Grace Valentine Kembel was born on Valentine’s Day in 1914.  She married Ellis Ray Spencer on Valentine’s Day in 1933.  She was the fourth of nine children; two boys and seven girls in all. She was always a bit of a conundrum to me.  A little gruff and distant.  Her husband, Ellis was such a trickster that he would often have us all laughing about the crazy stunts he and his family would pull.  Grace was more subtle; she had a dry wit that was biting…something I learned in later years.

As their 50th wedding anniversary approached the family planned a large fete to honor the couple.  We wrote to family and friends and asked them for pictures, stories, remembrances that we were going to place in an album.  We began searching through old photos and came upon the one above.  We debated about whether to add it to the album because we weren’t sure that the woman next to grandpa was Grace!  We compared other photos and asked relatives.  The issue was Grace didn’t like to smile for the camera, nor could anyone believe she would strike the rather sultry pose of the woman in the photo.  Was it her???? In the end we included it and much to our relief discovered that it was indeed Grace.  It would not be the last time she would surprise me.  Stay tuned for more of those stories, but for now here’s a short one.

One of my favorite photos of Grandma Grace is with her neighbor, Velma Capitola Kinchlo, “Cap” as she was known, and Grace were best friends in their youth. I’m not sure if they remain so in later years as I don’t remember hearing Grace speak of Cap; however on paper their lives seem to have taken a remarkably similar trajectory. They were born months apart in 1914. This photo, according to the back, was taken shortly before Grace got married in February 1933. Cap married three years later. Grace and her husband Ellis would move away from Laclede County in 1945. Grace always said that her dad, who’s standing in the background in this photo, worked her like a farmhand, as many rural families did out of necessity; but I take from this photo that sometimes the girls reminded him that they were girls, wearing the pumps with their overalls!