Dick, Doree, Mildred, and Harold celebrate Mildred’s 48th birthday at the Biltmore Bowl in Hollywood. Below is the special photo folder provided by the Biltmore Bowl for a remembrance of this occasion.

Aunt & Unc (Tirzah and Frank Jessup) celebrated their 40th anniversary on Feb. 16, 1953. They were in Whittier for the celebration, which was attended by everyone in the family as well as the Votaws’ pastor, Robert Cope.

Frank and Tirzah cut the cake together at the party celebrating their 40th anniversary.

Dick and Mildred (my father and grandmother) loved to go to the music & dance clubs in Hollywood. There they’d be able to listen and dance to the most popular big bands in America. By the time we kids came along that all stopped; I don’t think babies were welcome in those places. After that, the clubs were not playing “big band” music any more, and they began to go out of business as other forms of entertainment became more popular.

But we still loved to go out to eat, and driving an hour to get to a nice place was not unusual. There have always been a lot of great restaurants in the L.A. area and we visited many of them for family birthday parties when I was growing up.

Harold and Mildred celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on June 25, 1951. Based on the photos, it appears that they re-enacted the wedding ceremony. The above photo shows a canopy with a candleabra; everyone is dressed in their finest. Below is a picture of the couple cutting the “wedding” cake. At the top of the page you see Mildred, with a big grin, putting a bite of cake in Harold’s mouth. 

This photo may have been connected with one of the events on this page, or a different event. I’m including it here because my parents look so young and cute.