BETTY CHARBONNET REID SOSKIN TO KEN JENKINS

October 17 , 2000

To: Ken Jenkins

Just read through a printed out copy of your email and could hardly exhale!

The Charbonnet in the Louisiana legislature was my first cousin, Louis, whose father was the  younger brother of Dad’s (and also Louis) owned the mortuary-undertaking establishment.  Cousin Louis is still around.  The material I’m scanning reads like a movie script that fills in all the places I’ve not been able to fathom due to the color lines that were drawn by earlier generations.

I have photographs of my grandfather, Louis Sr., looking down from the wall of my study.  He died in 1924 , a few years after I was born but has always been a presence from the wall of our family home.  I have vintage photos of his constructions in and around New Orleans and in Memphis.  He and my father built Corpus Christi church in New Orleans and the convent of the Holy Family Sisters out on Gentilly (first order of black nuns in the country.  There is so much to share.

What a bonanza!

Betty