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The Dunaways |
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James Bryant Dunaway & Ruth Eloese Anderson | 
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James Scott Dunaway |
| Ruth Eloese Anderson Dunaway |
| Pappy’s little sister, my precious Aunt Ruth Eloese Anderson, was just 17 in 1941, when I came along. And, if I have the story right, she was in nursing school at the time. She babysat me a lot, and we’ve been fast friends ever since.
As of this writing (early 2004), she still goes by “Loophie” in our branch of the family. The story was that “Oophie” was as close as my (then small) mouth could come to ldquo;Ruthie.” The further distortion of her name appears to reflect an elision of “Little Oophie.” Unclear that that part was my doing. Not sure just when or where this shot was taken; I wasn’t into shutterbuggery early enough to get any teenage likenesses of my very favorite auntie. Maybe somebody in the family will share. We do have her as a twelve-year-old in 1936, watching my folks open their wedding presents. |
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| James Bryant Dunaway |
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Anyhow, some time around the end of The Big One,
Loophie married James Bryant Dunaway from the panhandle of Florida. In the earliest picture I’ve seen of Uncle Jim, he’s in his nation’s uniform and suitably handsome.
Here, he’s celebrating a birthday at the north end of our living room in San Bernardino. Apparently his. If I count candles correctly, perhaps his 36th. Of the myriad of puns that have perfused my existence, perhaps the earliest one that has found a (thus far) permanent synaptic niche is somebody’s observation that Jim had “dunaway” with Our Little Oophie…
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| 1041 South Seventh East |
| This the home that Ruth and Jim Dunaway occupied in 1954, as it appears now (December, 2003). It stands at 1041 South Seventh East, just across the (very) busy street from Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. Only a couple of blocks from Cummings Studio Chocolates. And a couple of miles from Sugar House, where Valerie and I lived for the first part of 2003. Maybe five miles from Mammy’s birthplace in East Mill Creek. |
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James Scott Dunaway |
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Loophie tells me that this was the last of several rentals that led up to the purchase of their home in
Sunset, where they spent most of their life together.
And it was to this home that Jim and Ruth brought their only child, my dear cousin James Scott Dunaway, after his birth in Salt Lake in 1954.
Here’s Mammy, holding the several-months-old Scott, probably around Christmas of his natal year. |
| More snow |
| That same year, 1954, we came to visit. Probably at Christmas, and just in time for a substantial snowstorm. For us southern Californians, this was sufficiently a novelty that I was moved to record it with my treasured Brownie Hawkeye camera. |
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| Here’s Brent, aged 9 or so, about to launch a snowball at me from the south end of the front porch. And yours truly, reciprocating from the north. These partial views of the (rather handsome) porch railing and of the neighboring houses helped to confirm that we had found (pax Brigham) the right place. Pappy was notably less thrilled. He’d moved to California a decade earlier, largely in order to make pictures like this harder to get. |
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| 1041 South Seventh East |
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From the porch, looking east across Seventh East, Liberty Park rests under a fat, white blanket. They tell me I called it “Libbady Pahk.” That would’ve been earlier than this visit, I presume. Could probably handle the conventional pronunciation, by my early teens. Might have chosen not to, though…
In the back yard, more snow. Not surprisingly. Below: Loophie and Brent dandle Scott. |
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| 1041 South Seventh East |
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A few additional angles on the place. |
| 1041 South Seventh East |
| We made this historic visit in the delightful company of our darling daughter Cyndi Ralston, our cherished son Chris, and his sweet wife Mary Beth (who kindly wielded the camera for this shot). We were on our way to the “This is the Place” monument, which Our Beloved Toad and MB had never seen. |
| The Dunaways, back to Sunset, one more time |
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In 1954, Ruth and Jim Dunaway brought Baby Scott to live at 364 West 1425 North in Sunset, Davis County, Utah.
We took these shots on Sun Yat Sen Day, October 10, 2003. As of which date somebody else lives here. Ruth and Jim had moved to the Seville in Orem for “assisted living” and hadn’t seen their lifelong home in a couple of years. So, we had an outing. That’s the two of them, in the back seat of Eleanor, our 2000 Honda LX, parked in front of the old homestead. |
| In Sunset |
| Jim and his gorgeous roses, out back. Dunno whether he brought with him a preexisting love of roses, or whether he learned it from Grandpa. In either case, we’re authorized to rejoice. |
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I’m hoping to come across some external views of this house that date from the Dunaway years. We spent a lot of time here, and it was so familiar that I may never have bothered to take its picture as such.
We stopped and chatted with a few of their old neighbors. That’s Valerie in the front seat. It was on this trip that Ruth and Jim kindly guided us to our former home at “ Sunken Heights,”, only a few blocks away, which we’d vacated when we moved to San Bernardino in 1946. |
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| In Sunset |
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Scott was visibly pleased to have this new tricycle for, I think, his second birthday in 1956. In the back yard in Sunset, all we cousins gathered around him on it. Left, clockwise from cousin-dog Boots on the left: me,
Brent, Scott,
Sharon, David.
Right, above: Was that indeed Boots? Here’s an older Scott with a distinctly younger pooch. On, perhaps, the same back lawn. |
| In Sunset |
| This breakfast shot may be the earliest I have from the Dunaways’ Sunset period. At right, Scott in a wintry front yard. Princess was my cousin-cat, although I can’t say I ever actually heard her called that. |
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| In Sunset |
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We gathered here often, over the years, and posed a lot of
individual and group pictures. On the left, that’s Vicki,
who lived with
Ruth and Jim as a teenager and whom we consider
an honorary cousin. She’s now Mrs. Paul Barber, of Kaysville.
I think that’s Paul’s & Vicki’s daughter Nicole
(“Coli”) on Grandma Loophie’s
lap; ain’t she cute?
When our Cyndi and Debbie were at Brigham Young University, in the 1990s, Ruth and Jim would invite them up over General Conference weekend. They got particularly close to the Dunaways in those visits. |
| Generational Portraits |
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| On the living-room couch in Sunset, circa 1956: Pappy , Brent , Grandma , Jim , Scott , Ruth , Richard , Grandpa , Mammy |
| Holidays in Sunset |
| Ruth, Grandma, Jim, Grandpa, Mammy, Pappy, Scott, Richard, Valerie |
| We think this one happened in July or August of 1966, as Valerie and Rick and I were driving back to Boston and doctoral studies at Harvard. Pappy and Mammy drove with us as far as the tepees of the Crow Nation in South Dakota, where Ken and Verna Carter were serving as missionaries. We had Thanksgiving in the summertime in Sunset, since we wouldn’t be around in November. Scott’s uncharacteristically dour. Brent is apparently on his mission in Switzerland. Baby Rick’s probably asleep in an adjoining chamber. |
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| Thanksgiving in Sunset |
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(Scott),
Grandpa,
Brent.
Grandma,
(two young guests)
Mammy,
Ruth,
(Scott),
Pappy OR
Jim ……depending on who’s behind the camera this time. It’s 1963 or thenabouts; I’m still in France. |
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| Updated July 2011 | [Dunaway.htm] | Page 67-009 |
