Last week I was preparing a presentation I was giving at my local genealogy society. I was trying to locate a photo I wanted to include in the presentation. The photo was from 2004 so I was pretty sure it had been printed and placed into a photo album. The big question? Where was the safe place I put the photo album?!
I started tearing my office apart and flipping through all of the photo albums on the bookshelf. One album caught my eye. It is a photo album my husband’s grandmother had created for him. What made me stop and look was a photo of Grandma June and one of hubby’s best friends from college. The caption had me laughing out loud. I called my husband over and we began to flip through the album together. Most people know I am easily distracted by fun things!
Let me pause here to give you history about hubby’s family. Hubby’s great grandfather, Louis Radvanyi immigrated to the United States from Hungary. He lived in Whiting, Indiana where he worked as a painter at Standard Oil. He married Maria Nagy and had six children. Unfortunately, Louis passed away in his forties when he was hit by a car. Louis left very little documentation during his life in the United States.
My mother in law has told me a photo of Louis hung in her home as a young girl. Her memory is her Aunt Angie (One of Louis and Mary’s children) had taken the photo in order to duplicate it for all the siblings. The photo did not make it back to her childhood home. My mother in law did not know where the photo was located. Only that it was the only representation of her grandfather that existed. Over the years, I have reached out to a couple of my mother-in-law’s cousins to try to locate the photo.
Back to my crazed search for a photo. The funny caption from Hubby’s grandmother made me pause to flip through the rest of the photo album. I wanted to see what she had included. There were photos of my husband spanning his entire life. Most photos were a either of Hubby or Hubby and Grandma June.
Then there was the photo of a picture! It is a picture of the painting of Louis Radvanyi!!! We have finally added a face to the name. Apparently at some point before giving the photo to Angie, Grandma June had taken a photo of the picture of Louis.
Grandma June passed away in November 2017. She had moved out of her house about eight years before her death in order to received more care. I believe we came into possession of the photo album about that time as her house was cleaned out. I cannot believe we had a copy of this photo for so long and did not even know it!!
Good news about my presentation! I eventually found the photo I was looking for. The photo album was with my genealogy books and notebooks on the bookshelf. Right where it was supposed to be.
