Photo Friday: Bowling Highliners, 1957-1958

This Photo Friday, it's another photoset taken from my Grandma Doris' albums, which I am slowly (s-l-o-w-l-y) in the process of digitizing. These were taken about 6 years before this set of bowling photos, and look to be from an end-of-season banquet and awards ceremony, probably in Washington, DC or Maryland.

That's my Grandma second from left, pictured with (L-R) Roland Stribling, J. Gray, Cecilia Petty, and Joe Franklin.

In addition to the original photo above, Grandma Doris also had an article from a bowling newsletter (from whichever association this event was held for), that described the bowling season a bit:

It reads, in part:

After thirty-three weeks of excitement and close competition another most successful season of bowling has been concluded, To add to the interest in the league of twelve teams only three games in the won column separated the first and seventh place teams when the final results were determined.

Trophies were presented to each member of the teams that finished in the first three positions. The champion Highliners (shown above left to right) Roland Stribling, Doris Mathis, John Gray, Cecilia Petty, Capt. and Joseph Franklin, League President.

The climax of the season was a banquet paid for with league funds. Each member and his or her guest had an abundance and variety of foods and beverages to choose from and dancing to the accompaniment of a 5-piece band.

To round out this set, here's a glamour shot of my grandmother, with all her trophies from the evening:

I love the glamour of these photos - the floor-length gown, the gloves - and it's a feature of many of the photos I've come across in her albums. She was never rich - she made many of her own dresses - and she wasn't part of Washington, DC's African American elite, but the circle she was a part of and the era in which she did all of this socializing provided her with opportunities to doll up, opportunities she certainly made the best of!

(Doris Shepherd was a fixture of DC's bowling world for decades. Click "bowling" in the word cloud to the right to see related posts.)

Photo Friday: Bowling Tournament, Minneapolis 1964

In between my active research, my major genealogy project is to digitize my late Grandma Doris (Reid / Mathis / Shepherd)'s photo albums. We brought 29 of them home after cleaning out her apartment in April 2015 and I have  S-L-O-W-L-Y been going through and scanning images. They are such an interesting look into her life, her family, some of my biological grandmother's family (the Coopers), the world of bowling, Washington, DC, and several decades that I didn't get to experience (namely, the 50s - early 80s). As I go through this process, I'll be using the Photo Friday heading to post some of my favorite photos, starting today!

This is my Grandma Doris (far right) posing with members of her Washington, DC bowling team at a Women's International Bowling Congress competition in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1964. Two things: 1) I love the jaunty set of her hat, 2) She is one pretty lady!

And here is another team from Washington, DC - they probably all bowled together frequently back at home. Check out the lady in the shades - she is too cool for school!

If you didn't already know, bowling was one of Grandma Doris' passions, so there are A LOT of bowling photos in these albums. Be warned :) And click "bowling" in the word cloud to the right if you'd like to see related posts.

Talented Tuesday: Louis Shepherd, Bowler!

Today’s post is inspired by the Talented Tuesday genealogy blog prompt over at Geneabloggers.

Most stories you find on here about bowling are going to be about my Grandma Doris, who spent most of her life outside of work bowling, thinking about bowling, organizing bowling events, teaching kids how to bowl, or traveling to bowling tournaments. But, her husband, my Granddad Louis, was also a bowler.
 

 

He played on a men's team in Washington, DC that also included my Uncle Valton Reeves (the brother of the husband of Granddad's first wife Elnora Cooper's sister Lila Cooper - I know!). He wasn’t as deeply involved in the sport as Grandma Doris was, but their shared love of bowling was one of the lynchpins of their relationship. Together, they often drove here and there across the country to tournaments, taking the youngest two children (my mom and aunt) with them. And the kids remember more than a few evenings where they were responsible for dinner while Mama and Dad were at a bowling event.

Apparently Granddad had some success, too! Check out this picture of him (center) holding a trophy at one of his competitions.

