My Eastern European Background

Please click button to play “Eastern European Heritage”:

My mother, now 88, has long loved to do flower gardening.

Here she is, visiting the Rockcastle River Trading Company a few years ago:

“My Mother the Gardener at Rockcastle River Trading Company circa 2024”

Lydia Joly, center; Loran Joly, left; daughter of Lydia, right; Lydia’s grandmother, standing; at the farm of my grandmother from Poland, and her husband, Ludwig, from Odesa, Ukraine, in Michigan

Lydia Joly, my mother, has loved to garden.

Here she is, at The Rockcastle River Trading Company, with one of the Carloftis sisters, a few years ago.  My mother was about 84 at that time.

Lydia Joly, right; one of the Carloftis sisters, left, of Rockcastle River Trading Company

“Carcille [Carloftis] Burchette named Kentucky Garden Club President”, by Dean Manning, June 11, 2021:

https://thenewsjournal.net/carcille-burchette-named-kentucky-garden-club-president/

ALSO:

https://wanderlustandcominghome.com/2015/10/15/explore-kentucky-rockcastle-river-trading-company/

“My eldest sister, Carcille Carloftis Burchette, was Valedictorian at Livingston High School, Valedictorian at Cumberland College, was Miss Congeniality and Maid of Spring in Miss Kentucky 1969, was most kids favorite teacher in Corbin, she started the Gifted and Talented Program there and was at least 3rd in the state against big Catholic schools in Louisville and Lexington for 10 years, is on the Corbin School Board (we donated our design and labor and are giving plants at wholesale in our busiest season because she is a spectacular human being and I’m proud to have her as my big sis!) and will be the next President of the Kentucky State Garden Clubs... guess what? It will be named the Carcille Carloftis Burchette Courtyard!”

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CSya4jQoW/

I was baptized in a creek in West Virginia.

Have made at least four trips back to West Virginia in the past five years:

“West Virginia – rural scenes – by Loran Joly”: