Little Sister Reaches Half-Century Mark

Things were rolling along without a hitch, if my memory is correct, back in the old days of my youth. Back when Mama was the only female around our house in Markham, Texas. Me and Cody and Daddy ruled the roost, or at least that was the way it seemed, until my Mama's belly started getting real big in late 1959. Daddy took her off to the hospital in the third month of 1960, and they came back home on March 22nd with a brand new baby girl. And let me tell you, folks, things haven't been the same since. When Kelly Renee Gupton made her entrance into the world, the lives of Cody and Tracy Gupton changed drastically. All of a sudden there was this new little baby girl getting the majority of our Mama's attention around the old homestead. She meant the world to all of us, though, and in reflecting on the past half century today, on my little sister's 50th birthday, all I can say is that I love her very much and wish "Bee" the happiest of birthdays on her special day! When Kelly was a little girl she had a little trouble forming the words she wanted to say and often struggled to pronounce her r's and l's. They all came out w's, until she eventually conquered that speech impediment. But memories persist, especially in the minds of her two older brothers who were there sharing the same house with her during all of our early years. Kelly would refer to herself as "Bee," failing to say the word "me" like she intended. We all got a kick out of her saying, "That's Bee's doll," or "Weave Bee awone." So if anyone hears me referring to my little sister as "Bee," now you know why! Stories about our upbringing in both Markham and West Columbia are many and all very entertaining, especially when told by our big brother Cody. Ol' Cody just has a way with a story that I am unable to equal. I could fill reams of papers writing about my siblings and the wonderful times we all had growing up together. But, for brevity's sake, I will simply display a few old photographs in this little tribute to my sister Kelli (who dropped the "y" from the end of her first name when she was in high school and started spelling it with an "i" instead) and send along my best birthday wishes to "Bee" as she reaches yet another wonderful milestone in her remarkable life. I love you, kid!

The mother of the baby in the photo below, Amanda Kuban Medve, is pictured above in a Kuban family photo I took many years ago. Kelli and Chris Kuban are shown with Amanda and Natalie, before their youngest child Tommy was born.

As she celebrates her 50th birthday today, March 22, 2010, our baby sister has gone from being the coddled infant she was in the photo above, where our big brother Cody, left, and I show how overjoyed we both were when our parents brought Kelly Renee home from the hospital. The big smiles on our little faces were true barometers of just how excited we were. Hey, our toys were getting kind of boring. We needed something new to play with. And now, 50 years later, Kelli is a grandmother herself. In the photo above Kelli and her daughter Natalie show off newborn Madelyn Reese, the daughter of Kelli's husband Chris Kuban's daughter from a previous marriage, Amanda and her husband Cody.

The black-and-white photos above were all taken by my mother, Verna Gupton, with her Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera (which I still have on the top shelf in my home office as a tribute to Mama's love of photography). I hope Kelli is not too embarrassed by this display of memories from her early childhood. It boggles my mind that these pictures were taken nearly 50 years ago. The top photo is of a very young Kelly Renee, sporting cowboy boots and her beloved doll and doll carriage. That's me in the next picture, straddling one of my sister's big stuffed animals, in the living room of our Markham home while Kelli shows off her Toni home permanent and cute curls. I was pretty cute too, huh? In the next photo Kelli opens one of her Christmas gifts while our daddy squats beside her. That photo and the one below it were taken during our first year living in our new brick home in West Columbia in 1962. And in the bottom photo the Gupton kids are all dressed up in their Sunday best. Mama posed us in front of the fancy bookcase in the living room of our brand new home. We moved from Markham to West Columbia in 1962 and I started the first grade the following year at West Columbia Elementary School. Kelli was the first of Rex and Verna's children to attend kindergarten classes. Our big brother Cody is pouting for some reason in this group shot. He was probably mad because Mama was making him go to Sunday school. Oh, those were the good old days!

Our parents, Rex and Verna Gupton, were elated the night they attended the high school graduation ceremony of their youngest child, my little sister Kelli, in May of 1978. I took the photo above in our kitchen on Kelli's graduation night. Our brother Cody graduated from Columbia High in 1972 and I followed in 1975. And now all of our parents' grandchildren have graduated from high school with the exception of Kelli's son, Tommy Kuban, who is currently a junior at CHS and in the running for class valedictorian. It's about time somebody in the family followed in my footsteps!

In more recent years members of the Gupton and Kuban families have truly enjoyed watching Natalie Kuban lead cheers at Columbia Roughnecks sporting events. Well duh? It runs in the family. Natalie's mother was head cheerleader at Columbia High in the late 1970s. Kelli, pictured above with her megaphone and pom-poms, was voted Homecoming Queen by the student body at CHS in the fall of 1977. She was a member of the 1978 graduating class.

I took this photo of four generations of the Ashenbremmer-Giesler-Gupton-Mosteit family in the backyard of our parents, Rex and Verna Gupton, in West Columbia shortly after the birth of my parents' first grandchild. Dustin David Mosteit, being held by his mother Kelli, will be celebrating his 30th birthday later this year. Also pictured are Dustin's proud grandmother, Verna Mae Giesler Gupton (left), and great-grandmother, Clara Pauline Ashenbremmer Giesler.

Our grandparents, Eula and Buff Gupton of West Columbia, Texas, sat down on our couch for a photo opportunity with the new arrival in the Gupton family during a 1960 visit to our home in Markham, Texas. Kelly Renee Gupton, born March 22, 1960, in the Wharton hospital, would be the last of nine grandkids for Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Morris Gupton. The old farts could have smiled, don't you think? Buff and Eula's other grandchildren are, in order of age: Dolores Gupton Rader, Peggy Lou Gupton Boone, Kirby Gupton, Raybourne Ricks "Hank" Gupton, Denise Gupton Ingram, Samuel Cody Gupton, Angie Gupton Middleton, and yours truly, Robert Tracy Gupton. Our grandfather died in 1961, so photos like the one above are the only memories my little sister has of "Bussie" (while my own are very vague and cloudy, since I was only four when he died), and we lost our grandmother Eula in 1968 when I was in the sixth grade and Kelli was a third grader.