The year was 1942. The world was ablaze. Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor the previous December, and the United States was ramping up for war. There was no way of predicting what the future might hold.
They had met a couple of years earlier when she was just 15 or 16. He had hired her itinerant farm labor family to pick his corn crop, and it was love at first sight. But suddenly that love had been put on hold. Now he had been drafted and was headed to the Pacific. Who knew whether they would ever see each other again? She had this portrait made so he could carry her with him. It traveled to Hawaii, then Guam, and finally to the Philippines and the islands in between. He saw some very awful images during his travels, but at the end of each day, he reflected upon this image. She got him through the day, and he never forgot her.
Some three to four years later, he returned from the Pacific Theatre of war, physically unscathed, and eager to move on with his life. He found her immediately, and they wasted no more time. They got married in October, less than a month before her twentieth birthday on November 12, 1945. Today, she would have been 100 years old. I worked on this old photo for your birthday, Mama, removing all the years of wear and tear and giving it some color. It surely had seen some rough times. Restoring it has restored our memories of you. I hope you like it! Oh, and happy 100th birthday!
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