It was there that I first encountered the name Lucien Abrams. Back home in Dallas, my curiosity led me to the Dallas Museum of Art website to see if the institution had any of Abrams’ paintings. As it happens, it has two of them:

I learned that the artist earned a degree in art and architecture from Princeton in 1892; he studied painting at the Art Students League in New York and at the Academie Julian in Paris in the early 1900’s. One of his mentors was James McNeil Whistler. The Handbook of Texas also notes that the artist had a one-man show at the 1925 Texas State Fair.

Because I’ve lived two blocks east of Abrams Road in east Dallas for almost 30 years with no idea for whom the north-south/8-mile artery was named, I idly wondered if the Impressionist painter had any links to Dallas. If so, did the renowned Impressionist inspire someone to name a roadway after him?

A quick Google search revealed no obvious connection between Lucien Abrams and Abrams Road.

More than a decade passed; my work as a graveyard detective took me down other roads. I turned my attention primarily to Dallas’ Oakland Cemetery, the final resting place of an estimated 27,000 souls, many of them important figures, a few of them named Abrams.

I knew Lucien Abrams was not among them; I had seen his grave all those years ago in Old Lyme.

I set aside the question of Abrams Road, and the odd coincidence of its sharing a name with an important painter. Instead, I researched and wrote what I call ancestories about some 40 souls — lovers and outlaws, good citizens and bad, hapless victims and everyday heroes — who are at eternal rest in Oakland Cemetery.

And then Lucien Abrams returned last month — if not to haunt me, to nudge me into another try at sorting out his connection, if any, to Abrams Road.

I revisited the DMA’s website. This time, I noticed that Girl Sewing was gifted to the museum by one William Henry Abrams, in memory of his wife Ella. A search on ancestry.com revealed they were the painter’s parents. Unlike their famous son, they had close ties to Dallas. As did Lucien’s brothers. And, they are buried at Oakland Cemetery.

I was getting warm…

William Henry (W.H.) Abrams was born in 1843 in Illinois. He attended Beloit College in Wisconsin, served as a sergeant in the Union Army infantry and, on June 10, 1869, married Ella Murray Rittenbaum of Virginia. Exactly one year later, Lucien was born in Lawrence, Kansas, where the 1870 census shows W.H. was employed as a real estate agent.

By 1880, the Abrams had welcomed a second son, Clarence Albright, and the family had moved to Marshall, Texas, where W.H. worked for the Texas & Pacific (T&P) Railroad. In 1885, a third son, Harold Jeffery, was born.

W.H. then moved his family to Dallas, where he continued to be a significant figure in the railway’s development. According to the Dallas Morning News, “Mr. Abrams was a vital factor in extending the Texas & Pacific lines through West Texas and in supervising the management of the lands of the company.”

In 1900, the census taker found all five members of the Abrams family together at 190 Maple Avenue. Lucien was 27; Clarence, 25, and Harold, 15. Keeping them fed was a live-in Irish cook by the name of Margaret McShea.

Two years later, the Abrams family was no longer intact. On August 16, 1902, at age 28, Clarence Albright succumbed to “cerebral paralysis,” according to his death certificate. His remains lie today in a vault in section 3, lot 8 at Oakland Cemetery.

It was 16 years before the family suffered another loss. This time it was the matriarch, Ella Murray Abrams, who had survived breast cancer in 1898, but died from lung cancer in September 1918. She was 70 years old.

Ella Abrams was an educated woman whose father was a U.S. Congressman. She was instrumental in founding the precursor to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, according to Vivian Castleberry’s book Daughters of Dallas.

She left behind her husband of 49 years and two living sons. Her remains lie near her son, Clarence, at Oakland Cemetery.

A widower for the remainder of his life, W. H. continued to excel as a landman. In early 1920, he earned a place in the history of Texas oil production when the first commercial oil well drilled in the Permian Basin proved to be a gusher, resulting in the region’s legendary oil boom. Because the well was on land managed by the Texas Pacific Land Trust, specifically under the direction of agent W.H. Abrams, it was named “Texas Pacific Abrams #1.” That designation appears on a Texas Historical Commission highway marker, erected in 1977 in West Columbia, Texas.

At some point after the loss of Ella, W.H. simplified his domestic life by moving into the Stoneleigh Court apartment house, which opened in 1923 at the corner of Maple Avenue and Wolf Street. According to Dallas historian Paula Bosse, the building then included 125 fully furnished apartments with kitchenette, bathroom and…maid service. It was there, on April 16, 1926, that W. H. died from senility and dysentery. He was 83 years old.

Like his father, Harold J. Abrams, the youngest of the Abrams sons, was long associated with T&P. When he registered for World War I in 1917, he was working as a railway clerk for the company. At the time of his death, he was an adviser to one of the company’s trustees.

Like his mother, Harold was a dedicated supporter of the arts, with his energy focused on the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. A violinist, he served as its first concertmaster in 1900; he also organized and presided over the Dallas Symphony Society. In his honor, donors established an annual Harold J. Abrams Memorial Award, a cash award for the year’s best symphony composition.

Harold lived — and died — in his home on Mercedes Avenue, a 15,000-square-foot home built in 1922 on 3.83 acres. Harold reportedly had been ill with cancer for some time when, on Sunday, May 8, 1938, he shot himself in the right temple while seated in his car, parked in his garage. He was 53 years old.

His remains were cremated in San Antonio, their location unknown. His survivors included his wife Blanche, a daughter, two grandsons, and one brother, Lucien Abrams.

The oldest of the Abrams sons — and the most famous one — was the last of his siblings to die. Born in 1870, he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1941 at age 70. His survivors included his wife, Charlotte Onillon, a native Parisian and graduate of the Sorbonne, and their daughter, Elinor. The family had made Old Lyme, Connecticut their home for 25 years.

It’s undeniable that the Abrams family — W.H., Ella, Harold and Lucien — made significant contributions in the arenas in which they operated: transportation, oil, and the arts. Surely one of them inspired city leaders to name a thoroughfare “Abrams Road.” But which one?

One thing is certain: What is now Abrams Road once was called the Old Greenville Road; a name-change took effect in 1933–34. At least two online sources credit Harold J. Abrams, the brother who committed suicide, for inspiring the Abrams Road name-change, because “he was a prominent local figure” and “to honor his significant though poignant local story.”

An article in the Lakewood/East DallasAdvocate magazine also offers that as an option: The history books are unclear whether the street was named for William H. Abrams or his son, Harold Jeffries Abrams. Both were members of the Texas Pacific Land Trust.

Harold J. Abrams likely needs to be ruled out as the source of the street’s name. He died in 1938, several years after Old Greenville Road became Abrams Road. And although W.H. made worthy contributions during his lifetime, they were not specifically civic ones.

And, as much as I had hoped it was Lucien Abrams for whom Abrams Road was named, there is no evidence that a worldly painter who made his home in Connecticut was awarded a spot on a Dallas street sign.

If not the Abrams family of Dallas, then who?

Col. Abram Harris (1824–1915)…maybe? Abrams Road is “generally believed to be named after Abram Harris,” is one online search result. “Harris was a notable figure in the early development of the region, and the road likely honored his contributions.”

