Lu Penrose Bond - 28 October 1912

Today would have been Gma Lu's 100th birthday!  What a marvelous milestone!!  Yet, she would have been unfazed.  Haha!  She was a very regal woman, and just took things as they came. I miss her.

Lu Penrose Bond - 1983

I lived with Gma for a year in 1991.  I want to quickly share the story of that came to be.  I was going through a time in my life where things were not going the way I was hoping they would.  I was kind of stuck and I wasn't sure what I should be doing.  I was living in Tucson, AZ, going to school at the University of Arizona.  I had been praying about what I needed to be doing, and one day, as I was walking to work, I was in the middle of an empty parking lot, outside an abandoned building, and I heard a voice say very clearly, "move to Fresno."  I was so startled and I looked around to see who had said it.  There was no one anywhere.  It would never have occurred to me to move to Fresno!  I thought of Fresno as, and I quote (keeping in mind that I was young and stupid), the "armpit of California."  Nevertheless, I got to work, and called Gma Lu.  I asked her if I could come to stay with her.  She said yes, and within two weeks, I had finished everything up in AZ, and moved to Fresno.  I know I was supposed to be there, with my Gma, for that period in time! 

I joked for a long time that all my friends in Fresno were little old ladies, as I took Gma to DUP, The Silver Belles get-togethers, etc..  We would sit at her dining room table and I would ask her questions, and she would tell me stories, and I wrote them down as quickly as I could.  She told me about her youth, about her parents, about her marriage.  All wonderful memories to be preserved.

I remember that she always had a "round robin" going with all of her siblings.  They would send a manilla envelope with letters and photos in it from one person to the next.  You would read everyone's things, add your own, and take out what you had put in previously, then send it on to the next person.  I thought that was so cool, and wanted to do that with everyone when we got older, but by then there was email and digital photos, etc., and it didn't seem as necessary.  Kind of a shame.

For me, it was the WAY she told stories. I have very specific phrases that come to my mind, and I hear them in my head in HER voice.  When I am having nasal issues, I hear her voice saying, "By dose is rudding a streab."  She told the story about her father who always had such amazing sandwiches in his lunches and one day (at the other man's request) traded sandwiches with a co-worker. As he bit into the peanut butter sandwich he had been given, he yelled out, "Help!  I've been poisoned!!"  I remember how she called people "ding-a-lings" when they did something she didn't like.  I loved it when she told me the story of how after she and Gpa had gotten married, he shaved his mustache.  When he came out of the bathroom, he asked, "How do I look?"  Gma said, "Clean."  He said, "Yes, but how do I look?"  She looked at him harder, trying to figure out why he kept asking, and said again, "Clean."  As she was telling me the story, Gma took her hand and waved it over her head and said, "Woosh!"  That just cracked me up!

I remember sitting watching her paint her nails.  I always thought her nails were so beautiful, always long and thin.  I remember how she always sat up straight, no matter where she was.  Even sitting on a couch.  I remember what a prolific reader she was!  Always reading something!  I remember giving her two rolls of Certs for Christmas one year, and she treated them as if I had given her something very important.  I remember the "ACK!" sound she would make when she was telling a story where she had been surprised or startled.  I remember how the air felt and smelled and I would step out of her house onto the back porch.  That is how Fresno is supposed to feel and smell.  I can't describe that any other way.  

Last year, I did a post about her birthday as well, which can be seen HERE

Gma Lu was a special lady.  An old friend of Gma's calls my oldest daughter, "Little Lu".  I am glad to have that frequent reminder in my life of how much she meant to people.

I hope that we can always continue to share these wonderful stories of our family members so they continue to live on with us!

Happy Birthday Gma Lu!!  I love you!

Direct Line Ancestry: Lu Penrose Bond --> Kathryn Bond Berkowitz --> Lora Marshall Nehring

Google Maps

The internet can be so cool!  Just for fun I have been entering addresses on Google Maps of great and great-great grandparents, whose homes I have photos of, to see if their homes are still there.  A lot of them are, and some are now parking lots or convenience stores.

