PLATTSBURGH -- Eighty-seven years ago, Dorothy Alice Anderson Gauthier hand-crocheted a delicate band of lace to decorate the slip beneath her wedding dress. Since then, 77 of the Redford woman's descendants have been christened wearing that same lace.

The tradition wasn't one anyone set out to establish.

"We never called each other and said, 'Don't forget to use the lace,'" said Marlene D'Aloisio, who was the 12th baby to wear it. "We just did, and we asked our children to use it for their babies."

Gauthier died in 1972, but the lace tradition has continued. To preserve her grandmother's memory and recognizing the lace as a family treasure, last May, D'Aloisio began capturing and preserving the memories of Gauthier and "Granny's lace" in a journal.

"I had some time on my hands, and I always wanted to know the numbers," she said.

The biggest catalyst? Her second grandson, Thomas, would soon be born and be next to wear the lace. What number, she wondered, would he be?

D'Aloisio called her mother and aunts, gathering family history from them. Then she contacted other relatives, asking them to complete a page for each christening, decorating it however they chose. "Granny's Lace Journal," she said, "is written by the first, second and third generations to the fourth, which is the babies being born now. &It's a tangible reminder of our past along with a very special connection to future generations,"

The journal begins with a photo of the lace then others of Gauthier, followed by the baptismal pages.

WOMAN OF STRENGTH

D'Aloisio lives on Long Island but was born in Plattsburgh.

"My parents moved to Albany when I was under 2 years old," she said. (But) we visited Redford two, three times a year & always in August for the Redford picnic."

She and her brother, Gary, spent many summers in that Town of Saranac hamlet as they got older. There, her grandmother owned the Sportsmans Hotel and Bar, which she managed on her own after her husband's death. Granny was a quiet yet energetic woman who wore an apron over her housedress, D'Aloisio said.

"She made the best baked beans and crocks of salted pickles and always wore nylon stockings."

She was also a warm person who unconditionally accepted everyone.

The christening tradition began with Gauthier's first baby daughter, Alice Ellen. D'Aloisio's mother, Regina Fournier, who died last October, described that first baptismal garment for the journal: "It was a christening gown of soft medium-weight cotton with two rows of evenly spaced quarter-inch white satin ribbon weaved two inches below the neckline through a series of handmade eyelets running downwards on each side of the dress front to the hem."