My siblings
Steve, Vicki, and Peter on the frozen Menominee River (circa 1957)
Dear George,
My dad, Vic L., was a
talented photographer, and he chronicled our family life from the late 1930’s
to the mid-60’s and beyond.
Starting in 2001, my brother Peter began creating postcards from Vic’s
negatives and mailing them to family members. Peter’s multi-year project, along with images taken from
family albums, are the sources of the photos shown here. I’ve been posting these once a week in
the righthand column of my blog, but, because those individual items get
deleted every week, I’ve been saving batches of them in this series of
archives. This is the sixth of the
series. The previous five can be
accessed by going to the righthand column, scrolling down to “Labels”, and then
clicking on “Archives. The photos
are nearly all taken at various locations in and about Menominee, Michigan,
many at our family home on the Menominee River.
Love,
Dave
This family Xmas card looks
to me like a professional photograph that was probably taken at Conant Studios
in Marinette. From the left, my
brother Steve, myself, my dad Vic, and my mother Doris. I would guess it’s about 1946 when
Steve was 5 and I was 9. Usually
Vic did his own Xmas cards, but this seems to be a special edition.
Steve and I are with our mom
on Xmas morning after opening presents.
Probably 1943 or 1944. Xmas
was the most exciting day of the year in our family. Santa brought presents, and so did our parents. We were thrilled to get new toys and
games and played with them for days and weeks on end.
Here’s my brother Steve,
around age 3, manipulating one of the floodlights that my dad used in his
photography. Vic enlisted our
participation in his photo projects, most notably by having us help develop
pictures in his darkroom space.
I’m going to guess that this was taken in our house on Sheridan Road
during the war.
This is my parents and
myself, probably in 1938 when I was about one year old. It’s nice to see my parents when they
were so young Vic would have
been 30; Doris, 28. It was the
midst of the Great Depression, a hugely difficult time for couples and
families, but they look happy nonetheless.
Carnivals and traveling
circuses visited Menominee every summer, and they were highlights of the
year. The merry-go-round was
exciting, if somewhat scary, for little kids, as were the pony rides and,
later, the bumper cars. This is
me, toughing it out, around 1940.
My dad is reading to me
(left) and my brother Steven.
Steve joked about this photo, saying that Vic had never read a book to
us in our entire childhood, except for the purposes of taking this picture
which chronicles an imaginary family scene. That might well be correct. The photo does look quite idyllic, though, and that’s how we
like to remember things.
My Mom and I are checking out
what’s probably a photo album.
More idyllic family life. I
look a little younger then than our five-year-old kindergarten grandchildren,V
and L, are right now. That’s
mysterious.
Here’s my dad and myself,
circa 1940. It’s sort of an
unnerving image – e.g., two generations facing an uncertain and potentially
harrowing future. My dad’s looking
quite formal in his suit and tie.
It’s a fitting father-son image from the depression/pre-war era.
Here’s my dad at the helm of
a sailboat, probably Bob Hood’s, somewhere on Green Bay or Lake Michigan. Menominee, of course, was and is an
important Great Lakes port in the U.P., a destination for boaters from
Milwaukee and Chicago as well as the home base for local boaters. My parents regularly went on watery
expeditions with friends to the Mackinac races, to Door County, and elsewhere.
Family friend Dooley Worth
sent this photo to me. It was
taken at her parents’ hunting camp at Cedar River. My dad, Vic, is in the middle. I think the man at the left may be Judge William Hupy, a
U.P. friend and lawyer colleague.
Margaret Worth is at the right. The men are pretty solemn-looking. I think they were having some fun by putting
on faces.
This is a view of the
Menominee River looking west from our front lawn. The sunsets were often spectacular there. We made swimming rafts out of dried out
logs from Pig Island across the river.
Then, when we were teens and thanks to the construction skills of my
friend Bob A., we started having real rafts made with oil barrels and planks.
This is myself, my brother
Peter, and my brother Steven at YMCA camp somewhere near Green Bay, Wisc. I was about 13, Steve 9, Peter 5. My parents sent me off to YMCA camp for
two weeks every summer. I hated
going, and it put me in a state of deep despair for weeks beforehand. Once I got there, it wasn’t quite as
bad as I feared. However, when
families came to visit on the middle Sunday, I still prayed they would take me
home. But they never did.
This photo was also taken at
YMCA camp, probably a year or two before the preceding one. My brother Peter is in the tires, Steve
is at the right (with big pants cuffs), and family friend Tom Caley is at the
left. I think Steve was the YMCA
camper the year that this picture was taken. He was more comfortable about going away to camp than I was,
though none of us were thrilled about it.
These are such representative
facial expressions from my sister Vicki (left), her chum Kevin (Kiera), and our
brother Peter. Peter looks very
impish, which in fact he was as a child.
I don’t remember the hand puppets, though they look like fun for the
young people.
This scene is at my eleventh
or twelfth birthday party.
Participants from the left are my brother Steven, Frank S., Skipper B.,
Jim J., Bill C., and Sam W.
Birthdays at this age were a mixed blessing, since you got a lot of
presents but you also underwent a lot of hazing, e.g., running the gauntlet
while others spanked you. I do
look happy enough here.
This is my mom and Circuit
Court Judge Ernie Brown who lived in Iron Mountain. Peter sent us this photo as a postcard and wrote of
Ernie: “He would make me sit on
his lap while he sang ‘Bye low my baby.’
He loved me and threatened to kidnap me on every visit which filled me
with terror.”
Peter was the sole high
school football player in our family.
He was on the junior varsity at Menominee High, and he might have
progressed to the varsity as well.
Steve was a high school basketball player and golfer, I played #2
singles on the tennis team, and Vicki was a junior high cheerleader (cheerleading
being the only athletic option available for girls in the early sixties).
The Chicago Northwestern
Railroad ran north from Chicago through Marinette and Menominee, and each of
the twin cities had its own depot.
In the late 1950’s I’d take the C&NW railroad train from Marinette
to Chicago and then transfer to another line to Springfield, Ohio, in order to
get to college.
Our family’s social circle
would enjoy frequent gatherings at people’s houses, cottages, and hunting
camps. These are some of the
regulars of the group. Standing,
from the left, are Jean O’Hara, my brother Steve, Muriel Sawyer, my mom Doris,
Bill Caley, and my dad’s law partner, Dick Sawyer. Kneeling from the left are Michael Dennis O’Hara, Mike
O’Hara, Florence Caley, and Tom Caley.
This was taken in the early 1960’s. Our lives were all so intertwined that a photo like this
brings back many memories.
G-Mail Comments
-Linda C
(2-28): What a wonderful set of pictures, I met Vic when he was old, but love
the dapper look on him when young.
-Phyllis S-S
(2-27): Dave, Loved the photos of your family - I can
see your current face in your child's face… Phyllis
Memories, indeed; and not a few tears!
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