I found those patches....

This is still a mystery photo for me. I know all who are in the picture except the little boy with a gun. He could be one of my two older cousins, but I still don't have the exact dating of the picture. My dad is on the far right in uniform and his brother in uniform is on the far left. I don't know why both brothers from the army would be back home at the same time. The brother was stationed in Alaska the whole time of the war. I know also that dad was stationed in DC for a while then retrained in Georgia to go over seas. This could have been a time when he was transferring.
The thing that struck me about this picture just today was the patch on my dad's left sleeve. I and a friend were cleaning out a chest of drawers in my parent's home last week and those two patches were in that chest. I hadn't made the connection other than they were dad's war things from the trunk that got flooded. All the things that could be saved from that trunk were put who knows where and they were found in different closets and furniture in the house. They had not been kept together. I am assuming like most of those army uniforms that the moths had eaten up the jacket and after it got soiled from flooding that they three the coat away. I really am glad we found those patches. Also was found a very small wooden shoe from Holland with hand painted scenes on it, also a pin cushion from France and letters that my dad had sent to my mom when they were first dating. All of these things are special to me now and I am glad that I can make sense of some of the things. I am going to quiz cousins about the photo though as maybe older cousins can figure the year it was taken. Thanks for reading....

Doris and Zella.....

My cousin sent this to me a while back and I really hadn't taken time to look at it. It is a marvelous picture done in a photo booth. The more I look at the photo and the painted background I suppose it may not have been in a booth. My mom is on the right and my dad's sister, Doris, is on the left. I am thinking that my mom has been married and that Doris is her sister-in-law at the time. The photo is taken around the 1940's. Mom and dad married and then a year later dad was drafted into the army. Mom had her first child 10 months after they were married and when dad was gone her 5 sister-in-laws were so good to her helping her with everything. She talked about that in her later years as how nice they had been to her.
My mom's name is unusual. Her grandmother had the name of Zella incorporated in it somewhere and her mother's name was Mabel Zella.
The photo shows the times of the century with short curly hair, it had been bobbed when she graduated from high school. The red lipstick was characteristic and they both have good smooth white skin. Doris was always well groomed and her eyebrows were always plucked to perfection up to the day that she died many years later. Doris had two children, a boy and a girl, and my mom had the four boys.
The total ten children in my dad's family are all gone now. The spouses of that family are also now all gone. My mom was the last of that whole clan to pass away this last year. It seems strange now to look back and remember all of the families and the lives from those families that have continue on to this day. It is strange to be older in age now than those two young women in the photo. It is a good memory though. Thanks for reading....