feel lucky to so recently had a new personal connection with this group, none of whom are living today but are vividly dancing in my heart and imagination this Memorial Day weekend.