When I was living in Arizona, my mom came to visit me and we found one of the homes that my mom had lived in as a child.  There really wasn't that much difference in the photos, other than an overhang.  And, yes, the house is still there.  I checked Googled Maps.  The overhang has been shabbily filled in to make another room.

1830 Indianola, Phoenix (Maricopa), AZ - 

My mom said she lived in this house when she was in the 1st grade, which would make this photo taken about 1949.

This photo was taken in 1992

I also looked up the home of my great-great grandparents, Frank and Henrietta Bond in Washington DC.  

This is a photo of Henrietta and Frank in front of their home in 1939.  

This is their home on 3127 Newark Street in Washington DC, probably taken around the same time frame.

I looked it up on Google Maps, and there it is!  It is s a lot closer to the road than it appears in this photo, but all the elements of the house are still there.

Unfortunately there is no way to save the maps on Google Maps, so if you are so inclined, you can always put the address in to see it for yourself.

Patricia Lu Bond

In 1992 I was living in Tucson, Arizona, but it would not be long before I was moving to Fresno, California. My mom, Kathryn Berkowitz, came to Tucson in June 1992 to visit me. (I recorded our visit in my journal and much of the following is excerpts from my writings.) We drove to Yuma, Arizona, where she was born, and one of the first things we did was got to the cemetery where her older sister is buried.

In 1942 Richard and Lu Bond were going to have their first baby. But Lu went into premature labor at seven months, and Patricia Lu lived for only seven hours. Two days later, she was laid to rest in the Desert Lawn Memorial Park.



The funeral program, for Patricia Lu Bond's burial

When my Mom and I got to the cemetery, we went to the office and found the location of Patricia's grave. We went to the location and searched for a while and could not find the headstone.



Site maps for Desert Lawn Memorial Park



We found a groundskeeper, Frank, who helped us to try to find the headstone. He stuck a stick into the ground to see if he could find a headstone that had perhaps had grass grow over the top of it. It hit something beneath the grass and we dug out the grass, but it was the wrong marker. We found where it should be, but there was no headstone to be found. Frank was wonderful and told us he would make a temporary marker for the grave site before we left Yuma that evening.

We went into the cemetery office to check to see if there had ever been a headstone placed on the grave. Mom couldn't believe that her dad, Richard Bond, would not have had a headstone made, but the cemetery confirmed that there had indeed never been one for Patricia.


When we came back to the cemetery that evening, there was the temporary cement marker on Patricia's grave. As far as either of us knew, we were the first ones to visit the grave since Patricia was buried fifty years earlier. It was neat, because suddenly Patricia Lu Bond became more than just a name on a pedigree chart, and I realized she would have been my aunt. I wondered if she would look more like my Mom or my aunt, or a combination of both.

We felt that Patricia deserved to be remembered again. At the time, I was working for a trophy manufacturing company, and I was able to order brass plaques wholesale, so Mom and I agreed that I would order a grave marker for Patricia.


Two months later, I was moving from Tucson, Arizona to Fresno, California, and I drove through Yuma. I drove to the Desert Lawn Memorial Park and there was the head plate! It looked wonderful!! I was so glad that we were able to do this for Patricia Lu and that I was able to do so much to bring it about. I placed four carnations at the headstone -- three red ones for Gma Lu, my Mom and my Aunt Marji, and a white one for me (it had been given to me as farewell gift from a friend as I left Tucson).


I knelt down at the grave and just began talking to Patricia. I explained that I had never done this before, but that I would do my best. I read the poem that was in the funeral program from her burial, "Crossing the Bar" by Alfred Tennyson. I also read the Hymn, "Be Still, My Soul" (no. 124), of which the third verse is the most significant:

Be still, my soul: The hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: When change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

I had tears in my eyes and I said a prayer thanking Heavenly Father for my family and for the opportunity to have helped making this possible. It felt very nice and I felt very good! Peaceful and happy!

When I arrived in Fresno, California, I was living with my Gma Lu. I told her about the experience that I had and showed her the photos I had taken. She was so profoundly grateful for all that we had done for Patricia Lu.

For all photos and documents related to Patricia Lu Bond, click here.