Another acknowledges that “Some older, less corroborated theories suggest [Abrams Roads] may have been named for a long-time T&P Railroad employee (but) Col. Abram Harris is the primary historical consensus.”

Furthermore, a third explains, “Abrams Road in Dallas, and the corresponding Abram Street in Arlington is generally believed to be named after Col. Abram Harris.”

Who was he? Born in England in 1824, Abraham “Abe” Harris was a career American military man. In 1899, he was “celebrated as the oldest surviving member of the settlers who founded the city” (of Fort Worth), according to the Texas State Historical Association. He is buried in Pioneers Rest Cemetery in Fort Worth.

Was he ever in the city of Dallas? I wondered. And why would a Dallas street be given the shortened version of a soldier’s first name? This explanation disapppoints me.

I prefer to believe that the remarkable Abrams family of Dallas — and Old Lyme, CT — inspired my neighborhood roadway. And it will be one of them I think of when I sit at a turn signal that leads me to Abrams Road.

When Mazie Mae Reed, 23, and James Johnson (J.J.) Dabbs, 31, happily exchanged “I do’s” in the spring of 1919, they had no idea what sorrows awaited them.

Both had grown up on farms in the final years of the 19th century: J.J. in Tennessee, Mazie in Hill County, Texas. J.J. completed two years of high school; Mazie’s formal education ended with 6th grade.

In about 1900, the Reed family posed in their Sunday best for an itinerant photographer who traveled with a portable backdrop. A barefoot Mazie sits on her father’s knee, while mother Artisha holds the youngest. Four more Reeds followed.

When J.J. Dabbs registered for the draft in World War I, he was a self-employed tailor in Cleburne, about 30 miles north of Hillsboro, the seat of Hill County. He served in the military from September 1917 until April 1919. He and Mazie married in May, suggesting they had courted before the war.

The newlyweds predictably made their home in Hill County. The 1920 census shows that J.J. found work as a laborer, but there was no industry specified. Ten months after their union, the Dabbs welcomed their first-born, a daughter; they named her after Mazie’s mother, Artisha.*

Eight years later, the Dabbs’ second child, a boy, was born. William James, called “Billy,” came along after the family moved to Dallas. The Dabbs rented a house on South Austin Street in the vicinity of today’s Greyhound Bus Station. J.J. found employment in the city’s sanitation department as a garbage remover.

There would be only the two children in the Dabbs’ household. At a time when large families were common, it’s easy to imagine with what joy Mazie and J.J. welcomed the arrival of their baby girl and baby boy. The infants, of course, would cost them hours of worry and exhausting labor. But, it would be the grown Dabbs children who cost them more dearly…at different times and for very different reasons.

The first to be born, on March 12, 1920, was Margaret Artisha, who still lived at home with her parents and 11-year-old brother in the spring of 1940. Having left high school after sophomore year, she was working 60 hours a week as a waitress in a cafe, the census shows.

In the fall of 1940, Artisha married J. W. Davis, Jr. in Rockwall, Texas. The union apparently was a stormy one, and by January 1942, Artisha and her pet terrier had moved into a two-story frame apartment building at 717 Martinique at Lindsley, in Junius Heights. She supported herself by serving customers at Wilson Tavern.

In the wee hours of January 6, the thermometer plunged to 10 degrees, a record low in 1942. In a corner of her bedroom stood a stove, and Artisha had placed a chair nearby. Before going to bed, she unthinkingly tossed some clothes over that chair. As she slept, flames ignited the clothing.

Despite efforts on the part of neighbors to come to her aid, Artisha burned to death in her room at 3:30 a.m., according to her death certificate. She was found lying across her terrier, which the Dallas Morning News described as being “burned to a crisp.”

Artisha was 21 years, nine months and 24 days old when she earned the dubious distinction of being the city’s first fire victim of the new year. The sad task of providing information for her death certificate fell to Artisha’s father. The Dabbs’ only daughter was buried January 7, 1942, at Oakland Cemetery.

Losing their beautiful daughter in such a horrific manner undoubtedly devastated J.J. and Mazie Dabbs. But there was another victim of that deadly fire: Artisha’s only sibling, William “Billy” James. Born May 25, 1928, the boy was an 11-year-old schoolboy when his sister married and left the family home on South Austin Street. He was only 13 when she died.

In May 1944, 16-year-old Billy registered for the World War II draft. His application shows he was 5-feet-9 1/2 inches tall, weighed 152 pounds, had brown eyes and hair and a scar below his left eye; he reported his age was 18. That application form, available online, has written across it in red ink the words “file cancelled” and “underage.” Nevertheless, records show Billy served in the U.S. Navy between June 1944 and January 1945.

At 21, Billy was living with his parents at 1220 Coleman Avenue. His father still worked for the city’s sanitation department; Billy drove a truck 48 hours a week for a delivery service, according to the 1950 census. Off the record, Billy’s life was far more exciting.

Not only was Billy entering a criminal phase — supplementing his income through theft and burglary in Dallas and Jackson Counties — but he met and, on August 11, 1951, married Juanita Dale Slusher, a 16-year-old striptease artist whose professional name was Candy Barr. It was the first marriage for both.

Candy Barr came to be known not only for removing her clothing onstage, but also for her friendship with nightclub owner and Oswald assassin, Jack Ruby. She famously performed in cowboy hat and boots while brandishing toy pistols. Her reputation was such that, as late as 1976, she rated a cover story in Texas Monthly magazine.

As Candy Barr’s fame grew, her marriage to a petty thief and burglar failed to thrive; clearly Billy Dabbs was not enough for the glamorous stripper. By 1954, she was married to her second husband, with whom she had a daughter. In 1959, she wed for the last time; that union also ended in divorce.

As for Billy, his life after Candy included a stint in the state penitentiary in Huntsville. A five-year sentence started in May 1952, but he was in and out of prison throughout the 1950’s. At one point he demonstrated his eagerness to shorten his time behind bars by offering to help Dallas police solve an internal scandal that involved theft…about which he knew a thing or two.

The Dallas police chief attained a reprieve for Billy, but when the freed convict wandered off on his own during the investigation, the State Board of Pardons and Parole realized Billy wasn’t one to play by the rules…and sent him back to Huntsville.

Post-prison, Billy returned to the Dallas area, where he found himself a new wife. Doris Jean Nichols grew up on a farm in Navarro County. Her father’s 1948 obituary attributed to him eight sons and nine daughters by three wives. Eunie Austin was wife #3 and the mother of Doris Jean, who was a 16-year-old high-school student when her father died.

It’s not clear when or how Doris Jean encountered the feckless Billy Dabbs, but falling in love with him sealed her fate.

On a Wednesday night in August 1961, the couple drove from their home on Wanda Drive in Garland to the Two Headed Calf Lounge on South Lamar Street in Dallas for drinks and shuffleboard. Billy allegedly got into an argument — about labor unions, of all things — with a stranger named Hartie Webster, who knocked Billy off his bar stool.

