Here are more photos of a young gentleman from my grandmother’s high school memory book. His name is Seignor Jernigan. All I really know about his from her book is that he gave her a Kodak for her graduation gift, there are quite a few photos of him (more than any other young man), and based on local newspaper clippings, they visited quite often ;) He wasn’t in her class, he was two years older. These photos were taken in 1930. And it looks an awful lot like a courtship if you ask me.

But it wasn’t meant to be. While they have some lovely photos together and clearly did a lot of visiting – couldn’t get away with anything that a small town Texas newspaper wouldn’t talk about in 1930 – they were bound for different paths. My grandmother, as valedictorian of her class, had multiple scholarship offers to college and eventually graduated from the University of Texas. Seignor completed high school but went into ranching and farming and WWII from there. Holly would marry my grandfather in 1934 and lived in Houston, Texas most of their married life. Seignor married Johnnie and would spend his adult live in Mills county – the same small town where these pictures were taken. It appears Seignor died in 1987 in Lampassas, Texas; his wife Johnnie about 8 years later.

It’s always odd to think about what might have been. But even stranger to consider who I might have been if my grandmother and/or Seignor has choosen a different path. My grandfather, Howard, was such a large and positive presence in my life that I can’t even fathom it. But in 1930, none of that mattered.