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My mother, Catherine, was born to  parents William and Ethel  on January 3, 1929 in Chicago Illinois. She was a fun loving free spirit who was on the swim team at Steimetz High School. She had seven brothers (William, Clemmons, Al, Frank, James, Bud and Robert) and was the oldest of three sisters (Ruth and Joyce). She met Frank while working at Sears. Having spent her carfare on ice cream, she saw him as a soft touch to borrow more. It was all downhill after that. They married in 1948 and produced the four of us, John, Frank, Mary and Jim. Catherine was a den mother for the boys' Cub Scout troop. One of her favorite stories was of how one of the kids went to the bathroom in the woods and wiped himself with poison ivy. Ouch! Rumor also has it that she played softball in the vacant lot next door the day before Frank was born. She passed away in 1962 while undergoing an operation for blood clots.

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Top row, from left: Catherine and friend; the Keyes family; Catherine's High School yearbook photo, senior year. Center row: Jim, Dad and me Christmas 1980; Grandma Hayslip and Grandma Keyes; Dad in colony cove May 1988; Catherine and John on Colin Avenue. Bottom row: Jan with Chris, 1985; Grandma Hayslip, Frank, Jim, Dad and me at Grandma's, 1958; Frank, Dad, me and John same day; Jim and Dad in Hawaii, summer 1976. Click on the "hotspots" in the photos for downloadable versions.

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My father was born Frank (no middle name) Vlcek on June 16, 1912 in Chicago Illinois. His parents, Frank and Josephine, were immigrants from Czechoslovakia. Grandpa Frank died in 1918 of a combination lead poisoning from his job as painter and the great flu epidemic in Chicago of that year. Dad was forced to drop out of school at the age of 16 to help support his mother and did not marry until he was 36. He enlisted in the Navy during WWII and served in Hawaii. Josephine eventually remarried Charles Hayslip. She passed away in 1972 and Grandpa Hayslip followed her shortly thereafter. Dad had a sister Mary, my namesake, who passed on in 1953 of a brain tumor and Joseph who passed recently. Dad married Catherine 1948. He always had an eye for the young ones. After Catherine passed, he married Derene Dorothy Parent.  Dad made it into the Millenium, outliving Derene by two and a half years, passing May 27, 2001.