myFamily
Grace Pauline Lackey
Biography by her daughter, Marjorie May Millard Neese
My mother Grace Pauline Lackey was born in Kansas City, Kansas, May 26th, 1891 to Orlando Raymond Lackey and Martha C. Brown. She and Daddy were married Oct. 18th, 1911 and lived in a home at 986W 52 Place in Los Angeles, CA. She worked in a Candy Co. where they made boxes of chocolates. She dipped the chocolates for their last coat of chocolate. She died when I was 14 months old, Nov. 12, 1918, and is buried in Odd Fellows Cemetary on Whittier Blvd. in Los Angeles, CA. All of the Lackey family and Millard family Mama and Daddy to Grandpa and Grandma Lackey and Grandpa and Grandma Millard are buried there at the Odd Fellows Cemetary. Great Grandpa Orland was the Odd Fellow.
All I know about Mama are things my relatives and her friends have told me. She was about 5 ft. 4. She had dark hair, brown eyes and olive complexion. They all used to call me "Little Grace"- they said I looked just like her and was as patient as she was. I guess one of the few times she ever displayed any temper was the day they arrived in California, when she was about 12 years old. She had a little geranium plant that she kept in the house in Kansas where they lived. She held it on her lap all the way to California and when the train pulled into the old Santa Fe Rail Road station at 4th and Santa Fe in L.A. and she saw the geranium hedge she was so frustrated she threw her potted geranium to the ground and broke it.
My daddy said Mama had a wonderful ear for music. They enjoyed going to the theatre and when they would go home Mama could sit down to the piano and play all the songs she had heard by ear. Her sisters were all talented too. Aunt Ruth painted in oils and sold most of what she painted. I have a picture of a bowl of roses she painted for my parents (Daddy and stepmother) as a wedding gift. My Aunt Daisy was a gifted seamstress. She'd see a dress she liked and make a sketch of it, get her material and go home and make it.
My brother Danny could vaguely remember Mama. He said the thing that he remembered best was how she'd
fix our breakfast, always some bacon, and mama would let him feed me little pieces of his bacon.
It is my greatest hope and prayer that I can get our family names all temple ready so that our family's temple work will all be done and that we can all be together and that I can really get to know my Mama and her my lovely family. She has such lovely grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I know she will love and enjoy them all as much as I have.
Now, as of June 7, 1977, she has a precious great-great, grandson, Michael Paul Jaroscak.