Uncle Ray
Raymond Albert Maes
October 26, 1926 - August 12, 2013
This my Uncle Ray. The photo was taken when I went back to the States in 1973. He's six years older than my mother. As I write this, he is still alive, aged 86.
We adored him. He was a keen bodybuilder and a bit of a woodsman. He could walk on his hands, allowing a small child astride his head.
He taught me to swing an axe.
Uncle Ray, my mother and I were all born in the house my mother was brought up in, where my grandparents still lived when I was born, and where my cousin Lenny now lives, 57 Cleveland Avenue, Saugus.
Uncle Ray died on August 12, 2013. At that time, my mother was the last of her generation. With Ray's death, she felt that the last of her ties to her home town had been cut.
