52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy: Ancestor Photos

The prompt for Week 36 of 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy, from Amy Coffin at We Tree, and hosted by Geneabloggers, is Ancestor Photos

For which ancestral photograph are you most grateful? Who is in the photo and how did you acquire it? Why does the photo hold a special place in your heart?

This vintage picture is one of my very favorite family photographs from my mother's Larkins side of the family. My great great grandfather Thomas F. Larkins appears in a four generation photo with his daughter, Irene Larkins Risko, granddaughter Doris Wheeler Parker, and great granddaughter Joyce Parker, who later married my dad, Paul Orshoski, Sr. The date of the picture is December 8, 1941, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the day of President Roosevelt's well known "Day of Infamy" speech as the U.S. entered into World War Two. My mom, Joyce Parker Orshoski, was in the wedding of family friends, Elizabeth Schmid and James Summy. Mom was ten years old in this picture. The wedding took place at St. Stephen's Evangelical and Reformed Church in Sandusky, Ohio. The reason I love this picture, which was in my mother's collection of family photos, is that it represents to me a much happier time in the Larkins line of my family. Grandma Doris died on May 6, 1943, at the age of 32, following a divorce. Great Great Grandpa Tom suffered a debilitating stroke, and Great Grandma Irene would end up taking care of both her ailing daughter and father in the early 1940s, not all that long after this lovely picture was taken.

Mom was resilient, however, and enjoyed her years at Sandusky High School and Margaretta High School. She got married in 1950 to my father, Paul R. Orshoski, Sr.

They had six children, twenty grandchildren, several great grandchildren, jobs they loved, lives filled with lots of friends and family, and many years of making memories.