April 10, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News

Remembering family reunions and "The Tie That Binds'

By Mike Haynes

                I don’t remember where I got my silly, brown tie that has the words, crudely written on it in iridescent green with a paint pen, “Blest Be The Tie That Binds.” Maybe I found it at a garage sale.

                It attracted me years ago because it brought to mind an annual reunion my family had attended for around 50 years. At the end of each weekend gathering, we would sing that Christian hymn before everyone departed for their homes.

                The Kunkel Reunion was a longtime tradition on my mother’s side of the family that brought together the descendants of Samuel Kunkel, who was buried in 1926 in my hometown of McLean, Texas. Of course, various branches of the family had different last names, and members of my immediate family plus my uncle, a Smith, joked every year that if you attended the reunion, you had been “Kunkelized.”

                On my dad’s side, we attended the Morse Reunion for many years. It didn’t last as long as the Kunkel one, which I think ran from the 1940s to the 2000s, but Dad’s kinfolks got together annually for 30 or 40 years. That reunion stemmed from my great-grandfather, J.S. Morse, who died at McLean in 1968, and others in his family.

                The Kunkel Reunion usually took place at the American Legion Hall in McLean, sometimes moving to Thompson Park or other Amarillo sites. The Morses moved around more, often meeting in McLean but sometimes in the mountains of New Mexico.

                The Kunkel group certainly was more organized. As long as I can remember, the reunion began with an informal gathering on Saturday night, a huge potluck dinner on Sunday (in our part of the country, the noon meal is dinner, not lunch) and then a formal business meeting where money was collected, officers were elected, minutes were recorded and those who had been born, married or died in the past year were recognized.

                And before that Sunday dinner, most of the group attended church together.

                Methodists and Baptists were the denominations most represented, so in alternating years, the congregation of one of those two McLean churches grew by 40 to 60 people on one Sunday in June. There were plenty of jokes about Baptists not dancing and Methodists not having an invitation to be “converted” at the end of their service.

                Sadly, both reunions have faded away. I’m still accused teased by my dad and siblings for “killing” the Kunkel Reunion, because at the last business meeting 15 or 20 years ago, I was elected president for the next year. By that time, most of my grandparents’ generation – the driving force behind the reunion – had died, and attendance had been low for a while. Drucilla, the family historian and secretary, was gone, and the usual practice of each family group sticking to its own table had gotten even more pronounced.

I talked to some of the remaining Kunkels and other relatives, and all agreed that it was time to fold up the card tables.

                The Morse Reunion came to a similar demise, although I wasn’t involved in that decision. Now some of us “younger” family members run into each other occasionally and say, “We should have a reunion again,” but so far, we haven’t.

                Another branch of my mother’s family, the Smiths, had a one-time event in 2012. Roger Smith, then pastor of Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, managed to get a big group of Smiths and relatives to a weekend at his church, and I’m glad. Four cousins of my mom’s generation posed for pictures, and a decade later, only one of them is left.

                I also was happy that I got to participate in a couple of reunions of my wife Kathy’s family. Her mom, Peggy, grew up in eastern Kentucky. She’s lived in Amarillo for more than 50 years, but she has visited her home in the heart of Hatfield-McCoy country most Memorial Days.

                On that weekend, the Francis clan traditionally has gathered to place flowers at mountain grave sites, eat the best fried chicken anyone’s ever had and sit on the porch telling stories and warning the kids not to get too close to the creek. I even got to meet a McCoy one year, kin to Peggy by marriage. I don’t think any Hatfields were invited.

                As with my family, deaths have reduced the number attending that reunion and worshipping at the pretty white Presbyterian church in the holler. The last time we visited Kentucky, I didn’t even get any fried chicken.               

                My mom has been gone since 2013, but the rest of the immediate family, consisting of my dad, three brothers, sister and their kids and grandkids, started a new tradition in 2021. We met in Ruidoso, New Mexico, for what we hope will be an annual Haynes reunion. My brother David’s wife, Ginger, had moved on to heaven unexpectedly, and David decided we could honor her by gathering in one of the family’s favorite places.

                Our family is no better or worse than a lot of families, but it comforts me that on big occasions, we do circle up and pray. There weren’t many dry eyes when about 25 of us did that around pizza boxes in a Ruidoso condo last summer.

                I used to get choked up, too, when Tom Caldwell’s bass voice would lead the Kunkel group: “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.”