To me, Aunt Lola (nee Viola) was the most outgoing and colorful of my father's siblings. She and my father joked with each other all the time, Lola usually getting the better of their exchanges. (Their sister Irene was a scene stealer as a youngster, but by the time I met my Major aunts it was Lola who held center stage.)

I never met Lola's first husband, Tony Kane; he drowned after a boating accident on Lake Ontario in 1931.

Lola and Kane had two children, Bob and Loretta. Bob was a talented artist as a young man. He was several years older than I was and we lost touch even before he married, left the Syracuse area and started his own family. Unfortunately, Bob didn't live to see his children into adulthood. He died in 1966 at age 38.

His sister, Loretta, endured her own tragedy, losing her first husband, Francis Orlando, in an automobile accident. As I recall they were on a family vacation when the accident occurred. My parents and I read about it in the morning newspaper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, and phoned Lola to offer our condolences and support – only to discover we were breaking the news to her that her son-in-law was dead and her daughter and grandchildren (Thomas and Daniel Orlando) injured. She hadn't yet been notified by the state police.

Both Lola and Loretta remarried, Lola to Bud Cullen, Loretta to Edward Lindsay.

– JACK MAJOR