Blog 3468 – 05.02.2025
Happy Birthday, Betty Lou
Today is the birthday of a very special lady, Betty Lou Lloyd Stokes. She is my wife Linda’s mother, my son Jay’s grandmother, and my granddaughter Emma’s great grand mother. Most weeks my wife and I get to spend two days a week with Mom while her daughter Sarah, with whom she lives, works. Sarah works from home a couple of days a week and Michelle, Sarah’s daughter, or Greg, her son, gets the privilege of a visit from grandma on the other day.
Tomorrow my Houston family will gather at a Mexican restaurant in Spring, Texas to break bread together and honor our beloved Betty Lou. Thanks in large part to her, I got to know the love of my life, Linda Lee Stokes, also pictured above along with an Easter picture of Mom, a picture of me as Santa with my daughter Emily when she was five, and a recent picture of our new princess, Emma Grace in her first pigtails.
Betty Lou is an exceptional woman and her lovely smile, captured in the Easter picture, is not just reserved for pictures, but shines like the sun on all she meets. It truly is a joy and a blessing to be around her and she is a treasure to all her family and friends.
Betty is many things and it would take more time and more space than a single blog or even a long series of them to list even half, so I will just mention one. Betty is a wonderful Yahtzee player. She and I usually play at least three cards, that’s fifteen games, on days she spend with us, and more often than not she is the winner. Just last Monday, in one game she had four Yahtzees totaling more than five hundred points that game and crushing me with that lovely smile on her face.
Happy Birthday, Betty Lou, you can beat me at Yahtzee anytime. I am glad and grateful for every moment that I have gotten to spend basking in your loving sunshine smile. See you tomorrow, Birthday Girl.
Your friend, fellow traveler, and Betty Stokes’ Zahtzee partner,
David James White
Note: The great love of Betty Lou’s life is Wallace Mendel Stokes who passed some six years ago. Wallace was a lucky man to find her, win her heart and to keep her through so many “rough and ready years.” Elvis Costello’s song She is my tribute to their She and He Love Story on Betty’s birthday.
She
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