Wk 2 Favorite Photo
After hours and yes I mean hours of deliberating it occurred to me that I was making this harder than it needed to be. I thought back to the first photo I remember and what it was about that photo that stood out.
I remember going to visit my Grandma Betty and looking at a large photo of her parents and her siblings.
I often found myself studying the clothes, uniforms and expressions. Grandma gave me a cardboard framed picture just after Grandpa died. It was a smaller version of the one that was hanging in her living room.
Or so I thought.
I looked long and hard at the picture in my hand. I knew something was not as I remembered but I could not tell you what it was. I studied it, then I counted the faces.
One was missing. How can that be? The expressions were exactly the same. Nothing looked off.
I always thought that everyone was in attendance when this family portrait was taken but that is not the case. Grandma Betty’s brother Bobby died while serving in World War II. ( Robert L. Keele d. August 3, 1944. He is buried in Saint-James, Departement de la Manche, France. )
It is amazing to me that they were able to add him into the picture. I have it on my to do list to research just how they did this.
Yet while one sibling was being added another was left out.
Grandma shared with me that her father’s first wife (Louise Williams d. December 1908) had died. He had three children, two surviving when he married my great Grandmother. In the family portrait, Harrison was not in the picture.
Grandma Betty said that he had done something bad to the younger children so he was sent away. I speculate that it must have been pretty bad to be sent away from the family and never to be talked of for more than 70 years.
Now when I daydream about this picture I think about the each one and what they were doing at that point in their life. Some had seen heartache and others experienced the battle front.
I am unsure when the portrait was taken but it had to be before February 16, 1947, as that is the date that my Great Grandfather Harrison Richmond Keele past away.
Keele Family Portrait:
Harrison Richmond Keele 1879-1948 m. Florence Lidia Hinkley 1888 – 1979
Artist Keele 1907-1984
Cecil Keele 1910-1993
Kenneth B Keele 1913-2012?
Ellen E Keele 1914-2006
Mildred Florence Keele 1917-2012
Audrey Willis Keele 1918-1979
Robert L Keele 1923-1944 (Add to the photo)
William Keele 1924-1947
Betty Louise Keele 1927-2012 (Grandmother)
Sidney L Keele 1928-2006
Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him…Colossians 2:7