The Soviet Army and Navy Day
This year marks the twenty-year anniversary of the triumphant end of my military service. Shortly after my long-awaited discharge from the Engineer Corps in June of 1990, the American Secret Services sensed a weak spot in the pontoon troops where I had served and used it to break up the Soviet Union. Of course, it was unthinkable while I was still in service; my fierce looks used to send the enemy running for their lives.
Today is the Soviet Army and Navy Day – a long-renamed holiday of a long-gone country. 20 years ago I couldn’t imagine being nostalgic thinking about my military service. But here I am – it was a time uncomplicated by work, taxes and raising kids and now it doesn’t seem like such a horrible way to spend two years of one’s life. So instead of rewriting my last year’s post I will share a few music videos on the subject.
This song is called “We Are The People’s Army”:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANU2Rz4WNcI
And lastly – world-famous Kalinka, here you can find the lyrics and sing along.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_A7Hu0uKNw
Continue reading →Old Photos: Kansas Sorority Girls From 1939
The article “Kansas Girls: It’s Fun for Them At State University” was published in the Life Magazine in the December 1939 issue.
Most people in these photos are in their 90’s now, but if you recognize someone you know, please don’t hesitate to comment or write to me. One of my previous postings turned into a real life story and helped some family members reunite.
Continue reading →Old Photos: A Photo Comes Alive
In the most Oprah-worthy development that had ever happened to this blog I received a comment on one of my “Old Photos” posts displaying several family Christmas images from 1945 taken in Neosho Rapids, KS.
I’m John, the center baby in the 7th photo. Everyone in the photo is still living. Betty, the lady on the right, turned 90 this year.
I mentioned before that my sincere hope is to hear from real people who either recognize a person, a place or an episode shown in the picture and so far it had only happened once.
I just had to email John to find out more about the 65-year-old photo-shoot and he graciously answered my questions and even allowed to use his family photo for this post. I wanted to know how did the Life Magazine find the Irwin Family in a small Kansas town and if the Life Magazine article and photos are still cherished by the family members.
My grandmother, who is shown in the photo preparing the goose, wrote a local column covering Neosho Rapids news for the Emporia Gazette, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper ran by William Allen White.
The Gazette (and other midwest newspapers) received an inquiry from Life Magazine about any families which had servicemen returning home from WWII. The Irwin family was chosen because it had members from all branches of the service; Army, Navy and Air Force (which was a branch of the Army at that time). Additionally, a son-in-law, Clyde Roush, was MIA (he never returned).
The photo shoot took two or three days in late November or early December, 1945. The article appeared as a 5-page spread in the 12/24/45 issue of Life. Of course, millions of copies were circulated all over the world. My grandparents received tons of mail about the article and my grandmother kept pen pals as a result of the article well up until the 1960’s. My aunt Betty Roush even received scam letters from prisoners here in the US claiming to know the whereabouts of her MIA husband. For myself, the article was my only “fifteen minutes of fame” and I got it all when I was 3 months old.
James F Irwin died in 1982 and his wife, Garland Irwin, died in 1994. All the children and grandchildren in the article are still living with the exception of Jim Irwin (on left in the photo below), who died in a tractor accident in 1992. Garland’s brother, Fred Andrews (on right in the photo below) a Navy CPO, died in 1970. A son-in-law, Jeff Haney (second from left in photo below) died in 1988.
The home where the photo shoot took place was built in 1877 and is still occupied to this day, although not by the Irwin family. At the time of the shoot, the home had no indoor plumbing which was no doubt quite a shock to the photographer from New York. The family had “right of first refusal” to buy the home back when it changed hands about 2000, but declined.
Most all family members, including grandchildren who weren’t born yet, have a copy of this 12/24/45 Life Magazine. I have several dozen copies myself. Life sent most of the participants enlargements of the photos, including many out takes.
Here is a photo of the surviving Irwin siblings taken in Neosho Rapids on 6/14/2009:
The 3 ladies on the right are in same order as in the photo below.
Interestingly enough, my grandmother said a large share of the fan letters she got concerned the hides hanging on the wash house wall. Note the irregularly broken rail track used for cracking walnuts. She even got letters about that. We used that piece of track for an anvil on our farm all the time I was a kid growing up.
I’d like to thank John for what turned out to be one of the most exciting and touching comments on this blog and for the glance at the Irwin Family history.
I’ve been posting old photos from the Life Magazine archives for some time now and I am still amazed at how the photographers were able to tell a story and connect with the readers while not using all the multimedia bells and whistles we can no longer live without. Quality photographs, interesting subjects, real people – that’s what made the Life Magazine relevant then and that’s what makes it interesting now, like a full-page window into the yesteryear.
For more Old Photos posts start your search here.
*John’s text was slightly edited to match the order of photographs.
Continue reading →Old Photos: Soviet Medicine
The World’s Most Socialized Medicine.
With paramedics, polyclinics and plastic bone banks everybody gets free care in the USSR.
In the 1919 when the newly launched Soviet Union was threatened by a plague of louse-borne typhus, Vladimir Illyich Lenin bluntly warned his countrymen: “Either the lice defeat socialism or socialism defeats the lice.” The USSR survived the lice and in the half century since has built to most massive system of the national health care ever known, still based on Lenin’s logical, if unsentimental premise: Russia needs her workers, and a sick worker cannot work.
From birth do death the Soviet citizen is followed by a dossier of his health history. He may get production line preventive treatment without leaving his post at school, factory, farm or office. If he is sick but can walk, he goes to a polyclinic, one of thousands of free, all-purpose infirmaries. At least in the cities there are doctors aplenty. Of the world’s 2.5 million physicians, 500,000 – or one in five – are Russians. (The U.S. by comparison has 309,000 M.D.s, for a population 85% as large. Another half million trained medical assistants called feldshers supplement the doctors, particularly in the vast, thinly settled rural outlands.
The system has flaws. To achieve quantity, the quality of treatment often suffers. Hospital sanitation is spotty at best. Anesthetics and modern equipment are often unavailable and most advanced drugs have to be imported. Dentistry is painfully old-fashioned. Medical education considered as a whole, is not up to U.S. standards (I would argue with that. M.V). But the Soviet goal is a lifetime health care for everyone, and any enterprise that ambitious is bound to have failings.
For some real-life hospital photos check out my earlier post.
Continue reading →Siege Of Leningrad
January 27th is an anniversary of the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad – one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies of the World War II. 900 days of bombing and starvation claimed over 600,000 lives.
Someone overlayed old photos of the blockade with the photos of St. Petersburg today to create haunting images at the same time signifying that life goes on even after a horrible tragedy like the one that happened 70 years ago.
Continue reading →
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