52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks -- Catching up Week 21 -- Nickname

I'm catching up on posts for the blogging prompt furnished by Amy Johnson Crow, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  The theme for Week 21 (May 20-26) was Nicknames.

My mother's family apparently was big into nicknames.  My Aunt Elizabeth was given, as a child, the nickname "Beffus."  My mother's nickname was "Rid," a play on their surname, Reed.  I don't remember what my uncle's nickname was.

When my father was courting my mother in 1936-37, he probably didn't know what he was getting into.  My mother's family was also big into word play and punning.  My grandfather wrote hymns as a sideline, and occasionally wrote popular songs, as well.  He also would dash off a humorous ditty from time to time.  I call these folks, Perry Wilmer Reed and Mary LeSourd, his wife, my grandparents, but they were actually my grandaunt and granduncle.  Mom was an intra-family adoption after her biological father died in a railroad accident.  And as those things go, it's a long story.

Anyway, Dad was a bit shy around the gregarious and sometimes raucous Reeds.  He wasn't sure how he should address his future mother-in-law.  Should he call her Mrs. Reed, Mother Reed, Mary . . . ?  She defused his confusion and his reticence by stating, "Call me anything!  Call me 'Charlie!'"  That quickly morphed into "Chollie," and that's how she was addressed as long as I knew her and had many visits with her.  

My father attended the U.S. Naval Academy, and to look at the entries in the Academy yearbook for the year he graduated, The Lucky Bag 1934 (the "lucky bag" is the naval services' name for lost-and-found), one would think nicknames were mandatory at the Academy.  My father's nickname was "Smoky," probably because he did indulge cigarettes.  His best friends were Edward "Ned" Worthington ("Playboy") and James Newell ("Sonny").

I was the only one of the three of us children in my immediate family who did not have a nickname -- other than the things my brother called me, like "shrimp."  Not really a nickname.  I adopted the nickname "Blurb" in high school, being of a somewhat literary bent, and like the jacket blurb on a book, I was (and still am) short.  My sister, named Mary Elizabeth, was known as "Betty," after our paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Jane "Betty" [Reynolds] Packard.  My brother's nickname was in honor of our father's Annapolis buddy, "Ned" Worthington, who was killed at Pearl Harbor.

We even give our animals nicknames.  Our present cat, Gabriela, has many, and has earned them.  She is: Gabby, The Baroness von Buttwiggle, Speed Bump, Dances on Bladders, Princess Tail-in-the-Face, and the Maharani of Kittypurr.  She has the best nicknames of all.