Bleeding from his nose, Billy left through the rear door with Doris Jean trailing him. According to a Dallas Morning News account, Doris Jean went back inside to summon Webster. Billy was waiting just outside the door; he struck Webster, a former Marine sergeant, in the head with a hammer as soon as he exited.

Billy and Doris Jean returned to their truck, where Webster found them and fired two shots — one into each of them at close range — with a .45 caliber pistol. They were dead on arrival at Parkland Hospital. Doris Jean was 29; Billy was 33. His death certificate records his occupation as “carpenter.”

As for Webster, a grand jury did not indict him. He was described as a man “decorated for Marine heroics in World War II” who admitted shooting “a three-time ex-convict and Doris Dabbs.” Webster reportedly refused to provide a written statement, and the murder weapon was never found.

It’s easy to imagine how J.J. and Mazie Dabbs reacted to the portrayal of their fallen son. He too had served in World War II. And so, in October 1961, J.J. began the process to honor his son’s service by filling out a headstone application for military veterans. He asked for a flat bronze marker featuring a Latin cross to mark his son’s grave in Oakland Cemetery.

All four members of the Dabbs family are buried in Oakland Cemetery. That the children arrived there first — not the natural order of things — was something J.J. and Mazie had to bear until their own deaths. J.J. died in 1973, and Mazie in 1981.

You might say that, for mama and papa Dabbs, a “single spy” would have been the loss of Artisha. But, having a son repeatedly imprisoned only to be shot to death in a bar fight — his young wife with him — surely qualifies as a battalion of sorrows.

Today, the Dabbs rest together in peace in Oakland Cemetery’s section 36, tier 7, graves 19, 20, 21, and 22. J.J. died in 1973 in an Arlington Hospital from the flu. He was 84. Mazie lived to be 86; she died of cardiac arrest in a Sweetwater hospital.

The two men’s graves have received military markers. Only Mazie’s spot is without a stone.

*Records for both grandmother and granddaughter show a variety of spellings for the shared name, including Articia, Artisha, and Rtisha. Mazie’s name also is spelled several different ways on documents.

Fair-skinned with black hair and blue eyes, Rosa stood only 4 feet 11 inches, giving her the aspect of an even younger girl. It couldn’t have been easy for her German parents, Peter and Therese, to see their fifth child (of nine) set off alone to live at such a distance.

Perhaps they were comforted knowing a cousin, George Dankesreiter, 40, and wife Annie, 43, were taking Rosa into their home in Elmo, Texas (pop. 400). George, a farmer, had emigrated from Germany in 1905, eventually making his way to Kaufman County. When Rosa arrived, the family of six — including the couple’s three young sons and Annie’s mother — made room for the tiny teenager.

With so many mouths to feed, Rosa may have honed her cooking skills while living with the Dankesreiter family. By 1912, she had made her way to Dallas and was employed as a cook in the household of an important local industrialist, Horace Elton Spalti. She lived with the family at 2701 Live Oak Street in Dallas.

Spalti, whose father had emigrated from Switzerland, was then vice president of *Olive & Myers Manufacturing Company and the F.K. Russell Machine Company, makers of clothing and furnishings. He became president of these enterprises and, ultimately, moved his family to Beverly Drive in Highland Park.

Living with the Spalti family instead of her country cousin may have allowed Rosa more occasions to socialize with others of her age and station. It’s known, for example, that she and a young Austrian immigrant named Fritz Yanke, also a German speaker, became acquainted.

Having served several years in the Austrian Navy, Fritz Yanke arrived in Dallas in about 1911. He joined two fraternal lodges, including Sons of Hermann, a mutual aid society for German immigrants. A remnant of that time remains in Dallas’s Deep Ellum: Still active today is the music/events venue known as Sons of Hermann Hall, built in 1910.

Is it possible the young immigrants, Rosa and Fritz, met at the Hall? Is that where they fell in love? Did they speak of marriage right away? Or, was their romance still too new for them to look that far ahead?

Fortunately, they didn’t know how little time they had to enjoy the heady beginning of their love affair.

The end began with what was probably a sewing needle, an item Rosa would have kept in her room for mending. It’s something easy to overlook when it’s fallen to the floor and, while walking barefoot, easy to step on. And very painful when it becomes embedded…and has to be removed.

Oddly, that’s how Rosa Bachinger died. She was 20 years and four months old, gainfully employed, happily in love. But, at 10:30 on the morning of June 25, 1912, in the Spalti home on Live Oak, she experienced a “paralysis of heart” during an attempt to extract the needle.

Paralysis of heart occurs when “the heart muscle temporarily or permanently loses its ability to pump blood effectively.” Infection and congenital heart defects are among the conditions that can cause the heart’s sudden paralysis.

Rosa’s funeral was held at 9 a.m. June 27, 1912, at St. Joseph’s Church. An automobile procession led from the church on Swiss Avenue to Oakland Cemetery where, as a member of H.E. Spalti’s household, she was buried in the Spalti family’s lot.

The young Austrian who loved her could not be consoled. The Dallas Morning News reported that Fritz Yanke — “in a mood of melancholy” on the night following his beloved’s funeral — took his own life by firing three bullets from an automatic pistol into his heart. He was 27 years old.

He was found sitting in a rocking chair in front of a large mirror in his room at 2624 Commerce Street. The newspaper reported that “hardly a drop of blood issued from the small holes made by bullets.” And that Fritz left notes written in German explaining that he had “no desire to live.”

His last request was to be buried “as near as possible to the grave of Rosa Bachinger.” The Spalti family complied: Two days after Rosa was laid to rest, Fritz was buried next to her. They lie together in section 2, lot 137; there is no stone to mark the lovers’ final resting place.

• The four Olive & Myers industrial buildings, erected downtown between 1903 and 1921, have long been reminders of the city’s past. A Google search offers photos of the buildings and information about their uses then and now, principally in historian Paula Bosse’s “Flashback Dallas.”

Just after Valentine’s Day in 1914, sixteen-year-old Thelma Graves of Dallas made the news in Marshall, Texas, when her upcoming nuptials to one M.K. Langley, 22, was announced in the local newspaper. The couple was expected to marry March 25 at the “country home of Mrs. M. F. Graves in Junius Heights, mother of the bride.”

The society news writer for The Marshall Messenger went on to speculate that “this will surprise many friends of both Miss Graves and Mr. Langley, who are well known both in Marshall and Dallas.”

Why a surprise? The reporter never explains. More than a century later, what is surprising — given the public nature of their betrothal — is that M.K. and Thelma never married…and not because M.K. wasn’t a marrying man.

In fact, records show McKinney (M.K.) Langley, a railroad conductor, was another woman’s husband prior to his engagement to Thelma…and again afterwards. He married a young Shreveport milliner shortly before she died in 1911. And, in 1922, he exchanged vows with his second bride in Dallas’s Sacred Heart Cathedral

By then, of course, Thelma Graves had found herself another man, as she would again…and again…and again.

Thelma Graves (b. 1897) was the youngest of six children born to Union Army veteran George Graves, a contractor, and his wife Mary Frances, the aforementioned “Mrs. M.F. Graves.” In 1911, the family was living in East Dallas where, on August 21, George Graves died of heart failure at 63.

