The following piece was posted on my website exactly 20 years ago, in May of 2004. Since we’ve just returned from our 2025 reunion–in the same location and with many of the same family members!–I thought it would be fun to repost it. I’ll call my “Kilgore cousins” attention to it.
Nearly twenty years ago, some of my siblings started worrying about our larger family. “The old folks are leaving,” they said, “and pretty soon, there will be no one left except our generation—the ‘cousins.’” Our mother came from a family of nine brothers and sisters, while our dad had eleven, so we were blessed with plenty of fun cousins and doting uncles and aunts. It was a great situation with all of us kids growing up together, visiting one another in the summers, and getting into trouble together. Now, with our parent’s generation aging, we all decided we needed to see each other on a regular basis. (Note: This was in 2004. Dad died in 2007 and Mom in 2012. None of their generation is still living. My brother Ron is the eldest of the clan as he turns 90 in August.)
Family reunion. The very term conjures up all kinds of crazy images-weird uncles, rambunctious kids, silly cousins. We sent out letters to everyone and for a couple of years tried holding reunions at various city parks and lake homes. Nothing really ‘took’, however, until we got smart and decided to hold the get-together at the only logical site-the old family homeplace. That was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, 1994.
Our maternal grandparents,Virge and Sarah Kilgore, bought several hundreds of acres of woodland and farmland just inside Winston County, Alabama, right after the turn of the 20th century and cleared land for a house. It was an old-fashioned breezeway-down-the-center home, unpainted, with two bedrooms on each side and a kitchen in the back. Most of their children were born there, including my mother Lois in 1916. Grandpa built a barn and a blacksmith shop and later a garage to house his car, a 1948 Packard. He died in 1949, Granny died in 1963, and no one has lived there since. But all the buildings still stand just as they left them. So, every two years, my Uncle Cecil-who owns the property now-and some of the men get out the tractors and bush-hog the surrounding fields and open up the house and we have a reunion on the Saturday before Memorial Day. (Cousin Johnny Kilgore, age 80, owns the place now and takes the lead in the reunion planning.)
I will never forget the first reunion, that Memorial Day weekend of 1994, because my wife almost did not let me come. Our daughter-in-law Julie–she and Neil live a mile from us in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie–was due to give birth to their first-born at that very time. I assured Margaret I would make the reunion and not miss the birth. On Friday, I made the seven-hour drive northward and on Saturday we held the reunion. They had brought in tables and chairs from the church and union hall so we could spread lunch together and get reacquainted with each other. That night, we built a bonfire and pulled the chairs into a circle and reminisced and sang and got silly.
When it was my time to talk, I asked who remembered the murder of Mrs. Boshell just up the road in the fall of 1951. Over the next half hour, we heard from family members who had seen the murderer the afternoon before his deed, from several who had seen the body of the poor victim lying on her front porch before the sheriff even arrived, from one who participated in the manhunt, and from another who skipped high school classes to attend the trial. Someone brought up another subject and we were off in that direction. We swapped stories and shared laughter around the fire until eleven o’clock. A 16-year-old second cousin from South Carolina, learning about her roots for the first time, said to me that night, “Joe, this has been the greatest day of my life.”
Next day most of us attended New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church, the only church our grandparents had ever belonged to, the church where Mom and Dad met in 1930. My brother Ron, a pastor from Birmingham, and I were the preachers that morning. Afterward, our family treated the entire church to lunch in the fellowship hall. Later, we returned tables and chairs to the church and union hall and returned to Mom and Dad’s home exhausted. Cousin Bill, a chiropractor in Clanton, Alabama, called out, “Who wants an adjustment?” I lay on the floor for the next half hour while he massaged every muscle in my stressed-out body. When he finished, I lay there in pure bliss. Someone wanted to play rummy–the family’s only card game–so we divided into foursomes for some friendly competition and teasing. About 4:30, the phone rang. Someone yelled, “Joe, Margaret says Julie has gone to the hospital to have the baby.”
I jumped up and said, “I’m headed to New Orleans everybody. I love you.” And bolted out the door for the long drive, so thankful for that relaxing massage. I arrived at Lakeside Hospital in Metairie late that evening. The Gatwood family and Margaret were standing watch while Julie went through a difficult delivery. In the wee hours of the morning, some went home for a few hours’ sleep. Early the next afternoon–on Memorial Day—Grant Waller McKeever was born to a thoroughly exhausted mother, a proud father, and a deliriously happy family.
It had been one of the greatest weekends of my life. Saturday, May 29, is our next reunion. Grant turns 10 the next day. In my mind, he will always be associated with the family’s first really great reunion.
Family. Is there anything better?
A few days ago, I was driving Grant and his little sister Abby back from a playground. Abby, who is 7, and I got into some silly banter about how much we love each other. It ends up with “I love you with all my heart and soul and toothpaste and mustache and grandma.” Abby said, “We made that up, didn’t we, Grandpa?” I said, “Yes, we did. Why do you think we like to be so silly?” Abby said, “It’s a family tradition.” I’m still laughing at that.
We have lots of traditions in this family. Silliness is one of them. As is faith. And laughter. And getting together to love and reminisce.
Families need traditions. If you have a family and no traditions, go get you some. Your children will be needing them. I recommend Deuteronomy 6 as a great place to start.
(Note: That reunion was 31 years ago. Which tells you exactly how old Grant McKeever is. This time, he was present with his bride of a few months, Amber Johns McKeever. Cousins galore were there, including Daryl Kilgore Hearn from Muscle Shoals, AL, Mary Beth McKleroy Bridges from Richmond, VA, her sisters Sharon Frick and Sandra (last name?) from South Carolina, Ken Schulz whose Kilgore-cousin wife Nelda Chadwick left for Heaven in the last year, Jim and Sandra Kilgore from Muscle Shoals with some of their family members. Uh oh. I should not have started naming them because without the list, no way can I get everyone. Oh, one thing we did for the first time this year is print up 50 t-shirts with my drawing of the old homeplace back when it was thriving–a couple on the porch swing, someone working with a mule at the anvil, a horse drinking by the well, chickens around. In Mobile, we have family members working for the t-shirt-printing plant and they took care of this for us. Great fun. In our family–the McKeevers–the siblings still left are Ron and me (both preachers), and our sisters Patricia and Carolyn. The three of them are dealing with medical issues (today as I write, Wednesday May 28, Carolyn had some surgery in the Birmingham hospital), so Ron wonders if any of us four will still be around for the next reunion in two years. He didn’t ask, but I plan to. Unless the Lord returns before then. And you talk about a reunion! That will be the best one of all. )