About a month before I was due, the doctor said “You’ve gained quite a bit of weight and we’d like to take a sonogram.”  And then he showed me the picture and said, “Well, look what we found!”  And they had a picture of two babies, and Gail’s legs were wrapped around Gary.  That was about a month before they were born.  

 

Gail was born heavier than Gail but they were both full babies.  Right when we got out of the hospital we went to my mother’s and we were there for almost a month.  At that time we were living in Metairie and we rented a small house behind an owner’s house that had a living room and a kitchen and just one bedroom.  But we were transferred almost right away to Baton Rouge.  My mom and dad helped us move and stayed with us for about a week.  We were renting a two bedroom there.  Gail and Gary each had their own crib set up next to each other and sometimes - if they weren’t cranky - I would sit in the middle with a bottle with both hands and I would talk to them and feed them at the same time!  At that time they had bottle holders too that would tilt the bottle so that the baby could get at it.  That was a long time ago, gee whiz.

 

We were in Baton Rouge for one year before we were transferred to St. Louis when Gail and Gary were just about a year old.  And this time we finally moved to a house that we had bought, in a subdivision.  I was so excited to have bought a house.  Once again my mom and dad came to help us settle in and it was a three bedroom house.  

 

We were in St. Louis for a long time.  We lived in this subdivision and there were several children in the neighborhood and Gail and Gary had friends.  Gary and Gail were very good in school.  They were in the same kindergarten class and Gary was talking and the nun wanted to put him in a closet.  And Gail says “You can’t put my brother in the closet!”  She told me about it later.  And that was the kind of relationship they had, she always looked out for Gary.  

 

After St. Louis we got transferred to Cleveland, Ohio.  We bought a house in the suburbs.  By that time we had Gary and Gail, Wayne, Steve, and Charlie - and Charlie was in school too.  So that must have been a long time that we were in St. Louis.  But in Cleveland we would go to sports and to football games.  There were a lot of little kids in that neighborhood too.  The streets formed a cul-de-sac and all the kids played in each other’s front and backyards.  We had snow in the front yard in Cleveland in the winter but by that time it was a good thing we had kids that were old enough to do all the shoveling.  

 

Roy was good with the kids - although the dog always came first!  Growing up, we had three or four dogs and Pawpaw always made sure those dogs were taken care of.  And he made sure the kids took care of the dogs as well.  I wasn’t working in St. Louis or Cleveland.  We had five kids in the house.  And then Johnny was born so we had six.  And Gail had five brothers – and she didn’t have any issue with that.  She just played with the boys.  But she wasn’t a “tom boy” so to speak.  That’s just how the kids were.  Boys and girls were always playing together, even if it was baseball or catch.  And it wasn’t always boy games, it was just Gail was good at getting along.  And my kids took care of each other.  Gail was the oldest and certainly helped take care of the younger ones.  I had my hands full but we were always in good neighborhoods and lots of children and the neighbors helped each other.  So if for some reason I couldn’t drive the kids to school – say I had a sick child and I didn’t want to take them in the car – the neighbors would take the kids to school.  We always had good neighbors from St. Louis on up.  

 

From Cleveland, Ohio we got transferred again, this time to Jackson, MS.  I wasn’t upset because I was hoping to work our way back here to New Orleans.  So I was happy about getting transferred to Jackson, and that was a good old town.  It felt like a small town and the kids were going to parochial school and it wasn’t a huge Catholic school, it was more like the ones here.  They were small.  

 

By that time Gail and Gary were starting high school.  Gail was very friendly and easy to get along with - she had a lot of friends both boys and girls.  She had a very good personality.  She was just always liked.  Didn’t matter if it was kids or adults, everybody liked her. And Gail was going with this boy, and he was in a Catholic school and making a confirmation, and his mother even bought a prayer book for him and the mother and father gave it to Gail, and even wrote a little note to Gail.  And I still have that book and read out of it sometimes.  But we moved to New Orleans so that relationship ended.  It was getting kind of serious and would have kept going if we hadn’t moved.    

