Photos of People on Beaches
Today I had brunch at my aunts house on the upper-west side. We were diving in to boxes of old photographs from a blood relative of ours who lived there before my aunt moved in. These were just some of the discoveries:
1. Josie (my great great cousin, I believe) originally owned the apartment. She was a somewhat famous concert pianist, as I discovered by flipping through twenty or so pages of newspaper clippings and concert programs with her named in bold writing. She started in Germany (the first half of the book was all in German) but made her way literally around the world. She was friends with various other composers, including George Gershwin who she apparently wanted to marry. I found a handwritten letter to Josie by Gershwin with four lines of original (though irritatingly simple) piano music. A Christmas song, but nevertheless, it was Gershwin's hand...writing music...GOD I couldn't take my eyes off it. There was another photo book of Josie and her family. There were pictures of Coney Island from the thirties (in one photo you can see the Cyclone in the background). Some photos of her as a child and a teen with her sister, Sara, another musician. Photos of vacations in the Adirondacks with a beautiful shot of Josie reading a book under a tree. In the back of that album was a series of eight or so photos of Josie drinking coffee which, even if you didn't know who she was, you would say is art. For years I've seen this piano in my aunts apartment, having no idea who it belonged to...
2. Various photos of great grandparents and great great grandparents who my grandpa knew and unfolded dirty family secrets about.
3. I'm currently looking a photo of my great great grandpa. He's wearing a bowler, bow tie, checkered coat, striped pants, mustache, and holding a cane. He was a pretty wealthy man, as is proven by this photo and my grandpa. Then the depression hit and he lost everything.
3a. His wife took up selling hams door-to-door during the depression while he tried to scrape everything back together.
4. Thousands of postcards from maybe the 20's to the 30's between Fanny (great great grandma I want to say?) and somebody else, possibly Josie. Most of them depict places in and around Germany. All of them are written in very fine German handwriting. These are supposedly the most valuable of the items due to the old postage stamps, but I flipped through around fifty and valued them for other reasons.
5. Photos of pre-WWII Frankfurt.
6. A photo of great great cousin Ira at four years old dressed as a pirate for Halloween. Ira later went on to start our Freeman family history at the University of Chicago, discover argon on the sun, and write various children's books with his wife, Mae, about science experiments possible with household items. On the cover of his book "Fun with Science" (it was the forties, cut him a break) were photos of my grandpa and his brother, Bob. In the book "Fun with Science Experiments" (don't ask me how the two books are different, I don't know) was the note "For Tony, best wishes from Ira and Mae". Tony is my dad.
7. Newspaper clippings about my grandpa, Dick (this was his side of the family that we were flipping through and where I got the name Freeman). He was the valedictorian of his high school in 1948 and president of all sorts of societies. After high school he studied at the University of Chicago. He later went on to be a tailor.
8. A photo dated '84 with my mom and dad. Tony is eating a chicken leg and has BBQ sauce all over his ugly mustache, my mom is looking on in disgust. They weren't married then.
9. My grandma and great grandma in Australia and Nigeria in the late 80's. I discovered that this is where I get my traveling genes from.
10. My brother holding me two months after I was born.
These are the highlights but there was so much more. After obsessing over these for 90 minutes I decided to start collecting photos of my family and organizing them; labeling, dating and so on. All of this was so exciting and inspiring and it was only a quarter of my blood! I'm going to compose books of Freeman-Kurn (my dad) and Cormier-Kavney (my mom) photos. I hope to get some of these photos online and I'll post some interesting ones when I can.
I began to ask my mom about her family tree because I knew practically nothing. She had one photo of my grandparent's wedding in 1960(?). The photo is of six people. My grandparents are in the middle, my grandma looking exactly like my mom. To my grandpa Pepere's side (pronounced "Pep-pay") is his parents. To my grandma Memere's side (pronounced "Mem-ay") is her biological father and her step mother. Memere's biological mother died when she was three and her father died when pregnant with my mom. When Memere was depressed about her father's death she said she had a dream where her father told her "Don't worry, it's a girl and everything's going to be alright." Then she had my mom. Jump ahead 40+ years to 2005 and Memere is going in and out of hospitals, sick and dying slowly. She told my mom that she used to see her parents sitting in the corner of the room in the hospital.
