Continuing from yesterday’s group photos of the siblings, here are some more informal photos from the same reunion of the children of Nathan and Mary McClain.
I admit right up front that these two are practically identical twins to me. I really struggle to tell which is which. So feel free to correct me. In the interest of consistency across all the photos from the reunion, I’m saying the guy with the striped tie is Clyde and the one with the spotted tie is Grandpa Arthur. I made those identifications based in part on Grandpa Arthur’s deformed right nostril (I don’t know the history of that—a farming accident somewhere along the line, perhaps?), that Mr. Spotted Tie here appears to share. With all that as caveat, then, Clyde McClain is on the left and Arthur McClain is on the right. An interesting thing about these two is that they passed away within two months of each other (Clyde first) even though Clyde was almost seven years younger than Arthur, and further, Arthur’s death was accidental. That occurred in 1947, nine years after this reunion.I can’t identify the people in the background, but in the foreground on the right side of the photo is Arthur McClain on the left and Ellery McClain on the right.In the foreground on the left is Clyde McClain and on the right is Addie McClain. In the background at center is Charlie McClain. The person behind Addie on the right edge of the photo may be Ray McClain.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I have not come across any indication in the photo archives that the McClain siblings had been getting together on any sort of regular basis. This reunion seems to have been a one-time event. I wonder if it wasn’t prompted by the death of Bill two years before this—sort of a hint that their generation was beginning to disappear, and if they wanted to get together, they shouldn’t delay. As I mentioned yesterday, it was a good thing they didn’t delay very much longer, since two more of their number passed away 5½ years after this, and all but four had passed away by August 1948, just over ten years after the reunion.