Thelma did not enjoy carefree teen years: She was 14 years old when she lost her father; at 16, she was “dis-engaged” from M.K. Langley and, at 17, she gave birth to a daughter. Baby Thelma Rose arrived March 11, 1915, about 13 months after the Marshall Messenger announced her mother’s betrothal to Langley.

Sometime during her tumultuous teens, Thelma Graves met and married William Martin Kramer, the son of a Pennsylvania coal miner. Six years older than Thelma, he appears in the Dallas city directory in 1915, residing at the Graves family’s address. It’s safe to assume he was Thelma Rose’s father. It’s his name on her birth certificate, and her birth is registered as “legitimate.”

Kramer, a telegraph operator, moved his wife and daughter to 521 Grandview — a few steps from his mother-in-law’s house — before June 1917. In August that year, when Thelma Rose* was two, a baby boy joined the family of three. As if to ensure life-long confusion, the boy was named William Martin Kramer, after his father.

When the children were ages two and four, the family abandoned Texas for New Mexico. In January 1920, Kramer was employed by the Postal Telephone and Cable Company in Albuquerque. Kramer worked for that same company when, in 1925, the family returned to Dallas and moved into a house on Marlborough Avenue in Oak Cliff.

One year and two months later, Kramer contracted pneumonia, his condition complicated by a case of flu. He died at age 35. William Martin Kramer was buried at Oakland Cemetery.

Thelma Graves, a widow at 28, was left to raise daughter Thelma Rose, 11, and her eight-year-old brother. She looked to a new husband for help: In 1927, Thelma and Albert Reinle Jr. applied for a marriage license.

The son of Swiss-German parents, Reinle was born in 1889, in Texas. After serving during World War I, he shared a home in Dallas in 1920 with his parents and siblings; at 30, he worked as a “whistler in the steam work industry,” the census shows. In later documents, he is described as a clay modeler.

Albert was likely a good provider. In April 1930, the family of four was living at a home (valued at $6500) they owned at 6943 Lindsley Avenue. His step-children, Thelma Rose, 15, and William Martin, 12, were enrolled in school. Although the 1930 census records their last names as “Reinle,” the two otherwise used their biological father’s surname, Kramer.

At 16, Thelma Rose Kramer was a student at Woodrow Wilson High School. As a member of The Girl Reserves — an organization dedicated to “the advancement of the spiritual, physical and recreational side of a girl” — Thelma Rose is among the girls photographed below for the 1931 school yearbook. Unfortunately, the editors did not match the girls’ names to the image.

On Wednesday April 6, 1932, Thelma Rose must have skipped school — and maybe even a meeting of The Girl Reserves — to elope to Bryan, Oklahoma with a fellow named Lafern Curtis (L.C.) Rambo.

The son of a Sherman, Texas farmer/butcher, L.C. was 21 years old on his wedding day. His bride-to-be had turned 17 less than a month earlier, but she assured the Bryan County court clerk she was 18.

Seventeen days later — on April 23, 1932 — Mrs. L.C. Rambo was dead.

The sudden death of a teen-aged bride was newsworthy: The Pampa (TX) Daily News and The Wichita Falls (TX) Times published identical stories:

…the wife of L.C. Rambo died at a hospital after being fatally stricken in a downtown theater. Hospital attendants said symptoms indicated she had died of poisoning. An autopsy is being performed.

Thelma Rose’s death certificate is more specific. A Parkland Hospital medical doctor ruled that strychnine poisoning was the cause of death, and the poison was self-administered. In short, Thelma Rose committed suicide.

It was a terrible way to die. Strychnine poisoning is known to cause, within 15–30 minutes of ingestion, involuntary muscle contractions, agitation, elevated body temperature, sensitivity to sound and pain, and seizures. Respiratory failure, multiple organ failure, or cardiac arrest are the major causes of death.

As for where Thelma Rose chose to take her life, there is a discrepancy. The Pampa and Wichita Falls news accounts mention a “downtown theater.” And, on the back of the Oakland Cemetery interment card, in pencil, are written the words: “poison-suicide in restroom of Palace or Majestic Theatre — Dallas.” There are no sources given for either account.

Thelma Rose’s official death certificate, however, reports she died at home on Lindsley Avenue. The informant on the document was her step-father, Albert Reinle.

Thelma Rose Rambo, like her father six years earlier, was buried in section 32, Oakland Cemetery.

Viewers of “Dateline” and the like know to suspect the husband when a healthy young wife suddenly dies. If officials suspected foul play in the death of Thelma Rambo, the notion evaded local newshounds. The Dallas Morning News archives yields no mention of her death nor speculations about the reasons for it.

The young widower found comfort soon enough with Allie Jo Cox who, in 1930, lived with her widowed mother on Cole Avenue in Dallas. Then a bookkeeper, she later became a schoolteacher. In 1938, she and L.C. had a daughter, Janis Marie Rambo, who grew up in Virginia.

By 1940, the couple had split; L.C. Rambo moved permanently to California. From there, he shipped out to serve in World War II. In 1950, he and a third wife, Lareita “Bunchie” Mansell, owned and operated a driving school in Santa Ana. The two may have known one another years before in Dallas: Lareita was in the North Dallas High School class of 1932.

Lafern Curtis Rambo died October 1, 1992. He was 81 years old. He outlived his first wife, Thelma Rose Kramer, by 60 years. He is buried in Westminster Memorial Cemetery in Orange County, California.

Rambo wasn’t the only figure in Thelma Rose’s life who outlived her by decades. Her mother — the other Thelma Rose, who like her daughter, lost her father at a young age and subsequently married young — tucked away her losses and moved forward in life.

At some point after Thelma Graves Kramer Reinle lost her daughter in 1932, she changed her name to Thelma Rose Berry.

What’s perplexing is that, in February 1934 — four years before the death of her husband, Albert Reinle — the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published notice of a marriage license for Donald V. Berry of Dallas and Thelma Rose Kramer of Dallas. It’s possible, of course, that Thelma and Reinle had divorced.

Mistaken identity is not likely. The 1940 census shows Thelma Rose Berry living with her 22-year-old son on Marlborough Avenue, where the Kramer family had resided in 1925. Thelma then was employed as a check writer for a grocery/retail business, and son William Martin Kramer worked as a delivery truck helper at the same location.

It was also Thelma Berry who purchased the plot where her mother, Mary Frances Graves, was buried in 1941 in Oakland Cemetery. And, it was Thelma Berry who married Matiya Milichevich in November 1943, according to their marriage license.

Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Milichevich was a Dallas jewelry designer. In June 1956, the two left their home in Lakewood to take a two-month trip abroad via the Ile de France. In October that year, Thelma took home a first-place ribbon at the State Fair of Texas in the category of Antiques for an “Indian relic.”

Thelma died in 1964 at age 66 of a coronary occlusion; Matiya followed in 1973 at age 75. They are buried in Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.

As for Thelma Rose’s little brother, William Martin Kramer avoided the vicissitudes of his family’s lives: He neither died young, nor did he marry multiple times.

