Saturday's Old Photo

I’m still working on replacing photos lost from some of the long ago Saturday’s Old Photo posts. This one was originally posted in May 2007.

These are Carl and Avas Carlson, relatives of my father, who ran a little Brethren in Christ Mission on the southside of Chicago. This photo is from the the early 1960s, and it’s one of those photo cards that missionaries give out. Stamped on the back of the photo in red ink is this:

 

BRETHREN IN CHRIST MISSION
6033 S. Halsted St. - Went. 7122
CHICAGO 1, ILLINOIS
CARL J. CARLSON, Pastor 
SUNDAY SERVICES 9:45, 11, 7, AND 8
WEDNESDAY SERVICE 8:00 P.M
YOU ARE WELCOME !  

 
I remember Avas as a pale, quiet woman. That’s how she was during the three years my family lived in the Chicago area and we attended church at the mission. According to my mother, there were quite a few days that Avas couldn’t get out of bed because she wasn’t feeling well. 

A few years after this photo was taken, Carl died. What did Avas do? We heard she started a new life. She began playing her harp again and giving concerts, perhaps until she was well into her eighties and maybe her nineties. No more days in bed for her.

You might think from those details that Avas was unhappy with Carl, but I don’t think so. I think she may have been unhappy with her restricted life in a gloomy flat above a storefront mission in a very rough area of Chicago.

Avas didn’t die until 2001 when she was 107 years old. 

Saturday's Old Photo: The Gift

A few weeks ago I posted a photo of my dad’s family and mentioned that there had been one more child, a boy who died when he was only a couple of months old. And here is that little one, wearing a cap and wrapped in a knit blanket, cuddled in my grandma’s arms.

On the back of this photo she has written

To Frankie [that’s my dad] -

Harmon Charles Vogt

Taken at the age of 2 months and 1 week.

Born Sept. 20, 1932

Died Dec. 12, 1932

Harmon was born with spina bifida. Counting up, I figure he died a couple of weeks after this picture was taken. If he were still living, he’d be seventy-seven years old, but as it was, Harmon Vogt’s life was more of a mist than most.

In all the other photos of my grandma, she’s looking straight at the camera. Here she’s looking down at the baby she knows will be taken from her. The Lord gives life and the Lord takes it away, leaving us with a few genuine sepia photographs for remembering.

Saturday's Old Photo

This is my dad’s family. I’m not sure what the occasion is, but they are all dressed up for something, aren’t they? There’s no date on the photo (Update: My sister dates the photo at about 1948), but I’d guess that the youngest children are teenagers and one son, as you can see, already has a child. My grandpa is in the center; my grandma is the second from the left; the others are their four sons, two daughters, and one granddaughter. My dad is the second from the right if you don’t count the baby.

This is what we would call a blended family. My grandma and grandpa each had two children when they married, and together they had three more, including a little boy who died when he was a few months old. There two last names—my dad and his brother were Russells and the rest were Vogts—but it was one strong family.

There are five of the six Vogt/Russell sons and daughters still living, and here you see them in a photo from their family reunion last summer. My dad is the one in the center. It’s my dad’s full brother, the son on the far left of the old photo, who is missing. The remaining brothers and sisters range in age now from their seventies to nineties.

The last time I saw this group was when my mother passed away 6 years ago. Every one of them came for the memorial service. The one brother and two sisters who still live in Kansas, along with the brother’s wife, drove all the way up to Minnesota together.

I’m hoping I inherited their spunk.