Doyle Family Reunion Highlights
After the brief award ceremony and prayer, lunch was served, and the food served was definitely worth the wait. The menu was absolutely delicious. At the center of the meal was the meat that was served. All of the barbequed meat was coordinated and barbequed at the home of Rwyne Prosser (son of Ruby and George Prosser). Rwyne Prosser has a huge 10 foot long barbeque pit in his backyard, and he and his nephews smoked and cooked huge quantities of ribs, chicken, brisket, and sausage with both Almond and Mesquite wood. The Mesquite wood was actually shipped in from Texas by Andrew Smith, who spent several hours at Rwyne’s home cooking the meat with his brothers Edwin “Tuff” Smith and Horace “Boo” Smith and their twin brothers, Ken and Len. Also, the Smith’s first cousins Larry Rogers (Janice Prosser Roger’s husband) and Vernon Prosser (son of George “June” Prosser) and Ronnie Prosser (son of Sylvester Prosser) helped out tremendously.
Along with the meat, the side dishes were also very well prepared and also prepared creatively as well. The salads, for instance, were provided by the Crowder girls, Davia, Faye, and Grace, who came down from the San Francisco area to Fresno on Thursday to prepare the salads at the home of Dorothy McAlister (daughter of Helen Moultrie), who has a home in Madera, 20 minutes from Fresno. Also, the beans were prepared in advanced. The John Doyle (son of Vernon Doyle) family cooked most of the beans at home in Sacramento, transported the beans from Sacramento to Fresno, and stored the beans at the homes of family members in Fresno until the Saturday picnic.
After the meal, after everyone was full as a tick, the family spent the remaining of the evening talking to one another and trying to deal with the heat. With 108 degree temperature, it was too hot to do anything in the sun. So, everyone moved around as little as possible and consumed a lot of water and punch and soda to keep as cool as possible.
Toward the end of the evening, the entire family gathered to take a family photo. However, the photographer had to make several announcements to gather the large crowd together. Everyone was full and hot and really didn’t want to move around a lot. However, once the family gathered together, the group looked absolutely wonderful, adorned in the family colors. Derek Doyle, Sr. did a fantastic job arranging the sale of family clothing to the family, and everyone was decked out in tee shirts and polo shirts and baseball caps and kangaroo caps, all in the family colors – red, gold, green, and blue.
The photographer, however, agitated the family a bit. After spending significant time arranging everyone for the first picture that was taken in the shade, the photographer lost almost half the crowd when he yelled to the crowd, “Now, let take one in the sun.”
After the photo, many family members stuck around for a couple of hours, but many left before dark due to the heat. Many returned to their hotel rooms, and met up with other family members later that night.