He wed Gladys Marie Ramzy in 1942. They spent some time in Topeka, Kansas, where he worked as a mechanic, then settled down in Jacksboro, Texas. He found work as a welder; Gladys as a secretary. The pair was still together when he died in 2002. He was 85 years old.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

• NOTE: Thelma Kramer Rambo’s middle name is spelled Rose and Rosa in documents. Also, I’ve referred to her as Thelma Rose in this story to distinguish her from her mother.

This was Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1960’s, when fast-food was a rare treat rather than a working mom’s reliable go-to. He seemed to get a kick out of treating my brother and me, not only to less-nutritious fare, but to an occasional ride downtown to sit in the dark all afternoon in one of the city’s grand movie palaces.

All I really knew about J.C. back then was that he was a jockey and a bachelor who lived with his mother, known to us as Aunt Pearlie. He also had a big crush on Nancy Sinatra, who performed These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ in mini-skirts and boots. When she was to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, J.C. would abandon us, saying he had to go home and get cleaned up for Nancy.

Although he drifted into my memory occasionally, I don’t recall seeing him once I passed out of childhood. And then, shortly after I graduated from college in 1976, I learned from my mother that J. C. — once the occasion of spontaneous pleasures for my brother and me — had killed himself by “eating glass.”

James Charles “J.C.” Payne and my mother were first cousins. His father, Joe Payne, and her mother, Mary Ann Payne, were among seven siblings born in the latter part of the 1800’s to an illiterate, club-footed farmer named Oliver Payne, and his wife, Sarah, in Allen County, Kentucky. The seven children were left motherless when, in 1912, Sarah died from consumption. Three years later, Oliver succumbed to coronary heart disease. Joe Payne was an orphan at 17.

At age 20, Joe set out to create another family for himself; he married Pearl Elizabeth Shaw, also 20, the daughter of a Monroe County, Kentucky farmer. Like Joe, Pearlie suffered an early, significant loss; her mother died of the Spanish flu in 1918, when her daughter was 18.

The newly-wed Paynes left rural Kentucky for Louisville, where Joe found work as a sawyer (woodcutter). There, Pearlie gave birth to one son and two daughters: J.C. was the middle child.

Joe’s role as husband, father and provider ended all too soon. In 1928, at age 30, he died of acute hepatitis, leaving Pearlie with three children under the age of seven. The 1930 census suggests Pearlie managed by sharing her home on Erie Avenue with her brothers — Ray, a cabinet maker; Haskle, a machinist; and sister Bessie, who earned wages wrapping butter in a creamery.

Nine years a widow, Pearlie married again in 1937. Edgar V. Meunier had been divorced from his wife of a dozen years only 22 days when he and Pearlie exchanged vows. J.C., then 13, and his sisters had a new step-father. The 1940 census shows the family living on a farm in Jefferson County, where, at 15, J.C. was enrolled in school, having completed the sixth grade.

As a teenager, J.C. found employment as an attendant in filling stations and parking lots and, later, in the Brown-Forman Distillery in Louisville. In March 1943, he enlisted in the Army at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana; he was discharged in March 1946, having served as a private first class in the North Atlantic Division’s Air Transport Command.

The enlistment record provides a physical description of the 18-year-old: He was blond with blue eyes and, at 5-feet-5-inches, he weighed 100 pounds. Clearly, he was a slight man, but a little taller than the average jockey. According to Horse-Sport magazine, a typical jockey is 5-feet-2 and weighs 113 pounds.

Despite family lore, it’s likely J.C.’s association with horse racing was more aspirational than actual. There is no evidence he was a jockey. The 1950 census does show he worked as “an exercise boy” in a racing stable. Then 25, he was sharing a house with Gordon Potter, 20, a trainer linked to multiple winning horses, including Crimson Satan, a competitor in each of the 1962 Triple Crown races. The horse placed sixth that year in the Kentucky Derby.

Racehorses likely brought J.C. and Potter together, but their turbulent love lives may explain why they shared a house in 1950. The census lists Potter as “separated” from his spouse, while J.C. is identified as “divorced.” Despite online access to marriage documents and local newspapers, I have found no record of a marriage.

Years ago, when I asked my mother if J.C. had ever married, she told me with comical exasperation that she thought he had once eloped on a Friday and filed for divorce the following Monday. True or not, it speaks to her impression of him as whimsical, as not fully adult in his life choices. Maybe that’s what appealed to me; as a kid, I liked the kid in him.

As an adult, I have occasionally re-visited what my mother told me about J.C.’s horrifying end — that he killed himself by eating glass. I was 22 years old when she called me long distance to tell me the news of his death. It was, of course, the “how?” that stuck.

I’ve lived for decades believing my cousin was a jockey who chose a ghastly way to die. I set out to write this piece to bring him back to life for myself — remembering his kindness to me as a child — but inevitably, I also needed to discover the truth about him. Was he really a jockey? Did he actually commit suicide by eating glass?

I’m content knowing that J.C. worked in Louisville’s horse industry. That and his slight stature may have encouraged folks to think he was a jockey, despite evidence to the contrary. Perhaps he chose not to correct any misconceptions.

As for J.C.’s cause of death, I could not return to my original source to ask more questions; my mother is gone now. And so, I called her last living first cousin, who lives 13 miles from where J.C. is buried. Her story differed from my mother’s: She said J.C. had bought a horse — “put a lot of money into it” — and something happened to the horse. And so, she said, “He shot himself.”

I struggled with that discrepancy, then explained it to myself: J.C. was despondent and turned a gun on himself. Instead of dying, he woke in a hospital room in Louisville and, in desperation, looked for a second opportunity. He broke a bedside water glass and swallowed the shards.

Is that possible? I wondered. Is that really how he died?

It was time to move beyond family stories and my own imagination. I applied to the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Registrar for Vital Statistics for a copy of J.C.’s death certificate. It took about a month to arrive in my mailbox in Dallas.

James Charles “J.C.” Payne died from a cardiac arrest June 14, 1976, in Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville. He had been under the care of Dr. Douglas David for eight years when, shortly after midnight on June 14, 1976, while hospitalized post-op, his heart stopped.

J.C. had undergone a carotid endarterectomy, a surgical procedure designed to remove plaque (fat and cholesterol build-up) from inside the carotid artery. That and an existing pacemaker are listed as contributing to his death. He was 51 years old.

Learning this was a relief. Now, when I think of J.C., it will only be in the context of surprise sliders and donuts, of an older cousin who went out of his way to delight a couple of kids. I wish I had a photograph of him. I know that, like my mother, he was fair. He favored light-colored shirts and slacks, and he liked big cars, something my mother attributed to his being short.

James Charles Payne lies in Akersville (KY) Cemetery among several generations of family on his mother’s side. Father Joe and mother Pearlie, who lived to be 91, also are buried there.

I grew up hearing stories about Galen — about my grandparents’ neighbors, my grandpa’s sawmill and small grocery store, my mother’s playmates, her years at Galen School, and so much more. Now, when I make the trip to Galen, I not only visit my family’s graves, but I also visit the site of my grandparents’ home, sawmill, and little store.

The sawmill is gone now, but the West home and the tumble-down store right next door are still there, on the Galen Road. Maybe you know the spot.

