Shared by Joseph and Ruby’s daughter, 2026.
Joseph and Katie Sharmer had three girls, and after that they were pretty sure they would never have a son. So they named one of the girls Josephine, after her father. Then, in November 1897, Joseph was born.
As a baby he couldn’t pronounce “Josephine” and called her Dodie instead, and Dodie she stayed. There was always a special bond between Josephine and Joseph. In December 1937, when he turned up at her door on his sales trip, she greeted him with “My darling little brother,” though, as he told Ruby, he was twice her size. Aunt Larry and Aunt Kathryn were both very tall, but Dodie, like her son Jacy, was very small (“Snow, Sleet, Smoke and Coal Dust”).
Dodie and her husband, Clair Van Slyke, had two children, Joseph Clair Van Slyke, called Jacy, and Gretchen. Sadly, Dodie was an alcoholic and died of cirrhosis.
Read on: Jacy · Gretchen and the Mail Boy
