Pics of your mom or dad that make you see them in a different way....

[monadnocky]

Once in a while we come across pictures of our parents that make us see them in a different light. We remember that they were young and vibrant, perhaps more so than we ever were. I came across one today - I believe that this was a trip with friends to Montreal (???) or Quebec (???) in the early 70's. It doesn't really matter which one here was my mother (but one is, I assure you).
So, let me see some others. From any era. Of them having fun, engaged in the same hijinks we were engaged in, whatever. Just post them.

48698355901_45ff539d8e_c.jpg

[Tom]

I'm a little different. I was a child of older parents, the youngest of nine. I remember my Dad's 50th birthday as one of the first remembrances of him. My brother has a picture of him hanging out with some US Army pals he made during the occupation when he was working as an interpreter less than a year after coming out of forced labor to the Nazis. He's standing there, a cig cupped between the third and fourth fingers looking like a total badass. He was a badass. My sister said it well upon his death. "Born poor, orphaned, hungry, homeless, hunted by the Soviets, enslaved by the Nazis – he came through it all with smile, a joke, impeccable manners, insatiable curiosity, a deep-felt concern for those around him, and never a complaint about his own situation."

This is the pic I have, his photo from when he came here and enlisted in the airborne infantry. I really wish I had known him when he was younger.

My_Dad.jpg

[Clyde]

Truly a hero, you are lucky to have know him period.

[j44ke]

My dad has always been pretty adventurous. Family trips usually included getting the car stuck somewhere we shouldn't have gone, but my dad always had that "let's see if we can get down this road..." attitude to everything. And he hasn't slowed down much. In retirement, he's been birdwatching all over the world, and instead of getting the car stuck, he got held captive by an Amazonian tribe several years ago. In the 1980's, my dad got a Fulbright to teach in Peshawar, Pakistan. Back then, the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan and the Americans, along with the Pakistanis, were shuttling arms into Afghanistan to support the Mujahideen. And it was relatively safe for Americans to be there. However, it wasn't particularly friendly to women, especially an American woman who decided to help the kids in the refugee camps. My mother was soft spoken, but in the early 1970's she was among a group of moms who rode the school buses after desegregation to make sure the racist bus drivers (all white, some KKK) stopped at all the stops, not just the ones with white kids. She got called all sorts of horrible names then. When she got to Pakistan, she walked to the refugee camps on her own, even though she got harassed and spit at. Only after she was slapped across her face and her glasses broken, did she consent to walk with in the company of their security guard. My dad is adventurous, but she was tough.

My mom and dad somewhere in Northern Pakistan on their way to Kashgar in China. The world has changed in so many ways since then.

[ides1056]

i have a photo of my parents before everything went south. I still can not project the trajectory of their lives from that time, or understand what happened, but to know that they adored each other, which is obvious in the photo, is enough.

[monadnocky]

One more I discovered recently.

The amazing thing to me about this is that the individual depicted, my father, was at the time of the picture a lieutenant commander in the Navy. This would have been 1969ish. I think he's on shore leave (is that what you call it?) during his fourth and final year of his stint, in some Virginia Beach-area Navy officer housing. Certainly looks like the Navy wasn't feeding him all that well. He died in 2012. *

Like Tom's pic above, it's stunning how young people can look when they're in the military.

48687783192_de7167b4ce_c.jpg

*Not necessarily because the Navy didn't feed him well.

[rydesteel]

They had just started dating. Mom was the preppy girl and Dad was the classic bad boy

[SlowPokePete]

My dad used to fish the Long Island Sound quite bit a long time ago.

November 3, 2021 by SPP™ SlowPokePete, on Flickr

SPP

[monadnocky]

^^^ Morgan Freeman voice ON ...And from that day forward, Pete was fascinated by anything doubled-up, including BMW twins...

[jdanke]

(grand)parent photo.

A few years back, after our neighbor Gil's funeral my grandma started telling a story about how he played accordion in a band with some other locals. She and my grandpa (below, center) would go to house parties where they'd play. Now, this is northeast Wisconsin - they were old school Lutherans married in '41, so this story would be from about then. Anyway, she wrapped up the story by saying how, this one time, on the way home she rolled the car and the gun went off.


g27_2.jpg

[davids]

My brother's been slowly digitizing the slides we found in my mother's closet as we cleaned out her possessions.

I'm not exactly sure where this photo was taken, but it's the summer of 1953, they're 26 and 22, and they've been married about a year:

PXL_20210219_233913372.jpg

[vertical_doug]

My brother's been slowly digitizing the slides we found in my mother's closet as we cleaned out her possessions.

I'm not exactly sure where this photo was taken, but it's the summer of 1953, they're 26 and 22, and they've been married about a year:

PXL_20210219_233913372.jpg

Clements Mountain in Glacier. They were probably riding the Red Bus on a tour.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cl...4d-113.7403929

Probably taken on the Going-to-the-sun highway near the Big Drift.

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.6977...!7i3328!8i1664

[bironi]

This is before I was on the scene, but I wish I was there.

[vertical_doug]

How about winding the clock back even more, Mom's Dad, my grandpa.



or as Mom would say, "grandpa and those damn ponies."

[taz]

mom.jpg
mom

dad.jpg
dad

[jclay]

My dad has always been pretty adventurous. Family trips usually included getting the car stuck somewhere we shouldn't have gone, but my dad always had that "let's see if we can get down this road..." attitude to everything. And he hasn't slowed down much. In retirement, he's been birdwatching all over the world, and instead of getting the car stuck, he got held captive by an Amazonian tribe several years ago. In the 1980's, my dad got a Fulbright to teach in Peshawar, Pakistan. Back then, the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan and the Americans, along with the Pakistanis, were shuttling arms into Afghanistan to support the Mujahideen. And it was relatively safe for Americans to be there. However, it wasn't particularly friendly to women, especially an American woman who decided to help the kids in the refugee camps. My mother was soft spoken, but in the early 1970's she was among a group of moms who rode the school buses after desegregation to make sure the racist bus drivers (all white, some KKK) stopped at all the stops, not just the ones with white kids. She got called all sorts of horrible names then. When she got to Pakistan, she walked to the refugee camps on her own, even though she got harassed and spit at. Only after she was slapped across her face and her glasses broken, did she consent to walk with in the company of their security guard. My dad is adventurous, but she was tough.

My mom and dad somewhere in Northern Pakistan on their way to Kashgar in China. The world has changed in so many ways since then.

Your mother was a hero; this world needs a lot more like her.

As far as I'm concerned what she did is vastly more awe inspiring than any military combat action or tough guy daring do.