When I returned home from my October visit to Galen, I pulled out a box of my Aunt Helen’s photographs, ones I inherited because of my interest in genealogy. I was most interested in finding images of the house/store at other times, and I found a few.

Ohio-born, and the son of German immigrants, Dr. Tucker had a medical practice in Flatonia, Texas, in 1900. He served as a captain in the U.S. medical reserve corps from 1917–1920; afterwards, he was superintendent of a Methodist hospital in Monterrey, Mexico…and a surgeon for a mining company.

Of course, the Tucker boys also had an exceptional mother. The daughter of a Kentucky farmer, Mrs. Tucker was a trained physician and, according to her husband’s obituary, practiced medicine with him early in their marriage. While living in Flatonia, the two supported the charitable Epworth League, seeing to it that the needy received medical treatment and nursing care.

In 1905, the family moved from Texas to Sulphur, Oklahoma, where Dr. Tucker established a general practice. Mrs. Tucker went to work for the extension service at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University). In 1915, she was named supervisor of Oklahoma’s rural hygiene and sanitation efforts, traveling the state to educate families about (for example) the danger of ignoring fly bites on children.

And, of course, she was a mother. Like many women with their own careers, she identified herself by using both her maiden name and her married name. She was Dixie Bohon Tucker, and that was the name she and her husband chose to give their first-born son. Second-born Charles Medwin Tucker shared his father’s middle and last names.

It is the male Dixie Bohon Tucker — his name is often styled “D.B. Tucker” in documents — whose life path inspired this examination of the Tucker family. He was the Tucker with the closest ties to Texas, particularly to Dallas. Since his death in 1918, he has lain in a plot purchased by his father, in the city’s historic Oakland Cemetery. No family members flank him.

Dixie left his family behind in Oklahoma when he made his way to Dallas. In 1914, he found work as a clerk in the auditing office for the MK&T (Missouri-Kansas-Texas) Railway. He was still there in 1916, living at 218 Ross Avenue. In June 1917, two months after the United States declared war on Germany, he joined up.

All three Tucker men served in the military: Dr. Tucker was commanding officer of the El Paso Infirmary during the war; Charles was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps (1919–1920). Unlike Dixie, they survived their stints as soldiers.

Dixie left Dallas sometime in 1917 for Camp Travis, a divisional training camp near San Antonio; there, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Among other duties, he was put in charge of transporting soldiers from one camp to another. He left Camp Travis for Fort Sill (Oklahoma) to study radio-wireless and aviation.

Once he “won his wings” as an artillery observer, Dixie moved on to Mount Clemens, Michigan, home of the military airfield known as Selfridge Field, for a three-week preparation to serve overseas. In his second week there, he made an unfortunate excursion.

On a free Sunday in early October, he and a buddy, Second Lt. John W. Quarles,* left Selfridge Field and paddled a canoe out on Lake St. Clair to explore the marshes along the shore. There was a stiff wind that afternoon, and the lake was high. By nightfall, the two men had been reported missing, and a search began.

At 8 a.m. Monday, their canoe was found, empty, presumably swamped. Planes and boats immediately were deployed to search for the men, but there was no quick resolution. It was mid-November before an Oklahoma newspaper reported that their bodies had been “recently recovered.”

Dixie’s death certificate attributes his end to an “accidental drowning in an overturned canoe.” He was 25 years old.

Second Lt. Dixie Bohon Tucker did not die in combat. Unlike his father and brother, he does not lie for eternity in a national cemetery. Nor does he lie among ancestors in a family cemetery. He rests among thousands of strangers off Malcolm X Boulevard in a city of more than a million souls.

It’s not clear why Oakland Cemetery became Dixie’s final home. His family of three all lived in California; he was the first of them to die. Had he closer ties to the city than records show? Whose decision was it to bury him here?

What matters, however, is that Dixie did get an honorable send-off. An Oklahoma newspaper reported November 16, 1918 that the aviators at Mount Clemens, Michigan gave Second Lt. Tucker a military funeral. The story suggested that he was well-liked among his peers.

Furthermore, it was reported in his mother’s hometown newspaper, The Harrodsburg (KY) Herald, that the entire class “wanted to escort the remains to Dallas at their own expense and would have been permitted to do so had it not been for the flu quarantine.”

The story concluded that it was expected that the citizens of Flatonia, Texas would change the name of its aviation field to Tucker Field in honor of “the popular young lieutenant.”

*[Newspaper reports of the drowning of Lt. John W. Quarles incorrectly spelled his name “Quarries.”]

At age 2, Robert Edward Anderson lived on a Hopkins County farm with his parents and baby sister, Minnie Lee. A decade later, at age 12, he was the youngest prisoner living on cell block 6 in the Dallas County Jail, having involved himself with a band of youngsters who committed criminal acts, principally the theft of automobiles.

It was 1930. Hard times. The Anderson family had moved off the farm and into southern Dallas, gathering three generations into a rented house at 3515 Whittaker Street. Robert’s grandfather made shoes in a factory; his father worked as a carpenter. Robert’s younger siblings — Minnie, 11, and James, 9 — attended school.

In May 1936, 18-year-old Robert was caught in the act of stealing Ed Colbert’s car at 607 S. Beckley Street. Having managed to cut a hole in the top and hot-wire the vehicle, he had driven 30 feet when he was intercepted. He ran from police, then turned and reached into his coat. A detective in pursuit warned him not to draw a pistol, and the teenager surrendered. There was indeed a pistol inside Robert’s coat, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Heeding the detective’s warning likely saved his life. Unfortunately for Robert, the lesson didn’t stick.

The newspaper’s headline read: Fourth Member of Fagin Gang Gets Six Years. Fagin, a fictional character in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, led a group of children into criminal activity in exchange for sheltering them. Despite that artful association, Robert had aged out of juvenile crime and into the big leagues. He received a six-year sentence for “theft over $50” and entered the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville September 20, 1936.

The prison’s Convict Record Ledger paints a picture of Robert at 18: He was 5'8" tall, 135 pounds with a fair complexion, light brown eyes, brown hair, and he wore size-8 shoes. He could read and write, having attended school through the fifth grade. He smoked cigarettes, but did not drink alcohol. He was not married, nor did he embrace a religion.

By 1940, at age 21, Robert had been moved to Eastham Farm Camp in Houston County, a notoriously tough assignment in the Texas prison system. It was the site of Clyde Barrow’s first incarceration in 1931–32.

June 3, 1942 was the official expiration of Robert’s imprisonment, but he was back in Dallas, employed by his paternal grandfather, W. C. Anderson, in October 1940, according to his draft registration card. Grandpa Anderson, then 74 and a lodger in the home of a truck driver and his family of five, owned a shoe repair shop.

On June 22, 1941, Robert married Grayson “Gracie” Smith. The 1940 census shows the 15-year-old living in Hopkins County with her father, Joe, a construction worker, and older brother, a high-school junior. Unlike her brother, Gracie was not attending school. Their mother, Lois, had died four years earlier from a post-partum hemorrhage.

