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NOTE: A word about the first four slides as they move from left to right above.
The first is the ealiest known picture of my mother, Blanche Smithson, when she was about 2-years old (1907). The second
is of my mother when she was just 16 years old (that would be 1921). The third is of her just four years later (1925)
when she would have been 20 years old. The fourth is of my mother at the age of 25 (1930)....
The very last picture is of my mother and father, Eugene Harold Downey,
in front of their Sun City Center, FL home in August, 1968.
My father was smitten by my mother's beauty when they first met while both were
attending the Blackburn College Academy--- a live-in high school/prep school affiliated with Blackburn
College in Carlinville, IL. My father went on to graduate from Hyde Park High School
in Chicago, and later, by going to college as a full time day student while continuing to hold a full time job at AT&T,
working from 4 to midnight, he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Lewis Institute
of Chicago in just five years time. Until the Great Depression, which began with the fall of the stock market
in October, 1929, my mother worked in the Palmolive Building on the near north side of Chicago, right at Lake Michigan.
But with the Great Deprssion of the 1930's setting in, she lost her job. She would never work again.
...written by her son, H. Bruce
Downey
"Amazing Grace" as performed by H. Bruce
Downey, son of Eugene Harold Downey and Blanche Smithson Downey ------------>
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above.