In late Spring of 2024, I started documenting a short story about my maternal grandparents, Norm and Greta, based around inherited photos I'd discovered in their collection, along with a few of the stories they'd shared with me.
While I'd realized the importance of the photos and the story behind them months before, I was inspired to actually write it out when I was invited by Barbara Tien, founder of Projectkin, to be a guest contributor as part of a very special cohort of military memories for the Members’ Corner.
I was honored and delighted to be a Guest Contributor, but that also means abiding by the standard practice that the content can't be published (in it's entirety) on another website - partially due to search engine issues.
However, since one of my driving missions with Let the Memories Begin Again is to encourage and assist you in documenting and sharing your cherished stories alongside the photos and/or memorabilia, I wanted to share how I'm also working on that for my own family.
Below is an excerpt from the piece and the entire story can be read via the Projectkin substack . Hope you enjoy reading it and much as I did writing it! ❣️
And, check out this fabulous promo video Barbara created for the story... such perfect music too!!
The Photo
"Dressed in full military uniform, wearing a triangular-shaped party hat made from newspaper, and raising a glass of John Haig and Co Scotch Whiskey, my grandpa Norman 'Norm'(first on left) celebrated Victory in Europe (V-E) day in Rome with a few of his fellow Army comrades.
On the back of one of the photos, Norm wrote, “V-E Night Roma,” adding his companions’ ranks, names, and nicknames. On the front is the date, May 7th, 1945, written in what I recognize as my grandmother’s handwriting.
But V-E Day is officially May 8th. So, either the photos were incorrectly dated, or maybe they’d been taken a few hours before the news officially broke across the globe. While I’ll never know for sure, there’s no doubt there was a celebration that seemed to include lots of revelry and drinking.
Until recently, I didn’t realize that this and other remarkable photos were “hiding” among the collection of Norm’s military images that I’d stored in a manila envelope after carefully removing them from the tattered pages of vintage albums. That envelope and the rest of my grandparents’ photos were stashed away in a large wooden box, waiting patiently for me to rediscover and tell their stories.