On Mom's Dresser

 
I've been sorting. Don't even ask how it's going. The house looks like a disaster area (more than usual), but the hope is that when it's put back together there will be a little less junk, and a few more things that go together will be located together. That's a never-ending task.

Anyway. Today I found three of the four men who were always on my mom's dresser. Not sure why the fourth picture wasn't with these three. The missing one is of her dad. Perhaps it will surface eventually.

The very same dresser was also handy, now residing in my dining room. Just for you, I cleared part of the top and put the pictures back where they belong. Lots of reflections, but I wanted to put them in their "proper" context just for one minute.



It looks to me as if all the pictures were taken when the men were about the same ages, but not the same years, because they are from different generations.

The picture on the far left is my dad, Ray F. Leary. It looks to me as if he might have been college age (he went to Cornell but did not graduate). That would make it about 1922, and probably the oldest of the pictures.


In the middle is dad's son, John S. Leary. As a child looking at that picture he always looked to me like a grownup. Looking at the picture now, he seems more like a high school student. That places the year around 1944, the newest of the pictures.


On the far right is Mom's brother, Merrill F. Rowe, "Jacques." He was killed in 1933 at age 26. I'm guessing college age as well for this shot. That would put it around 1929.


Of course none of these pictures is labeled. At least I'm going to get that done before they are relegated back to a box. Two of the three would need new frames to display them (hanger/stander broken) and it seems wrong somehow to change the frames they've been in for my entire lifetime.

Another interesting mystery was also uncovered. Tucked in the frame of Jacques' picture was a cancelled check written by his father (the missing picture) Howard M. Rowe, to him in May of 1933 for $350.00 Pretty big bucks for back then. Wonder what it was for!

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