On her wedding day, Gracie exchanged vows with a 23-year-old ex-convict who had a 5th-grade education and a dozen arrests for burglary and auto theft. She undoubtedly saw a good-looking bad boy and happily said, “I do.” What she didn’t count on was becoming a widow at age 17.

That Robert’s outlaw life ended violently would not have surprised local officials: He and multiple family members were known in Texas courthouses and jails. In 1936, the year Robert stole Ed Colbert’s car in Oak Cliff, his father was in jail under three indictments, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Notably, sister Minnie Lee (aka Joan) and her husband, Cecil Roy Green, a Fort Worth crime boss, were arrested in New York City in 1941 as part of an investigation into loan-company robberies. Green died 14 years later in a hail of gangland bullets on the Jacksboro Highway.

And most significantly, James Edward, three years younger than Robert with a shared middle name, closely followed his big brother’s lead. Having left school at 15, he arrived at Gatesville State School for Boys in 1936. James graduated to Huntsville in 1939, and then to Eastham, sentenced to two years for auto theft. In November 1940, James received a conditional pardon from Gov. “Pappy” O’Daniel. He did not, however, give up crime.

In fact, brothers Robert and James became a criminal duo. In August 1941, the pair was in New York City, possibly to visit their parents, who had re-located from Dallas to East 87th Street. While there, the brothers attempted to steal a car on W. 92nd Street. Traffic cop Harold J. King intervened and, according to a news story, “a pistol battle followed.” Officer King was killed.

The Anderson brothers headed home to Dallas. Three months after the shooting of Officer King, Robert (and a companion presumed to be his brother) stole a 1941 black Buick from Joe C. Stephens, an oil man who lived at 6657 Lakewood Boulevard. The thieves made it as far as Arkansas when state police stopped them, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The pair took off, drove into a ditch, then fled into the woods on foot. After a 6-hour pursuit, a patrolman saw the men leave a “Negro grocery store” and called for them to stop. Instead, they kept running and attempted to hide in some weeds. Assistant Superintendent of State Police Clifford Atkinson fired into the weeds to flush them out…and struck a human target.

Robert, who had survived an encounter with police in 1936 by surrendering, failed to do so that day. He died November 9, 1941 in Brinkley, Arkansas from a gunshot wound inflicted by Atkinson. He was 23 years old.

He was buried in section 36 in Dallas’s Oakland Cemetery, in a plot purchased by his grandfather.

James Edward Anderson escaped capture in Arkansas, but he did not escape punishment for his role in the shooting of New York police officer Harold King three months earlier. Police tracked him down through fingerprints left on the car he and Robert had attempted to steal.

About a month after losing his brother in Arkansas, James was indicted for his role in the policeman’s death. Found guilty of attempted manslaughter, he entered Sing Sing Correctional Facility February 3, 1943. The prison’s “receiving blotter” shows he was eligible for parole December 22, 1948.

Upon his release, James returned to Dallas and moved in with his first cousin, Eva Nell Kouns and her husband, Everett, on Lamar at Lenway Street, according to an Anderson descendant.

The 1950 Dallas census shows a James Edward Anderson living in east Dallas with a wife and infant son named James Edward Anderson II. The name is a common one, of course, and this connection is uncertain. The James Edward Anderson in that census, however, shares a common aptitude with the subject of this story. When James entered Huntsville prison in 1939, he identified himself as a painter/paper hanger. And the James Edward Anderson living on Reiger Avenue in 1950 worked as a painter in an auto shop.

What is certain is that, in 1960, James belatedly followed his brother Robert’s lead once more…by getting shot by a policman while in the commission of a crime. Early on the morning of June 6, 1960, he and an accomplice broke into the K&P Corner store, a combination grocery/gas station in Crandall, and emerged with an “armload of loot,” according to a Dallas Morning News story.

The pair set off a burglar alarm in the owner’s home. The owner immediately called a family member, A.B. Gass, an off-duty policeman who lived nearby. Gass threw on his pants, grabbed his pistol, and intercepted James exiting the store. James called out, “The heat’s on!” and began running. His accomplice jumped into the getaway car, but not before Gass hit his target twice: once in his back and once in his shoulder. The pair was apprehended in Seagoville. James, 39, was taken to Parkland Hospital in critical condition.

James survived, however, and reached the age of 51, surpassing his big brother by 28 years. Unlike his brother, he wasn’t shot to death by a lawman; he died from complications of heart disease. His death certificate identifies arteriosclerotic heart disease and a myocardial infarction.

He died on August 24, 1972 in Parkland Hospital, Dallas. Instead of burial, his body was sent to the State Anatomical Board; that is, his cadaver was donated for scientific study.

The woman’s reads: My love goes with you and my soul awaits to join you. And the man’s: Another link is broken in our beloved bond, a golden chain is forming in a better land. He gave his all.

Some readers of those words may conjure a romance. Others may be confused: Who chose these sentiments? Who is speaking here? And to whom?

The answer lies in understanding who Ila May Buckley McGill and Robert Holbert Newman were to each other…and learning who else in their lives loved them.

When Ila May Buckley was eight years old, she was living with her mother and two half-brothers in Howe, a Grayson County community about 60 miles north of Dallas. The 1910 census shows that she was enrolled in school.

Ila’s similarly named mother, Ida, is listed as married, but the census shows no husband. In fact, one of Ila May’s half-brothers, Robert Holbert Newman, 21, is identified as “head of household.” Both he and brother Chloma, 13, were then working as farm laborers, Ida as a seamstress.

The Newman brothers’ father had died in 1898, leaving Ida a widow. In the fall of 1900, she married H.M. Buckley, the father of Ila May, born in 1902. Buckley then seemingly disappears; he not only isn’t included in the 1910 census, but he’s also absent from the 1920 census. Ida continued to identify herself as “married” until, in the 1930 census, she is marked a widow.

As the oldest son, Robert apparently assumed responsibility for his widowed mother. When he filled out his draft registration in 1917, he noted that his mother was dependent on him for support. He further claimed a disability (“kidney troubles”). Nonetheless, he served honorably with the military police July 1918-September 1919, as a prisoner-of-war escort. Back home, he returned to farming.

Brother Chloma also served during World War I. In 1920, he was back home with his mother and brother, working as a motorman for a streetcar company. Shortly after, he married and started a family; he and his wife subsequently opened Newman Grocery store.

Little sister Ila May beat both her brothers to the altar. On May 2, 1919, Ila said “I do” to Wiley Murrell McGill in the county courthouse in Athens, Texas. She was 17 years old; her bridegroom was 18. The newlyweds settled on a farm in Bonham, about 72 miles northeast of Dallas.

The 1920 census shows Wiley was the head of a household that included his 77-year-old grandfather and 73-year-old grandmother. In the spring of that year, Ila May and Wiley welcomed little James Houston to the family. Two years later, on April 7, 1922, Forrest Murrell joined them on the farm.

Unfortunately, Ila May didn’t live long enough to see her baby boys grow up. Less than two months after her second son was born, on May 28, 1922, Ila May died of septicemia. She was 20 years, six months, and 20 days old. She was buried in Oakland Cemetery section 3, tier 4 1/2, grave 22.