I wish I had more details for this picture – where and when it was taken, for example, though I’d guess this is the 1960s – but this is a case of what you see is what you get. In any case, a tip of the hat to Louis Shepherd, bowling trophy winner!

Grandma Doris - More Bowling Pins!

I posted a few weeks ago about the stash of bowling pins - the kind you wear, not the kind you knock down - my mom and I came across as we went through some of my Grandma Doris' things while prepping for a flea market. Grandma passed away at the beginning of April and a LOT of her things ended up with us.

(Side Note: If her spirit was watching from somewhere, seeing us getting ready for a flea market probably made Grandma smile a little bit - I'm pretty sure half her adult life was spent at flea markets, selling Mary Kay and an assortment of thingimbobs.)

Anyway, Grandma didn't just bowl, she lived bowling - and was pretty good - and her jewelry boxed attested to that. Our first go round revealed 26 pins, from the Washington, DC Women's Bowling Association, Virgina State Women's Bowling Association, Women's International Bowling Conference, and more. Welp, we found two more!

The one at the top of the page may be my new favorite out of all of them, b/c... Tasmanian Devil. I mean, really, y'all. This sends me back to my Looney Toons youth - Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs. But anyway...Both pins have been added to the collection, and I actually hope we find more. Plus we have tons of pictures of Grandma posing with her teammates at tournaments, so maybe we can match a few pictures to pins?

Speaking of which, one of the other things that came back up with us from DC were Grandma Doris' photo albums. If she had been born a little later, she would have been a scrapbooker, with all the fancy doodads, special papers, stickers and scissors that cut decorative edges. As it was, she filled album after album with labeled pictures, some with commentary, some with dialogue bubbles (yep!). There are 19 of them.

So one of my next genealogy tasks is going through these babies, scanning and cataloging the photos, and then making the hard (or digital) copies available to folks in the family who want them. Did I mention there are 19 albums? I need to get cracking!

Bowled Over by Bowling Pins

As some of you already know, my Grandma Doris passed away earlier this year. Technically, Doris Elizabeth (Reid) Shepherd was my step-grandmother – my mom’s stepmother – but she’s the only grandmother I’ve ever known on that side of my family. My biological grandma, Elnora Mae (Cooper) Shepherd, passed away when my mom was 5 years old. (In a strange twist of metaphysical fate, both grandmothers passed away on April 1^st, forty-eight years apart.)

One of the things Grandma Doris’ passing has meant is that a ton of her stuff is now at my parents’ house. Now that it’s yard sale season, we’re going through boxes and bags to see what can be let go, and what we want to keep (which, it turns out, is basically anything with sentimental value). Look what came out of one envelope of costume jewelry:

 

Grandma Doris was a bowler. Actually, that fails as a descriptive statement. Grandma Doris had a deep, abiding and passionate love of bowling and she gave a lot of her time and energy to both playing the sport and supporting it. Among her many bowling commitments, she was a member (and sometimes officer) of the Washington, DC Area Women’s Bowling Association for many years.

A love of bowling was something that my grandma had in common with her husband, my Granddad Louis, and my mom and aunt remember family trips to places like Lebanon, PA and Aliquippa, PA so their parents could compete in bowling tournaments. I didn’t find any Lebanon pins, but I did find a few from the Virginia State Women’s Bowling Association and the Ocean County, New Jersey Women’s Bowling Association:

She also had more than a few from the Women’s International Bowling Congress, plus one from the National Duckpin Bowling Congress:

 

(I’m not gonna lie – I had to look up what “duckpin bowling” was. According to duckpins.com, it is “a variation of 10-pin bowling where the balls and pins are significantly smaller making the game much harder.”)

In total, I counted 26 pins in that one envelope. I wonder if there are more hiding somewhere else? Either way, maybe we’ll come up with a good way of displaying these – my dad has already suggested mounting them in a nice frame for a conversation piece.

This is just a sliver of my Grandma Doris’ bowling story – I’ll be coming back to this topic more than a few times, so stay tuned! In the meantime, do you have a story or memory about Doris Shepherd the Bowler?