Saturday's Old Photo

 

This one of the few photos we have of my Grandfather Russell, my dad’s father. His name was Bruce Russell and he was a banker in Tribune, KS. Sadly, he died of a ruptured appendix while he was still in his twenties, leaving his two little boys, three-years-old and one-year-old, without a dad.

 

Not too long after he died, my grandmother married my Grandpa Vogt, the one you saw in the last two old photos, so my Grandpa Vogt is the only father my dad knew. And a very good father he was.

 

Do you notice that Grandfather Russell is holding a camera while he has his photo taken by someone else with another camera? That’s a little curious, don’t you think? Were they taking photos of each other? Comparing cameras?

 

And was this the camera that took my dad’s baby picture in the rocking chair? So many questions and no one to answer them.

 

We have a collection of love letters between my grandma and this grandpa, letters written before they were married, while she was still in high school and he was a working man. Most of the letters were only a paragraph long, a few sentences, but they wrote faithfully, twice a day. Those were the days, remember, of twice a day mail delivery, so if she wrote in the morning, he was reading her letter in the afternoon.  Almost like email.