It’s all about accidents and chance. Did you ever run across some rediscovered artist online: some songwriter ignored in her own day whose friends preserved her manuscripts and recordings or author whose stories and poems were published in cheap, quickly discarded magazines? Years later, someone comes along and says “Hey, look at this!” and brings out the results to bring the originator some posthumous fame? That’s a wonderful thing, but what about those artists whose manuscripts went into recycling, whose paintings were burned to make room in a warehouse, and whose tapes were erased so they could be reused? Those make the survivals all the more amazing.
Anyhow, the face smiling at you at the top of this column is Lavonne (Lenins? Levins? Levine?) at the age of 2 years and 1 month, in Des Moines, Iowa in December of 1915. We know this because someone wrote it on the back of the RPPC (Real Photo Postcard) which was printed for sending out to the family. If you are one of those highly specialized blogreaders, used to scanning everything you find on the Interwebs for inconsistencies and things that don’t sound right, you may be objecting, “Yeah, I see her name and age, but where do you get 1915 and Des Moines out of that?”
I don’t. Instead I marvel at the accident which saw related postcards survive together to be bought by me. For HERE is Lavonne with her little brother Darrell eight months later. And, once again, useful information has been added at the back.
We even get the address of that house in Des Moines, which MIGHT, if I wanted to exhaust myself in research, add useful details on that last name. But there’s no hint whether they owned the house or rented, and records of a family that lived there for only a short time…what? How do I know THAT?
Well, again by mere chance, here are Lavonne and Darrell roughly two years later. Lavonne has maintained her smile and either Darrell dislikes having hs picture taken, or knows he is starting on a life as straight man. Now, id I had been paying attention to online auctions, there might be more of this story (these three came in two different auctions from the same seller) but I am perfectly happy to leave Lavonne and Darrell in 1918, without necessarily pursuing the next hundred and six years.
For example, here is Hazel Ann, also photographed in 1918. That’s all anybody wrote on this RPPC, but here I can cheat. I knew the original owner of these cards, who was Hazel Ann’s little sister, born in 1924. So, with a last name, I was able to find out what became of Hazel Ann.
Hazel Ann, shown again in 1918 with a protective older brother, never married, and worked her way up through a number of clerical jobs to become chief recordkeeper and motivational power behind a big city not-for-profit, and marketing director for a for-profit, all of which earned her a laudatory obituary. Worth remembering. And so, I suppose, is the brother who was buried with what remained of the rest of his crew when his bomber was shot down in France during World War II.
Remember, all ye would-be rediscovered artists: the key to a happy ending is knowing when to stop the story.
Blogsy Babbles 