I can’t say all the things I feel, or process all the emotions yet. I did spend the duration of Hurricane Irene’s heavy rains scanning in these old photo and re-establishing a mental image of my Dad from before the time when age and illness waged war on his body.
This may have been a last family photo, Charles Marshall my Dad’s father died when Dad was only 18 months old. There was no collection of stories and anecdotes, just a few old photos. I can see from this one how much my Dad adored his older sister Ginny, as he did his whole life! How my Grandmother managed raising her two children on her own, well she was strong she had to be.
My father was a photographer and one thing I could tell from the box of old family photos I brought home from his house was the interest must have started when he was little. Considering the hard times and single parenting they still managed to get a lot of photos of my Dad as a boy. He had never shared some of these, so there are surprises along the way as I scan my way through the box.
Summers were spent in Rye and Hampton Beach New Hampshire. Someone had a nice pony, this is one of the photos I had never seen but makes me understand more why he was so excited when we got my first pony.Little could he have guessed how much impact that pony would have on the rest of my life.
Here he is with his sister after 8th grade graduation. Pretty dapper dresser even then! He was always one for a suit and tie when he was going somewhere. When he worked for the newspaper as a photographer he was always in a suit with a white starched shirt. I finally got him to wear a colored shirt when I was a teen. It was very conservative though. 
1945 and 16 year old Herman takes on a growth spurt propelling him to his mature height of 6 feet.
WWII and someone had to help build a highway across Alaska’s expanse and off he went just 17 and enlisted with his mothers signature. Another adventure that included chasing a moose down the AlCan highway as they worked on it.
