a story with pictures

[dragonlady7]

Finished cleaning up the old photos I scanned at work. This is my grandmother, Margaret Kelly, whose dates I'd have to look up. I know she passed away in 2002 and I believe she was 89, so this photo would have been taken in 1929 or 1930.

She was born and raised on the island of Manhattan. Her father and mother came from Ireland; her father drove a taxi. She developed scoliosis, with quite a bad curvature of the spine that in her old age gave her a 'hump'; her father said it was because she was so often curled up with a book. He made sure she went to college because with her deformity, she wouldn't be able to find a husband. I don't know where she met Grandpa, and don't have the date of their marriage to hand, but there is a wonderful photo of the two of them dated September 10, 1939:



Grandpa died in January of 1978. I remember Dad saying that he was only 58 when he died, but that seems like he'd've been too young-- that would give him a birthdate 7 years later than Gram, and while I remember that he was younger, I hadn't thought it was by that much. It's possible, though.

He was a handsome fellow-- unfortunately, the curls didn't last, and he went bald. More unfortunately, he was plagued by ill health, hospitalized for tuberculosis, and eventually died from complications of it.


After Gram died, Dad got her boxes of photos, and has been going through them. Many are unlabeled. I posted some earlier, of when we were kids-- the double prints that all the aunts and uncles sent off dutifully to their mother so she'd have pictures of the grandkids. People don't do this anymore, I guess-- they just show slideshows on their computer screens. I know because the grandmas come into my store and complain that they never get photos to put into albums. It's not the same, people. Mail some prints to your grandmothers.
Which I am going to go do in a moment.

Anyway, these are some of the earlier-vintage photos. There are some wonderful ones of my aunts. Like the baby of the family, my aunt Maggie, named for her mother. The unlabeled photos of my aunts, I have to identify by recognizing which cousin they look like. Aunt Judy looks like her oldest son, or possibly her youngest in her frecklier stages. And Aunt Alison looks like her older daughter. But Aunt Maggie has no kids. Instead, she looks eerily, creepily like my littlest sister.

Aunt Maggie, above, and Ann, my baby sister, below:

Not the clearest photo of her, but you can see the face shape is the same.

Which is a long, roundabout way of saying that I've got photos of Ann's wedding reception up as well as old scanned family photos, including dozens of adorable pictures of Baby Nephew. But I'll blog those separately.