On finding two old family photos

My sisters are helping my dad clean out his attic right now. The house was built by my mom’s parents in 1950.

The other day, the girls (despite our respective ages, they are always the girls and my brother and I are always the boys) found a box filled with photos of people none of us could identify. They were almost all taken at photography studios along North and South High Street in Columbus.

My guess is that they were probably acquired by some family member in hopes of using them in a craft project or, likelier, they may have been among the refuse found by my grandfather in his many search-among-the-trash missions.

But in the box of those studio photos were two family snapshots, seen here.

The first is of my grandmother, no doubt taken in her teens while she still lived in Columbus’ Linden area. (My great-great-grandfather, Martin Ranck, a carpenter and former schoolteacher, built a number of homes in Linden.) This would have been in the 1920s, shortly before my great-grandparents moved the family to the Bottoms, Columbus’ near-west side. My grandmother was a member of Central High School’s first graduating class in 1925.

In the picture, my grandmother looks as though she could easily be transported to today. Though in later years, she became a whining passive-aggressive, in those days, I think she was a handful, who liked and was liked by the boys.

When I saw the second photo, I immediately spotted my mom. She’s in the center, unmistakable. The back of the photo has a caption that says it was taken on February 28, 1941, making mom exactly nine years and four months old.

The caption also says that the other two in the picture are “Uncle Burt” and “the little girl next door.” Because my mom’s middle name is misspelled (Jean instead of Jeanne), I imagine the picture was taken by someone other than her parents, probably one of my great-uncles. None of us knows of an Uncle Burt. But I’m guessing it’s one of my great-grandfather’s brothers or brothers-in-law.

My mom died earlier this year. My grandmother passed in 1991.

There’s a treasure trove of history in every family tree. These pics were interesting for me to see.

By the way, my sisters also uncovered three songs in sheet music. One was copyrighted 1910; the other two were from 1917. The latter were both songs about young men leaving their families, their mules, and their sweethearts, in that order, to fight in the First World War. One song also extolled the leadership of President Wilson.

The last point is unsurprising because my great-grandparents were staunch Democrats. My grandmother often told me how the Republican kids would taunt her and other kids from Democratic families for their political allegiance, telling them, "Beans is good enough for Democrats."

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Today's 11:11, July 23, 2017

I posted a link to an installment of Today's 11:11 over on Facebook and someone asked me what the significance of 11:11 was. Here's what I said, with a few more comments.

Since the advent of digital clocks, 11:11 seems to have always been the readout I've noticed whenever I randomly check the time.

Unless I have a meeting, class, or appointment, I generally don't look at clocks. But when I randomly do so, I often see 11:11.

A friend of mine reports the same experience, which is funny. We're both kind of obsessed with it.

I attach no significance to 11:11, really. It would be just as striking if what I frequently saw was 10:10 or 12:12...and just as meaningless.

But I decided it would be a good blogging discipline to daily post about something that I've read or thought about and post it at the same time every day. 11:11 seemed like a good time to do it. It's a writing prompt, a blogging prompt.

Another reason, I suppose, is that we're in the centennial period for World War 1 right now. It's on my mind. I was always taken with the fact the Armistice bringing the war to an end went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, November 11, 1918. (Originally celebrated as Armistice Day, November 11 is now Veterans' Day.)

One final reason. There's a tradition among some Christians that refers to the moment of Christ's return as midnight, the end of the old creation, the full institution of the new. All time before that moment is the eleventh hour. We need to live life to its fullest and keep following Christ in the eleventh hour.

Yeah, I probably have given this too much thought. 😀 But all this other rationale came to me after I thought, "I'll be sure to post at 11:11 every night."

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Today's 11:11, July 21, 2017

One-hundred years ago, the Harlem Hellfighters, a division composed of African-American soldiers in the segregated United States Army fought with distinction during World War 1, called at the time the Great War.

The global conflict officially ended at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918.

That's how November 11, came to be known as Armistice Day, later Veterans' Day in the US. It was a day of joy that seemed to hold so much promise democracy, especially in the countries who fought for that system of government according to the democratic vision of President Woodrow Wilson.

Sadly, after the shooting stopped, Wilson turned a deaf ear to the calls for civil rights from the veterans of the war he had sent them to fight.

Some of the heroes who made up the the Harlem Hellfighters, the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, were, after fighting to make the world safe for democracy, on returning home to this nation, forcibly subjected to racism, segregation, and, in several tragic incidents, murder by frenzied white crowds. The federal government, under Wilson's leadership, countenanced lynchings of black citizens by whites, North and South, threatened by blacks seeking equal treatment under the law.

It had been the hope of African Americans across the country that the bravery in service of liberty exhibited by American black men during the war would legitimize their people's place in the United States and lead to fair treatment. Instead, a white suppression of African-American citizens took place which, in many ways, still exists to this day.

As an American and a Christian, that makes me both sad and angry.

[To learn more about the First World War and its aftermath, watch the excellent series The Great War, from PBS.]