St. Louis Reunion: ROAD TRIP.

Thursday 8-15-13:

Troy and I will be hitting the road for St. Louis tomorrow (Friday) morning. We have a stop to make on the way and should be getting into St. Louis in the afternoon.

We have booked a room at the Econ Lodge by the airport for Friday night (4576 Woodson Rd., St. Louis.

I will be going offline in the morning but we will have our cell phone if anyone wants to contact us-- text or voice. If it goes to voice mail just leave a message and we will call you right back.

Saturday 8-17-13:

Got some good info at the reunion in Wentzville. Dean & Joe were there and helped finalize identification on several pictures. Bud's daughter, Christine Simbeck Pallardy, (Bud & Chrissy in picture/left) was also there and we expect her to give us help on Bud's military later this week.

Gary R Littrell and I went to Valhalla (??) cemetery and got some pictures of Jesse's and others tombstones after the reunion. Won't get a chance to review information that people wrote in the books and charts until after we get home, but hopeful we got a lot of updated information.

Sunday, 8-18-13:

Drove down from St. Louis to Portageville. Got here late afternoon and was only able to get a hold of Louie. Visited with him for about an hour...Ava had told me he had found Raymond's military papers for the MRC book. WOW!

He had a bunch of orders for Raymond enlistment, movement to basic, transfer papers, unit citation, etc., etc.,... everything except his discharge papers, but what he had will make up for that... even possibly make it possible to get his discharge papers later on. Even had Raymond's handwritten notebook from Artillery school, ...63 year old notes!

... and pictures from Korea... a bunch of them. Unfortunately Raymond didn't put much information on the back of them, but there plenty of information we can get from the front.

My scanner went on the fritz and we couldn't scan anything, but at the hotel I think I fixed it... we'll visit Louie again tomorrow morning and give it another try.

• Ava Savat i knew u would like all the info. daddy had.

• Sandra Savat-Mann Glad Louie had it. I kept looking - no wonder I couldn't find anything. I do have a page from Daddy's army yearbook (is that what it's called?) so I have this pic. Glenn, let me know your email addy and I'll email it to you.

Monday 8-19-13:

Troy and I had breakfast with Judy (a cousin from our Hampton side of the family), then I proceeded to Louie's. Troy spent the day with cousin Judy and they visited Janet and then Martha Rea's in Marston while I went over and got the scanner working at Louie’s. Then I picked up Troy and we visited with Mary Catherine.

From there we headed to Fred's and got there after dark. 

When we got to Fred's and I saw what he had on Red in WWII it was a confidence boosting plus.

Using just a letter home from JD where he mentioned Red going overseas (but no details), and a picture of Red in uniform we had produced about 5-10 pages on Red's service, when we got Red's actual papers from Fred it turns out about 95% of our research and detective work was accurate. (end of Monday)

Tuesday 8-25-13:

Troy spent the day with Fred while I drove back to Marston, New Madrid, and breezed through East Prairie. Shot some video at Evergreen Cemetery and the veterans memorial in New Madrid and East Prairie (got a picture of Raymond Savat's spot on the Memorial -click here-) then drove back to Fred's. Didn't get much at the Library, but so far the trip has been productive...info on Louie’s father Raymond and the pictures take us from having nothing on Raymond to having almost too much!

We decided to stay another day instead of leaving Wednesday afternoon.

Wednesday:

Tuesday two of Red's old friends joined us at the lodge and this morning Monty arrived to help them work on a shelter for Fred's boat. While they did that Troy and I road into Poplar Bluff and looked at apartments and the VA Hospital. After I dropped Troy back at Fred's I drove back to Anniston and did a cemetery census there. I also shot some video and visited La Forge. I decided I just had too much information to look-up at the Charleston library so I will have to do that research at a latter date. Drove back to Fred's.

Monte pulled out Aunt Bertha’s picture albums and we got a lot of new pictures…including more with Ruben in Uniform, still none with Bordie in Uniform.

Thursday:

We loaded up, said goodbye and headed to Marston. Visited with Janet and got a picture of Fred's Silver Star. Saw Avery for the first time since he was a little kid. Headed for Charleston to try and catch Darlene before she went to work, couldn't find her house... been there a hundred times as a kid. Tried to find her at work... at the Wal-Mart, but couldn't find the Wal-Mart, turns out the wall mart was in Sikeston, drove to Sikeston... turned out the time we had for Darlene going to work was actually the time she got off work, drove back to Charleston and finally found her house. Visited her and Wendell and then headed for Ann's. Got some good information and stories from Ann... almost the whole day had been spent trying to identify one of the homesteads, then the one the family was at during the 37 flood... we think we did it as well as clearing up some information about Dick Littrell's death and the conflict between Grandpa John and his brother Uncle James.

After Ann's we hit the road and got into a hotel in Effingham...where we are now.

Friday :

Hopefully everything has uploaded to LittrellFamily.,net on Facebook but if not it should upload when I go online in the lobby this morning.

  Covered over a thousand miles on this trip (Indy<>St. Louis(2 days)<>Portageville/East Prairie area and back and forth to Fred's place (3 times)<> all over Mississippi and New Madrid Counties<> then back to Indy. We saw more cousins than expected and didn't get to do all the research I wanted to, stayed two extra days, but all and all it was a great trip though tiring. The info on Raymond and Red's service, the story updates from Ann, Monty and Fred, cleared up some mystery about a few pictures, saw where Chrissy and Deana are sending information on Bud and Steve... all these things are big contributions to this years Military Roll Call book, and next years book on the family.

Will post new info as I process it.