1. Josie (my great great cousin, I believe) originally owned the apartment. She was a somewhat famous concert pianist, as I discovered by flipping through twenty or so pages of newspaper clippings and concert programs with her named in bold writing. She started in Germany (the first half of the book was all in German) but made her way literally around the world. She was friends with various other composers, including George Gershwin who she apparently wanted to marry. I found a handwritten letter to Josie by Gershwin with four lines of original (though irritatingly simple) piano music. A Christmas song, but nevertheless, it was Gershwin's hand...writing music...GOD I couldn't take my eyes off it. There was another photo book of Josie and her family. There were pictures of Coney Island from the thirties (in one photo you can see the Cyclone in the background). Some photos of her as a child and a teen with her sister, Sara, another musician. Photos of vacations in the Adirondacks with a beautiful shot of Josie reading a book under a tree. In the back of that album was a series of eight or so photos of Josie drinking coffee which, even if you didn't know who she was, you would say is art. For years I've seen this piano in my aunts apartment, having no idea who it belonged to...
2. Various photos of great grandparents and great great grandparents who my grandpa knew and unfolded dirty family secrets about.
3. I'm currently looking a photo of my great great grandpa. He's wearing a bowler, bow tie, checkered coat, striped pants, mustache, and holding a cane. He was a pretty wealthy man, as is proven by this photo and my grandpa. Then the depression hit and he lost everything.
3a. His wife took up selling hams door-to-door during the depression while he tried to scrape everything back together.
4. Thousands of postcards from maybe the 20's to the 30's between Fanny (great great grandma I want to say?) and somebody else, possibly Josie. Most of them depict places in and around Germany. All of them are written in very fine German handwriting. These are supposedly the most valuable of the items due to the old postage stamps, but I flipped through around fifty and valued them for other reasons.
5. Photos of pre-WWII Frankfurt.
6. A photo of great great cousin Ira at four years old dressed as a pirate for Halloween. Ira later went on to start our Freeman family history at the University of Chicago, discover argon on the sun, and write various children's books with his wife, Mae, about science experiments possible with household items. On the cover of his book "Fun with Science" (it was the forties, cut him a break) were photos of my grandpa and his brother, Bob. In the book "Fun with Science Experiments" (don't ask me how the two books are different, I don't know) was the note "For Tony, best wishes from Ira and Mae". Tony is my dad.
7. Newspaper clippings about my grandpa, Dick (this was his side of the family that we were flipping through and where I got the name Freeman). He was the valedictorian of his high school in 1948 and president of all sorts of societies. After high school he studied at the University of Chicago. He later went on to be a tailor.
8. A photo dated '84 with my mom and dad. Tony is eating a chicken leg and has BBQ sauce all over his ugly mustache, my mom is looking on in disgust. They weren't married then.
9. My grandma and great grandma in Australia and Nigeria in the late 80's. I discovered that this is where I get my traveling genes from.
10. My brother holding me two months after I was born.
These are the highlights but there was so much more. After obsessing over these for 90 minutes I decided to start collecting photos of my family and organizing them; labeling, dating and so on. All of this was so exciting and inspiring and it was only a quarter of my blood! I'm going to compose books of Freeman-Kurn (my dad) and Cormier-Kavney (my mom) photos. I hope to get some of these photos online and I'll post some interesting ones when I can.
I began to ask my mom about her family tree because I knew practically nothing. She had one photo of my grandparent's wedding in 1960(?). The photo is of six people. My grandparents are in the middle, my grandma looking exactly like my mom. To my grandpa Pepere's side (pronounced "Pep-pay") is his parents. To my grandma Memere's side (pronounced "Mem-ay") is her biological father and her step mother. Memere's biological mother died when she was three and her father died when pregnant with my mom. When Memere was depressed about her father's death she said she had a dream where her father told her "Don't worry, it's a girl and everything's going to be alright." Then she had my mom. Jump ahead 40+ years to 2005 and Memere is going in and out of hospitals, sick and dying slowly. She told my mom that she used to see her parents sitting in the corner of the room in the hospital.