Dealing With It-2 Cast of Charcters

                                                             

                                      

It's unfortunate that the family's move to Grants Pass was too early for TV cameras to track the drama of those Landers Family adventures.  You wouldn't need scriptwriters because the dialogue just bubbled up from the interactions of the individual players.

John Earl was in his forties when the first daughter, Virginia Helen, made her appearance in 1927 followed by William Charles in 1930.  Mary Ella filled out the cast in 1932.  John had been a warrior. He ran away from home when he was 17 to join the US Army and his mother, Ella Maud Landers, was so overjoyed to see him gone she signed the papers for his underage enlistment.  He celebrated his 18th birthday in the Philippine Islands as a part of the United States' deployment to put down the Philippine Insurrection of 1902. While there he went with a detachment of soldiers sent to China to join other European nations putting down the Boxer Rebellion.

John returned to America where he used money he had stashed playing poker to attend a couple of years in college in Kansas then signed up again in the Army under Black Jack Pershing to chase Pancho Villa around northern Mexico.  It was this General Pershing army that formed the core of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) that went to France in World War I.  By then he was a top Sergeant in his regiment.

Eunice Elizabeth Ramsdell was in nurse's training when she and John were married in Cove, Oregon on the 21st of June, 1922.

Virginia was a top student who took violin lessons and became an accomplished player.

William (Bill) was a particularly fine looking boy who was intellectually advanced above his school peers. Good hair.

Mary was last kid who was blessed with a friendly demeanor that set the tone for sibling harmony.

John's mother, Ella Maud, was sent by God to test the forbearance of all the other dwellers on the planet Earth.

Couch surfer Don McDougal became a beloved semi-member of the clan.

Editorial note: This series makes no attempt do be a definitive account of all those family years on the Redwood Highway.  The intention is to give a snapshot of one of the more entertaining periods that features a family member who had a bag of tricks that never emptied. The full appreciation of her force field is difficult to capture with words.

Stand by with the cameras.  Something big is about to happen.

                                                            (To be continued)