One of my family members put together this pictorial essay of the “Carr Sisters” to pass out at the inaugural reunion of sailors who served on the USS Carr, FFG-52. Their first reunion was in the hometown of Paul Henry Carr, Checotah, Oklahoma, and the descendants of my mother’s parents were very involved and part of the reunion also.
The top picture includes all my aunts and my mother, and in the bottom picture are the Carr Sisters plus my Uncle Paul and my grandmother. Everyone knew my grandmother as Mama Carr, and that is what the vast majority of folks called her.
My oldest aunt, Katie, was born in 1911 when my grandmother was 20. My mother, Juanita, was the youngest, and was born in 1933 when my grandmother was 42… 22 years of having babies. She actually had two more that died very young. My mother did sometimes go on about feeling more like a grandchild rather than one of the sisters as many of her nephew and nieces were around her age or older! The next youngest sister was six years older than my mother.
The headline is absolute right. There was not a weak one amongst them, My grandmother and all the Carr Sisters were strong women with big personalities. I chalk it up to the influence of my grandmother and the hardscrabble life they had growing up as the children of sharecroppers.
Since I knew my aunts when they were middle aged or older, what always gets me when I look at the bottom picture is how “foxy” they were as young women. You have to love the 1940s hairstyle.
And so it goes.