Grandpa’s Funeral
When I started this blog, the idea was just to send out some little stories to the kids and grandkids so they could stay up to date on family lore. There are only so many family stories available, so I began including other things that interested me. Today’s story is about more of the family stuff I’ve got. I hope everyone finds it interesting.
My granddad, Albert Adelbert Thomas, died in March of 1960. Grandpa was one of 11 children, and he and grandma had seven children of their own. We expected a lot of relatives to show up for the funeral. On the day of the funeral, my dad and mom and sister, Sylvia, and I went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house to greet the incoming relatives and help Grandma.
Grandma and Grandpa’s seven children were Walter, Grant, June, Francis, Joe, Albert Allen, and Ruth. Grant was in WWI and was gassed by the German’s. This ruined his health and he died just a couple of years after the war. I’ll tell you a little bit about the siblings and Grandma now.
GRANDMA: Grandma was sweet, kind, and always pleasant to be around. A couple of days after the funeral, I was trying to console her. She said, “Don’t worry about it, Davey. I’ll be gone before Memorial Day.” And she was.
WALTER: Walter came to the funeral with his son, Victor, who was a grown man, and played in a band or orchestra in Wichita. Walter lived and worked in Wichita until he decided to move to Missouri. He became the center of attention when he announced that he and his good friend in Missouri had swapped wives.
JUNE: June and her daughter, Virginia, came to the funeral from Massachusetts. June was a pleasant lady. Virginia was a deaf/mute person, and because of that, June had become a teacher of the deaf. Virginia was a very nice young lady, and Sylvia and I learned to communicate with her with no problem.
FRANCIS: Francis came to the funeral with one grown child and two children that were Sylvia and my age. Her fourth child, Tommy, a grown man, was a trucker. The grown lady, Kathleen, was a pretty red-head. We didn’t see the younger children, David and Patty, until 45 years later. In 1995, Dave was a retired motorcycle cop. Patty had some kind of a health condition. The morning of the funeral, Tommy drove up in his truck with the auto-transport attached. He had just delivered a load of new Chevrolets from the factory in Kansas City. Some years later, we heard that he had become a Kansas state assemblyman.
JOE: Joe lived in Emporia and was in the freight-transfer business. Later, he owned a Yellow Van Lines franchise. Pat and I hired the Thomas Van Lines/Yellow Van Lines to move us to Texas. Joe had three sons, Kenneth, Keith, and J.P. Keith joined the Navy just before the end of WWII in 1945 and was stationed in Long Beach, CA. Keith was a body builder and worked out with Jack LaLanne, the famous muscle man. Keith also tried out for the part of Tarzan in the movies. We were told that he didn’t make it because he didn’t swim well enough.
ALBERT ALLEN: Albert was my dad. For several years, he worked at the Mobil Refinery. Then he went out on his own as a bricklayer. I remember the day when he came home, so proud, and announced that he had given himself a raise in pay. He said that for the first time he would be making $5,000/year.
RUTH: We saw Ruth and her husband, Don, frequently over the years. They lived in Augusta, and Ruth was a schoolteacher driving to El Dorado every day. Don worked at the Mobil Refinery. In the 1990’s, after Ruth had died, Pat and I visited Don in his assisted-living apartment. When we got there, Don, who was 100 years old, was busy checking stock prices on his computer.
Dave Thomas
October 15,2026
