Rebecca Louise Kryder Zawadski

Third daughter of Frank H. Kryder, Fort Wayne, IN. born 1936

Represented by her step-father John Wesley Daniel

Sister of Katherine Kryder Picot and half sister of Rosemary Kryder Bond

Leonce Picot, Best Man

Here it is seen how important life changes like marriage and deaths which are recorded or published with an aka or not at all will separate heirs easily from their lineal descendancy when it comes to distribution of property.

Michele Picot-Strawberry would like to memorialize here Charles Zawadski, Uncle Chuck, who was a fantastic photographer, and worked many years independently in his own office creating commercial art for the Mai-Kai advertising and various Mai-Kai print projects.

Uncle Chuck was the swellest member of her family, along with his brother, John Zawadski. (Though, despite her outspoken and old-fashioned Pensacola ways, Michele was very fond of Nell Picot too).

When the original Leonce Picots were on the road gourmandising, Michele and Laura resided with Rebecca "Toti" at their house in Kendall Green, Pompano, Florida. Toti and Uncle Chuck's daughter was the Picot sisters' younger cousin Tamara Veronica who died at 50 years old.

Charles and John Zawadski were so extra good to the kids. Neither gent ever raised their voices or lost their tempers that Michele can recall. There were naturally gentle. Chuck gave his wife everything she wanted.

John had just gotten out of the army and was yet to start life, so he had a room in the house too.

The brothers taught Michele army card tricks while the younger girls were afternoon-napping.

Once Michele overhead Chuck saying to Toti, " I'm a little worried. John says he only has $100 left in the bank."

The first "Pier One" store had opened on U.S. 1, and Toti just had to see it, for lack of any arty stores being around in those days.

Everyone piled into Chuck's old Volvo to see the Pier One. It certainly was different than the 5&10 or Ward's which were the emporiums we were used to shopping.

Uncle John bought the three little cousins each a colorful crepe paper ball, filled with trinkets which appear as the paper is unravelled.

On the way back to Kendall Green in the back of the car, Michele felt pangs in her heart for John. She wasn't sure how serious only having $100 was, but he so wanted to buy the three girls a souvenir, just to bring joy to children. What a tender heart he had!

Toti never worked a day of her life and Uncle Chuck financed her expensive pursuit of ceramic doll making and antique doll collecting over the years, moving his family to a very nice house.

He was one of Kay's last friends to the end, and it was Chuck who was "sent" to Kay's house to discover her dead body after she hadn't been seen for a number of days. Toti and Chuck lived only a few blocks away.

Soon after, Toti, Tam, and Bunny all abandoned Uncle Chuck and decided to move to Scotland, where they died. The former Zawadski family all died within three years of each other- mother, daughter, then father.

This spontaneous "let's live in Scotland" whim is not without roots. Toti was kidnapped by Bunny from her father Frank Kryder, in the middle of the night in 1940.

When Katherine and Becky were in High School, and John W. Daniel was their father figure, one day Bunny put the girls in the car and headed for new Mexico. Michele heard two aspects of this trip, one from Toti and one from Kay.

Toti's version was that the whole incident was sudden and unexpected.

"Mother just decided she wanted to move to New Mexico."

According to Toti, they drove from Fort Lauderdale to New Mexico, hung out a few days then turned around and returned to J.D.

"Mother looked around and decided she didn't like it there."

Years prior, Michele had heard her mother's memory of the trip. Kay did not explain why they were on the road but as she told it,

"Once we were on a trip with mother and driving through Texas we were just starving. We had driven miles and miles until we spotted a restaurant. Since we were in Texas, I thought it would be pretty safe to order a steak. They brought it with a pile of french fries covering the top. When I moved them aside, underneath a big hole had been cut right out of the steak."

The quirky running away, the secret drinking, her early misbehavior as a minister's daughter- something was a bit off in LeVonne. In her photographs from childhood through old age she always appears as though she is hiding something.

She recreated herself of course, once grandchildren were born. While Kay, Becky, Leonce, and Chuck all knew she was kooky, the new generation provided opportunity for her to appear as something completely different than she was inside- an Episcopal Saint.

Katherine Kryder's paternal family was for generations Methodist. Her stepfather's family was for generations Methodist. Her maternal family was for generations Methodist. But Bunny's father, Dr. Lawhon was an early poor Methodist Reverend.

When Michele asked Bunny about Dr. Lawhon all she got was, "He never amounted to much."

Bunny liked the social superiority of the wealthier Episcopalian congregation. Though Toti had to convert to Catholicism when she married Uncle Chuck, Kay, her girls, Bunny and her third husband were more or less inducted as Episcopalians.

Bunny was always busy ironing the altar cloths, going out to "the migrant camp," attending Daughters of The King and Women's Auxiliary. She was a real church lady, by gum. That was how she wanted to be seen by her grandchildren.

Michele Picot, before she actually became a migrant herself, begged Bunny to go to the migrant camp. She wasn't exactly sure what it was, but the church ladies brought things there to poor children.

"No, you can't go there- there are too many germs," was Bunny's consistent answer.

Michele, after studying Florida history, believes this migrant camp was directly west of Pompano near U.S. 441, the original truck farmers route. There were a few edifices left then from the original land boom as farms were situated on either side of the highway. Trucks just had to pull off on dirt roads where packing sheds were erected a number of acres apart, then get on their way north.

This housing for pickers who moved with the seasons was plain rectangular cement block dormitories, with or without stucco and paint. The bathrooms were communal, in their own dormitory. Not much different than outhouse life. There likely were too many germs for an outside child. Though obviously migrant pickers and tenant famers became more of a fascination as Michele became her own Strawberry Girl.

She visited her Uncle Chuck a few years before his death. He must have been expecting she would show up eventually because he had saved a closetful of items Toti had left behind- albums of her high school days, sketches she'd made of Chuck at art school, their wedding album, family pictures, pictures of Kay in high school, a portrait Toti had painted of the three girls, another portrait Michele had posed for.

It was odd that he waited until Michele finally came to the house to see him because in the later part of his career he worked for a publication located next door to the Down Under and would frequently stop at the bar for a drink before going home. Michele saw him frequently and they chatted.

She supposes he wasn't sure how the traces of the past would affect her. But when she came to his house to ask about the gun that killed Kay, he decided she was ready not only for his closet of scrapbooks and photo memories, but ready for quite a bit of information he had concerning the gun, Leonce, and Bunny (LeVonne Kryder aka).

Uncle Chuck was a reliable source. He loved Kay, and he loved his wife and daughter. After all that had gone by, it wasn't in his nature to make up stories.

So raise a glass to the Zawadski Bros., Charles and John, and say an Ave Maria too.

Dona nobis pacem.

Katherine Kryder Daniel Picot as Maid of Honor at the wedding of her sister, Rebecca Louise Kryder Daniel.

Michele Picot-Strawberry 2022