I have so many questions when I look at this photo. My Grandma is on the left. She is wearing a corsage made of gardenias. It appears to be three gardenias. For their entire married lives, my Grandpa would buy her a double gardenia corsage for Mother’s Day. In fact, it was such a habit, that the first Mother’s Day after my Grandpa died, the florist delivered a double gardenia corsage to my Grandma. She called her boys to thank them who then called the florist to thank him. They took care of it for the remaining Mother’s Days of her life. When she passed, the florist made her one last double gardenia corsage. Was the gardenia corsage in this photo from my Grandpa? Did the tradition start before their first Mother’s Day as a married couple?
Uncle Dale was in the Navy during WWII. Was this photo taken when he was on leave? About to ship out? There is nothing written on the back. I know that his ship went down and the family spent some uncertain time – weeks? – hoping to hear from him. In the end, he made it home safely. Now that I look at this beautiful photograph, I want to know more!! Hopefully, I find more details in the letters from this time period.
Isn’t Claudia so adorable? She was born more than a decade after my Grandma, the next youngest sibling.
I love the way that photos cause me to ask questions I hadn’t thought about before. Studying old photos can be a great way to prompt new research questions.
ps – I’ve been deep cleaning/organizing my office. I found three more Ellis photo albums. I may need to rename this series. Maybe – Red Ellis Album…? 😯😍
Here are the first two pages of the album to give context for this photo:
This post is part of a series sharing this wonderful old family photo album. You can learn more about the album here.