My Favorite Ancestor Photo

[Marc Chevalier]

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Is there one photo -- and only one -- that really captures the spirit of your grandma, grandpa, or any other relative from the past? A picture that you'd show to your descendants and say, "That's your great-grandma in a nutshell"?


Here's my favorite ancestor photo. It's a 1930 snapshot that my grandfather took of my grandmother one morning, when they were still newlyweds. She's in her lounging pajamas, reading a newspaper and smoking. According to her, the shot was completely unposed ... grandpa surprised her and she was not too happy about it. (Pajama photos were unseemly back then, even for the French.)







My grandmother's name was Aimee Leitner (1909-1997). Born in Toulouse and stylish to her fingertips, she escaped her bourgeois bumpkin family and ran off to Paris, where she became a milliner for a successful hat designer. A quick study, grandma went solo and designed hats for an exclusive clientele. (And my mom ended up having a countess as a godmother!) World War II ended all that.


After the war, my grandparents -- who believed that all of continental Europe would be absorbed by the Iron Curtain -- moved to Rio de Janeiro, where grandma resumed her old career and achieved success as a hat designer for rich Brazilian women desperate for postwar French style.


Grandma Aimee lived to see the golden age of hats fade and die. Luckily, she had retired by then.


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[moustache]

I have a few i would LOVE to share buit,since it is ONLY one i will share said number.This is a photo of my grandparents at a USO dinner/dance in 1943 or so.They had the chance to meet a Don Swan,a big band player who went on to work with Xavier Cugat,etc.Looks like a good time they are having.I called my mother and she says it is at The Palladium in Hollywood.It had only been opened for a few years.
My grandfather would be soon heading to the pacific on a minesweeper.



JD

[Marc Chevalier]

What terrific expressions on their faces!

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[Hondo]

To quote a line from the Beatles A Hard Days Night, where’s my Grandfather?

Wow grandmother was quite a looker, a pretty woman very attractive If may say with all respect meant; Very nice picture, how it makes me dream of living in that time period.
Can’t wait to see Grandfather
Really an awesome story, I’m not a writer, awful speller to beat but if I was you I’d think about writing a book, or at least having oral history of your Grandfather and Grandmother lives, seem you know a bit, Thanls alot for sharing

[Marc Chevalier]

Can’t wait to see Grandfather

Already did the grandpa thing: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showp...&postcount=162

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[Hondo]

I must have missed that post
Your Grandfather was cool, Thanks

[Maj.Nick Danger]

About 1912 I think. Probably taken by my grandfather before they were married. I want to enlarge this 3 x 5 inch image and paint it on canvas in a grand scale, about 3 x 5 feet.
Sort of my take on Whistler's Mother.

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Wow! My scanner gave the image a strange painterly sort of look,...almost colorized.

[Sefton]

Marc,you're grandmother is so cool. Great photo! Moustache, your grandparents made a great looking couple and the Don Swan autograph is neat (I wonder if that was his real name? ). Maj.Nick Danger, please show off that painting when it's done. Lovely photo!

O.K.,so here's what I came up with for my picture. It's my father's brother Walter in a photo taken in San Francisco (where we're from) in the 1950s. I love the leather jacket and the trousers he's wearing.

[Marc Chevalier]

I'm digging all these photos! Character in spades!

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