With two little boys to raise, Wiley soon found them a stepmother. He married Nobie Watson in October 1923; she gave birth to their son, Wylie M. McGill, in June 1928. In 1930, the family of five was settled into a home at 1502 Oakley Avenue. Wiley worked as a department-store salesman.

1930 found Ila May’s big brother, Robert — who never married — and mother Ida living in a home they owned at 3925 Metropolitan Avenue. Neither reported an occupation: At age 40, Robert was finished with farming. Living about a mile away was brother Chloma, wife Ora, and their four children in their home at 1542 Second Avenue.

At this point in their lives together, it’s clear that Ida and Robert had reversed their old roles: She had to assume responsibility for her son. Robert was suffering from what was then called “dementia precox,” defined as “a chronic and deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration.” Today, we call it schizophrenia.

Robert died January 16, 1937. His death certificate names “angina pectoris” as the cause of death; contributing to his end was his worsening mental condition.

For 15 years, Ila May had lain alone in Oakland Cemetery; no wonder Ida and Chloma put Robert to rest near his half-sister. Chloma sent an application to the War Department for a free headstone, something honorably discharged veterans were entitled to. The stone was shipped April 30, 1937, to the home Ida had shared with Robert on Metropolitan Avenue.

Choosing the dual headstone and engraved messages was almost certainly a collaboration between Ida and Chloma, the two people in the world who knew Ila May and Robert the best — and loved them the longest.

NOTES: Ida Newman Buckley’s oldest child was a daughter, Lula Leota Newman, who was married and living in Oklahoma in 1910. She died in 1917. Ida died in 1951, at age 80. Of Ida’s four children, only Chloma outlived her. He died at age 73 in 1970.

AFTERWORD: After posting this story, a reader let me know that those who made and sold headstones often offered customers a selection of epitaphs. That is apparently what happened when Ida and Chloma ordered the headstone for Ila and Robert. They didn’t write the words; instead, they chose them from a book or catalog.

The Bounds family headstone in Dallas’s Oakland Cemetery tells a sad story: The small family — a mere trio at a time when families ran large — all died young.

Margaret May, Texas-born on Valentine’s Day 1875, was visiting her brother in Port Arthur when, at 48, she had a stroke. Nine years later, her husband, Hiram, a Dallas optometrist, drowned in an Oak Cliff lake. He was 57.

And, in 1937, the couple’s only child, Virginia Mae, then 26 with a new job in Chicago, fell ill after returning from a visit to Dallas, according to a news story. A family member’s funeral keepsake says she died of bronchial pneumonia.

What makes Virginia’s death different from her parents’ is that she left behind not only a spouse, but also two children, according to a Dallas Morning News account.

There’s much more to her story than that.

Most of the girls in the 1925 South Oak Cliff High School yearbook have the same flapper style — bobbed hair and fashionably thinned eyebrows — that Virginia sported in her class photo. She was scheduled to graduate in January 1929.

It’s unlikely Virginia still had high school in mind by then. In 1926, she had married Loehr “Bob” Harmon, and in August 1927, their daughter, Jeanne, was born. The new mother was 16 years old. Virginia subsequently lost a second child, born prematurely in 1928.

Jeanne wasn’t yet two when her parents divorced in 1929. Her paternal grandmother opened her home in Topeka, Kansas to the little girl, who grew up to study economics at Washburn College. After returning to Texas, she married Chester Noblett of Fort Worth in 1943; they raised three children. The 1950 census reveals that Jeanne worked as a model in a retail clothing store. When Chester died in 1997, the couple had been married 54 years. Jeanne lived until 2012.

Virginia did not share her daughter’s good fortune in finding and keeping a compatible spouse, but in 1930, she gave it another try. At 19, Virginia became Mrs. John R. Laughlin.

She and Laughlin, 25, rented a house on Swiss Avenue in Dallas for $43 a month; neither listed an occupation. The couple’s boarder, a widowed hat maker, may have added a little to the newlyweds’ income. The marriage didn’t last. Laughlin ultimately went to medical school and established a practice of many years in southeast Texas.

Twice divorced at age 25, Virginia next exchanged wedding vows with Blaine Short in April 1935. Interestingly, the marriage document identifies the bride as “Miss Virginia Bounds,” ignoring the two husbands who preceded Short.

Blaine had been living with his father in Lenoir City, Tennessee, when at 15, he was orphaned. It was 1931; his mother had died eight years earlier. Fortunately for the teenager, he had a big brother in Dallas, then living at the Dallas Athletic Club and managing the Melba Theatre on Elm Street.

By 1934, Paul Short was managing the Majestic, a movie theatre that had recently left behind its vaudeville days, when the likes of Houdini, Mae West and Bob Hope appeared there. Short’s innovation was to offer stage bands, including those of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.*

Short was in a position not only to give his younger brother a home in Dallas, but to send him to school and model a vocation. Census data show that Blaine graduated from high school and found work as a film booker in the motion picture industry.

Did Blaine’s big brother also introduce him to Virginia? Or, did the 20-year-old find a bride without fraternal aid? On April 2, 1935, Blaine and Virginia, 24, were married by the Rev. Henry May at 2711 Throckmorton Street.

Two years and two months later, Virginia was dead. She was 26 years old.

The Dallas Morning News reported that she died “after an illness of several days.” Her survivors included “husband Blaine Short, two children, her aunt Mrs. (Ruby) Cochran, and an uncle, Grover Furlow.” That Virginia had been living with her aunt in Dallas “until a short time ago when she accepted a position in Chicago” suggests she and Blaine had separated.

Some of the newspaper’s “facts” are questionable, suggesting the reporter’s source was unreliable. Virginia was said to have graduated from Adamson High School. Were the “two children” she left behind Jeanne and the stillborn baby? As for what killed her: It was neither an “illness of several days” nor bronchial pneumonia.

On June 24, 1937, Virginia died from an overdose of a barbiturate, Amytal, a sleep-producing agent prescribed for anxiety and sleep disorders, or used as a surgical anesthesia. The Cook County inquest could not determine whether the overdose was accidental, homicidal, or suicidal, according to her death certificate and an article in the Chicago Tribune.

Aunt Ruby brought Virginia’s body home to Dallas to be buried next to her mother in Oakland Cemetery. Four years earlier, her father had taken his place next to his wife, on his own terms.

On Sunday, December 3, 1933, Hiram Bounds walked a short distance from his apartment in northern Oak Cliff, removed his coat, placed it on the shore of Lake Cliff and entered the water.

A passerby discovered the coat; he alerted officials after finding a note in the retired optometrist’s pocket that said “full particulars” were in a second note in his apartment. Addressed to family and friends, the note made reference to ill health.

On Monday, December 4, firemen dragged the lake and found Hiram Bounds’ body. According to the death certificate, cause of death was suicide by drowning. He was 57 years old.

Three and a half years later, Virginia joined her parents. Mother, father and daughter were reunited in a plot in Oakland Cemetery’s section 7, lot 16, graves 3, 4, and 5.

• NOTES: During World War II, Paul Short served on the War Promotion board as coordinator of motion pictures, which apparently led him to Hollywood, where he joined Paramount Pictures and became an executive assistant to David O. Selznick.