ARCHIVE: VIC'S PHOTOS #15

Dear George, 

 Here is another archive of my dad Vic’s family photos, mostly taken between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s. The source for most of them is my brother Peter’s postcard project in which he printed Vic’s negatives in postcard form and sent them to family members. I’m very grateful to my dad for keeping such a good visual record of our family history and to Peter for keeping them alive. 

 Love, 

Dave

Here’s my dad, Vic L., as a young man from his senior high school yearbook photo.  Vic was born and grew up in Marinette, Wisconsin, across the river from Menominee, with his siblings, Kent, Karl, and Martha.  He graduated from Marinette High and went on to St. Thomas College in St. Paul and the University of Wisconsin where he obtained his law degree.    

 

Here’s our mom, looking like a bathing beauty.  Given the high hills in the background, this was nowhere near Menominee or the U.P., and it looks like California to me, probably taken in the 1930s before any of us were born.  

Here are my mom and myself on the Green Bay shore, perhaps at Henes Park or the Caley’s Northwood Cove beach.  I wonder if I caught something to put in the pail.  In any case, I look quite pleased.  

Here is our family in 1941, posing in from of the Tourist Information Lodge on Ogden Avenue.  Vic, Dave, Doris holding infant Steven.  Vic would be joining the Navy in two years, and Doris would be at home with Steve and myself. 

 

Christmas was a major celebration at our house from early on.  I will guess that Steve was 1 and I was 5 in this photo (if so, it would be 1942).  It looks like we got a bonanza of presents, and we children look pretty happy.  

Here’s my dad, looking trim and fit in his Navy uniform, with Steve (maybe 3) and me (maybe 7).  Vic was sent to the Pacific around this time, and we boys missed our father badly.  He spent time in occupied Japan, then returned home in 1946.

   

These are my parents’ close friends Bill and Florence Caley at their family home on Sheridan Road in Menominee.  Bill was the president of the Signal Electric Company in Menominee, and Florence was a former teacher and homemaker, mom to Bill Jr., Tom, and Bruce.  

The Cedar River is 25 miles north of Menominee along M-35.  We knew it best because Jean Worth’s hunting camp was on the banks of the Cedar, and we took many hikes along the river bank trail on visits.  This was the most beautiful primeval forest that we knew in our youth.   

Jean Worth, one of my parents’ closest friends, was the editor on the Menominee Herald-Leader and a pre-eminent U.P. historian.  Our family had many adventures and good times at Jean’s hunting camp at Cedar River, along with his and his wife Margaret’s three kids, Dooley, Ann, and Jeanne.  

Here is baby Vicki (my sister) and our Irish setter Mike on the window seat in the living room at river house.  Dog and baby seem very compatible, and Vicki loved Mike more and more as she grew up.  

My brother Peter is intently soldering together components of the ham radio set that Vic bought for him to put together.  Though I was away at college at the time, my recollection is that the radio actually wound up working.  Good for kid and father.  

I’m in the background with the bow, and my younger brother Steve is lying dead with an arrow in his chest.  Since, in real life, I was a bully older brother to Steve, I suspect my photographer father was documenting my various travesties.  

Here is an entertaining fire hydrant portrait, probably dolled up for the purposes of this photo.  I don’t know the back story, but I’d have to guess that this is my father’s humorous creation.  

A year older than me, Bill Caley was one of my childhood friends, and our family would visit his  in their Northwood Cove home on Green Bay.  Bill was a star football player for the Menominee Maroons, played football and graduated from Dartmouth in 1958, and established the successful Twin City insurance agency in Menominee and throughout northern Michigan.  An avid sailor, Bill passed away in 2017.

Here is my brother Steve with his motorcycle in the driveway at river house.  As you can tell from his taped up leg and bruised face, he took a nasty spill on his bike and wound up at the hospital.  I was away at college at the time and only heard the gory details afterwards.  

Here are a pair of lovebirds making faces.  Steve and Margie met on spring break during college in the early 1960’s and got married on June 20, 1964, in Margie’s home town, Elmhurst, Illinois.