THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September, 2, 1994 TAG: 9408310170
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PATRICIA HUANG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
IT COULD HAVE BEEN the roast pig or the homemade ice cream on the wooden picnic tables under the pavilion. It could have been the casual shooing of flies away from the potato salad or the sticky, sweaty children racing to the pool.
But it was probably the six generations of Simmonses laughing in the August sun that really said ``family.''
``I grew up barefoot, wearing hand-me-down clothes and working in the fields,'' said Laforn Langley, 36, of Chesapeake. ``And Grandma used to make corn whiskey.''
She reflected on those days growing up with her grandmother in Bowers Hill. There were always plenty of relatives around since her late grandmother, Doris Louise Simmons Chavis, had eight brothers and sisters, Langley said, and some of them had as many as 14 children. Every Sunday, they'd muster a caravan down to Winton or Ahoskie, N.C., to picnic with other family members.
``We're trying to re-create one of those Sunday afternoons,'' Langley explained last Saturday when she and other relatives in the area held a two-day reunion of extended family from as far away as New York.
Though among them were the Johnsons, Browns, Chavises, Feltons and Mitchells, they were all somehow descendants of the Simmons line.
Beaming, a young woman with a short, black bob and sunglasses on her head sneaked up behind an older woman dressed in purple. A tap on the shoulder and another beam. She waited for the woman to turn around.
``Watch, I know you won't remember me,'' she said, giggling.
The woman in purple, Jerleen Combo of Ahoskie, cocked her head. Squinting one eye, she hesitated. ``I know that grin . . . Wait, I know that grin,'' she said with conviction.
``I'm Jean's daughter, Lynette . . . remember?'' the girl offered.
``Oh my God. I knew I knew that grin!'' said Combo, 48, as the two embraced. She quickly spun the girl around to face another relative.
``Look, look,'' she said. ``Guess who this is. Look at that smile!''
But there aren't simple terms for the relations between the approximately 120 people that arrived at the Triple C Park in Deep Creek.
``My grandmother on my mom's side is her aunt,'' explained Lynette Mitchell, 28, of Queens, NY.
Like a game of Twister, family members quibbled throughout the day over their relations.
``This is my brother's son's niece,'' said Combo later in the day, as she fed the youngest and newest member of the family, 2-month-old Unequa, under the shade of a tree. ``So that makes her my . . . I don't know.''
But try asking Langley, who makes it her business to keep up with all the old members and new ones too. ``My grandmother raised me so that's how I got designated the family historian,'' she said. ``I knew my grandmother's brothers and sisters better than my mom did . . . I have a very good memory. I can still remember holding out my arms so someone could fill it up with logs of wood when I was just an itty-bitty 4-year-old.''
Walking over to the edge of the pavilion, Langley greeted some newcomers to the picnic. ``Hi, I'm your cousin Laforn,'' she said to three teenage distant relatives. ``Now tell me who you are.''
Introductions included a slew of references. I'm so-and-so's brother or I'm so-and-so's son, they'd begin. But everyone knew great grandma Beatrice. Or at least the 12 children who ran to her side as she stepped out of her car did.
``I have 11 children, 30-some grandchildren and 20-some great-grandchildren,'' said Beatrice Simmons Johnson, 65, as she glanced around the park. ``There's always someone stopping by. You never get bored.''
She is also grand aunt to Laforn Langley, sister to grandpa Lonnie, 68, who was sitting in his wheelchair, and aunt to Robert Felton, Laforn's uncle, who was working the grill and keeping an eye on the deep frier for fish.
Felton described himself simply. ``I'm brother to some, cousin to some, uncle to some.''
But most of the younger ones couldn't keep track.
A petting zoo hired for the children included a donkey, a calf, two goats, rabbits, sheep and a chicken. The youngsters giggled and crept around the animals, asking over and over if they would bite. The attraction, however, vanished when the lifeguard arrived to open the pool and the little ones sped off to splash away the humidity.
Five-year-old Anthony was left behind. A lone boy petting a donkey.
``I was mad at my mommy,'' he said, explaining why he had been spotted crying earlier. He had bawled when she told him he couldn't swim because she had forgotten to bring his trunks.
Back over under the pavilion, the adults reminisced. ``Everybody said it felt so much like the good ol' days,'' Langley said. ``We reminisced about how we used to get together to work in the corn fields . . . and we thought about how far we'd come from the outhouses and wooden stoves and how the kids these days take all that for granted.''
On Sunday, the family reunion included a formal dinner banquet at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth. The dancers had everybody doing the twist and everyone made vows to keep in closer touch.
``You had to pick two people that you didn't know, get their address and number and write to them at least twice a year,'' said Langley, who is completing a book on her family's history, called ``Images of a Family.''
``I told people that if they didn't hear from anyone else during the year,'' she said. ``They'd at least get a card from me.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos by L. TODD SPENCER
Jerleen Combo holds the youngest relative, 2-month-old Unequa,
while Lonnie Simmons gets a hug from his sister Beatrice Johnson at
Triple C Park in Deep Creek.[color cover photo]
Relatives at the Simmons family reunion enjoyed a menu of roast pig,
fish, potato salad and homemade ice cream at Triple C Park in Deep
Creek.
Four-year-old Amanda Smith isn't too willing to leave her mother,
Leslie Smith, and go meet the relatives.
Ashley Brown, right, wears her goggles for a dip in the pool at
Triple C Park in Deep Creek.
Shirley Riddick fights off smoke as she helps out at the grill.
by CNB