Friday, July 30, 2010

Rest in Peace, Aunt Florence

I had planned to create a scrapbook page for my mother's family this week with the intention of submitting it to the Carnival of Genealogy. However, I changed my plans after my Aunt Florence died on Monday of this week. Florence was one of my dad's younger sisters. She was born on July 30, 1920... 90 years ago today. If she had lived 5 more days she would have seen her 90th birthday.

I don't know a lot about Florence. She married about 1950, I don't know where but I suspect it was somewhere in the Detroit area. She and her husband never had children. They lived in a western Wayne County suburb and had enough property to have a pony. I remember visiting Aunt Florence once or twice but we didn't go there frequently. I think I remember hearing that Florence worked as a waitress in a bar when she was younger. I believe that's where she met her husband, Ed. Ed died in 2000. I barely remember him at all.

I thought I'd honor Florence with a scrapbook page of her own but then realized I didn't have much to put on that page. I have very few pictures of Florence and those I do have are mostly out of focus. I have no documents for her other than a photo of her entry in the baptismal registry of St. Francis D'Assissi Church in Detroit. She was baptized Florence Rosalia on November 5, 1920.

So instead of creating a page just about Florence, I chose instead to create one showing my dad's parents and their eleven children. With 13 faces on this page, it didn't seem prudent to try to squeeze in any other documents or memorabilia. So here you have the Laska family, plain and simple. Florence is in the center of the bottom row.


Rest in peace, dear Aunt Florence.