Pictured, from left to right, moving clockwise, are:

1) Aletha A. (Rhode) Booton, S.J. Rhode’s sister. 2) S.J. Rhode.   3) Bonita (Bonnie) L. Caldwell, whose parents are also in this picture.   4) Yvonne N. Rhode, S.J. and Birdie’s second daughter, who later married Jack Dalton.  (The Rhodes’ first daughter, Helen Lucile, died in 1918 at the age of 15.)   5) Erwin E. Caldwell, assistant cashier at the bank.  6)  Erwin’s wife, Lucile J.E. (Booton) Caldwell, longtime family friend of S.J. and Birdie, with close ties to their daughter, Helen, and related by marriage to Aletha Booton. 7) My mother, Eleanore J. Matthews, before she married my father.  She was offered employment by the Rhodes and worked at the bank as a teller.   8) Mary Birdie Rhode.    9) Joseph Rhode Matthews, Mom’s brother, my uncle.  He was offered employment by the Rhodes and worked at a bank in Brighton. 

S.J. was a second cousin to my Mom’s and Uncle Joe’s paternal grandmother, Sadie (Rhode) Matthews (i.e., they had grandfathers who were brothers).   Both of their families were from Iowa.  When S.J., Aletha and their brother Thomas were orphaned, Sadie’s father took them in. 

After Mom and Uncle Joe were orphaned at a very young age, S.J. and Birdie expressed an interest in adopting them, but their maternal grandmother, Mary Margaret Young, had promised their mother on her death bed that she would raise them, and so she did, with loving help from Sadie, including making clothes for Mom and Uncle Joe as they were growing up.  When Mom first came to work at the bank and live in Fort Lupton, (on Tomato Day in 1936), she resided with the Rhodes in their house, which still stands on the southwest corner of 2nd St. and Denver Ave.