Creston, meet Creston

What’s in a name? For one Texas family, naming their newest child Creston represents a legacy of love and fond memories.

Creston was born Dec. 16, 2021, to Chris and Brooke De Luna of Fort Worth, Texas, was named in memory of the child’s great-grandparents, Jack and Patricia Johns, high school sweet hearts who met at Creston High School and were married for 67 years. Creston is a healthy boy, weighing 9.1 pounds and measuring 21.5 inches long at birth.

Knowing she wanted the perfect name to honor her grandparents and a name that started with the letter C or B, Brooke said she was inspired while decorating for Christmas in 2020. As she looked at each structure of the Christmas village she inherited from her grandfather, she noticed the post office had a piece of label tape covering the U.S. Post Office markings and was replaced with “Creston Post Office.

“My grandfather was a postmaster,” she said of Jack, who died in 2019.

When she approached her husband about the name, she said they both fell in love.

“We decided, boy or girl, that was going to be our kid’s name and a couple months later we found out we were pregnant,” Brooke said.

Cindy Mendoza, Creston’s maternal grandmother, who has lived in Fort Worth since the age of three, said she was tickled when she learned of her new grandchild’s name.

“Every summer I spent the whole summer with my grand parents because I loved it there,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza, the grand daughter of Lyle and Blenn Keast and Kenneth and Lenora Johns, fondly recalled running around her grandfather’s service station, Keast Oil, located near Peznick’s, where she’d shop for treats and the basement of Iowa Southern on Montgomery, where her grandma Lenora taught cooking classes.

Brooke also cherishes her childhood memories of time spent in Creston –  a place where she said everyone was so nice and they walked around freely.

“I remember my great-grandma (Lenora) sitting on her front porch and me just running around in the grass in front of her house,” she said. “She passed away when I was pretty young, so the memories are hard to remember, but I remember the pictures and I remember just loving it out there. We’re from a bigger city, so it was so cool to go somewhere that was little. It seemed like everyone just knew each other. My grandparents just loved it and it was so special to them.”

“We were there on Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, too, so Creston was just like, this place, still to this day, I love it,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza said the family makes a point to at least drive through every three years or so, and will return Jan. 21 for a relative’s 80th birthday.

“We just can’t stay away,” she said.