Tracked down and reached out to a cousin in trying (endlessly) to flesh out a fuller picture of my great-grandfather Ward McCullough and his people.

One of his sisters, named Clyde, was the only one in his bunch who managed to stay out of the papers. A great-aunt I got to know had a photo of her and said that her Aunt Clyde would have been welcome in their home, which was a rare distinction among her father's siblings.

But she left Georgia for Mississippi and no one seemed to have heard any more from her. In finding her grandson, I asked what he remembered of her; if she ever mentioned her family. The recollection he offered was limited, but I was really taken with it: "We lived in Pascagoula and she loved to fish. She, my mother & I would walk to the pier where Mama Clyde would put out 2 crab nets baited with chicken necks. We fished with cane poles, caught flounder, sheepshead, speckled trout."

Such an idyllic gloaming to what have must have been a fraught and tumultuous life.