The only surviving photo of my paternal grandmother taken in the early 1920's in Havana, Cuba.

My great-great-grandfather Hutcheson, my namesake, in the early 1950s with my great-aunt. He came to America from Scotland in 1882. Worked and lived in Chicago putting on slate roofs in the Highland Park area. He was a proud member of the Freemasons. Note how dignified he was.

1947. Elders, Deacons and Minister of the Church of Christ in Hedley, Texas. That's my father, James Lee Willett, the minister, at left.

My mom in 1946 at age 17 in Joiner, Arkansas. I got a chuckle out of the Joe Terror Whiskey Store in the background. Also, this is the sister of the Young Navy Sailor (see below). She is the one that signed the papers for my Uncle to go into the Navy.

I found this in a box of old family photos. A note on the back of the picture states "Homer Hall and 47-pound catfish caught in Aug 1927." The Hall family (one of whom was married to an aunt of mine) lived in Hudson, Wisconsin, along the Mississippi River, so I imagine that is where the photo was taken.

This is a mysterious picture we found in my wife's family photos. The prone figure feeding the belt is marked with 2 small x's and is labeled "Franizcek", so he's probably the relative. The image is a photographic postcard (not lithographed) labeled on the reverse "Fronta Italie" and postmarked "K.u.K. Luftfahrtruppen Fliegerkompagnie Nr.22" I assume from the K.u.K. that this is the Austro- Hungarian army (or some other army where it was OK to point a rifle at your weapons instructor's head). But does Luftfahrtruppen and Fliegerkompagnie mean that this was an aviation unit? The machine gun mount looks odd, as if it is just a pipe on a stand, instead of a tripod. Is it an aircraft machine gun adapted for training purposes? Let's see those Shorpy experts go to work!

My grandfather Bernard Geraghty Sr. escorts my mother, Catherine Philomena Geraghty, up the aisle at Most Precious Blood Parish in Astoria, Queens, in June 1944 for her wedding to Francis Callan. Although Grandpa Geraghty looks like a holy terror here, he was a genial and beloved figure in our family. When I was young, my mother would repeat to me the stories he had told her as a little girl. Once I got to high school, I read a short story whose style and tone immediately brought the "Grandpa stories" to mind. It was "Araby," by James Joyce.