 

We were in Jackson for a couple of years I think.  And Rene was born in Jackson, and she was a baby when we moved.  We were wanting to come back and Roy had requested to come back - he declared when we moved back to Jackson that the next move we were making was to New Orleans.  And was right.  We moved into that house on Suzanne Drive.  There weren’t really subdivisions out here at that point, mostly just individual houses built by individual owners.  Do you know how we got that house on Suzanne?  This man named  Louis Martello had become good friends with Roy in Jackson.  Louis and wife Joyce Martello were close friends with us. Roy worked in the same office that Louis worked out of in Jackson.  Because everybody more or  less worked out of the New Orleans office at some point, so I think they knew each other from before Jackson too.  Anyways, Joyce’s parents lived in Jackson and we all became great friends.  And when Louis found out we were looking for a place to live in New Orleans, and he had a big family, and his brother had this house in River Ridge that was up for sale.  And that’s how we learned about the house on Suzanne – Louis’ brother was selling it.  

 

So we had seven kids moving into that house on Suzanne.  And Gary and Gail were going to high school at Chapelle.  I remember one time, Johnny and Steve and the boys were living upstairs.  And I didn’t always go upstairs to make sure everything was okay. It was Mardi Gras and Roy’s boss was coming into town, so Roy says, “Why don’t you all come stay with us?”  Anyways they all came to our house and Roy had told his boss, “There’s a bathroom upstairs that you can use.”  And one of the boys said, “Mama you better not let him go up there,” and so I went upstairs to check on them and Johnny was raising crawfish!  He had crawfish in the tub - and they had mud in there!  And the other boys said “we were told not to let you upstairs so that you wouldn’t know.”  I could have killed them.  

 

Gail never, ever got into trouble.  Well there was this one time but this was when Gail was already in college.  I do remember Gary and Gail and Gail’s dog Brett and a bunch of people went camping in a dry county in Mississippi, and the police had been busting people for having liquor and right when they were about to get asleep the police came and saw beer and they all got arrested.  And they decided to call Pawpaw and he went up and even poor Brett was in the jail cell.  

 

Gail was a lifeguard at Paradise Manner and they all liked her – everybody over there liked her.  She became the manager.  I would go over there and end up talking to her the whole time.

 

The Langlois moved to River Ridge around the same time we did - they were over on Tiffany Drive.  And there were always parties over there and the group would meet up over there.  We socialized with Pierre and Nisette.   All the boys in the neighborhood hung out with each other.  Just about every house on Suzanne had a kid in it.  And Gail started dating Jack. Gail and Jack looked after each other. We liked him. They weren’t smoochy-woochy in front of us.  Even when they went off to college with each other Gail helped Jack I think.  

 

Gail went off to college in Southeastern but we’d still see her a lot.  Weekends and summers.  Then they both graduated and they moved to Baton Rouge and Jack got a job, I think.  And they got married.  I think it was at St. Matthews.  I vaguely remember going to see them in France after that.  

 

Gail had Danielle in Houston.  I want to say maybe they had a long, narrow backyard.  And Brett was with them in Houston at that point.  Gail was a great mother.  She was in school but Gail knew what she had to do and she would get it done.  

 

When they split up I was so upset.  Gail was doing so much to help.  And Gail was always concerned about the other person.  And she had the intelligence to solve problems very easily.  And she cared about other people.  She was aware of people when they needed help or care.  And so seeing her struggle like that, I wanted to help and do something but you also don’t want to intrude.  And there’s not much you can do.  

 

I felt very close to Gail.  We would talk a lot on the phone, our whole life. I visited Gail in Alaska and it was the first time I saw those fish jumping.  The salmon.  And I went on a boat and saw a whale.  Gail was always very … what’s the word … she liked adventure and would try anything.  

 

 It was really hard for me when she got the Dementia.  Because she was so intelligent and always used that to help other people.  You just never saw someone so intelligent and who would light up a room.