I Love Pictures #2
Calgary AB

This first shot brings a huge smile to my face. It’s so wonderfully inappropriate for the time period it was taken (1923). The family has plenty of old photos of this generation staring sullenly at the camera. Simply a cold indifference to the person who will later be viewing the image who can only interpret their personality as miserable. Then there is this image. These are my great great grandparents. Or to make more sense, my mother’s mother’s father’s parents. Follow? Julia Wigle Rogers (born February 1841) and Edmund Rogers (born January 1840).  There must be something in the Rogers genetics that make them they  most delightful people. A couple summers ago I attended a Ferguson (my mother’s father’s side) reunion which was rather nice with a dosage of civil war history and farming tales and that was that. The following day we attended the Rogers’ Reunion. Rather, we attended the Rogers’ Rebellion as noted by the spray painted sign at the road.  I think their descendants have the same sense of humour.

It warms my heart to see these two, likely in their church clothes, hands comfortably in their laps, side by side in their rocking chairs. I can only imagine the hub bub of getting the chairs outside for this photograph was accompanied by some wonderful moments. I feel like these two would epitomize Carl and Ellie in Pixar’s Up (yes I cried while watching that).  When I see this I hope that every single couple I photograph well sometime share a similar image someday.

L: Norman Iler (mother’s father’s mother’s father) in his work clothes. | R: Norman and Linnie Wigle Iler outside the home my mother grew up in ( Fall 1948)

Murray (my maternal grandfather) and his twin sister Doris (1924)