Marvin Lee Axsom from Sherrie Johnson

a FB post from Steven LaChance

I wanted to share this with you from Leopoldstadt because it really spoke to me about the importance of family history. I really do think this passage is the underpinning of the entire play and our lives at the same time. The Grandmother is labeling names in a family photo album as she begins to speak. “I’ve been writing in names that are missing, the ones I know, which is by no means all of them. That’s what happens, you see. First, there’s no need to write who they are, because everyone knows that’s Great-Aunt Sophia or Cousin Rudi, and then only some of us know, and already we’re asking, ‘Who’s that with Gertrude?’ and ‘I don’t remember this man with the little dog’, and you don’t realise how fast they’re disappearing from being remembered … Wilma It’s still an amazing thing to me, to know the faces of the dead! I can remember Grandpa Jakobovicz’s tobacco-stained whiskers, but his wife died giving birth to Poppa before there were photographs, so now no one knows what she looked like any more than if she’d been some kind of rumour. Everyone was mad to have a photograph when I was a girl, it was like a miracle and you had to go to a photographer’s to pose for him … wedding couples, soldiers in their first uniforms, children in front of painted scenery … and, always, women dressed up for the carnival ball, posing with a Greek pillar. Later, when we had a camera, there were too many pictures to keep in the album, holiday pictures with real scenery, swimming pictures, pictures of children in dirndl pinafores and lederhosen, like little Austrians. Here’s a couple waving goodbye from the train, but who are they? No idea! That’s why they’re waving goodbye. It’s like a second death, to lose your name in a family album.” Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt

more pictures from Sherrie Johnson, very helpfully labeled.

That’s Bobby on Left, Russell is Baby, Roger and Me. All with Susie

a picture from Shirley

another picture from Sherrie.... Shirley, Anna, Daisy, Susan

so true. all my grand parents. aunts. uncles. my dad. and now my brother. R.I.P.

obviously not active into researching anymore...but sometimes someone will send me some little nugget....

rec'd FB friend request from Sherrie Johnson

Deb the two women on left one is Cora due you know other one. Aunt Millie

I recognized Grandma Pauline and Uncle Roger, but mistook the seated woman for Great Grandma Daisy, when it was her mom, Great Great Grandma Susie Boyd.

she thinks it was taken in Missouri.

UPDATE: Aunt Mary called me. She said: taken at the duplex in Cainsville that Grandma Susie Boyd and Aunt Mollie Mullins shared. Cora is behind Mollie. Anna Rilling is holding her grandson Bobby Landry. Sherrie is the little girl. Aunt Mary also said that Virginia was there the day that Grandma Susie died and all the dogs in Cainsville started barking at the same time. sent pics on to Virginia Matson.