Photoessay #1050 - Young Allen Ginsburgh

A studio photo of a young Allen Ginsburgh (my father). I inherited a double picture frame of him and his sister Elgie (given name Ethel Louise). The glass in the frame broke in transit and then my husband took the whole thing apart in a way that it's never going back together, thinking that the picture of my aunt was a picture of my mom that we could use for her memorial.

I just had this comical thought. What if we had put up a picture of Elgie as my mom! OMG, be glad for things that didn't happen, whew. Nice picture of her though.

But he does look so young here. I'm thinking maybe high school? One thing that strikes me in this picture, the full lower lip. Which I kinda have. But I don't remember it on him. Not in person, not in pictures. Something that showed in pictures in his younger days? So so young, look around the eyes, just a baby.

He was born in 1926, so maybe graduated high school in 1943? 1944? Don't know. He was a little young to fight in WWII. He was in ROTC at Cornell, he once told me that he was exempt because of his eyesight which was very poor. He said he rode around in trucks in the New York State countryside a lot in ROTC. But it wasn't the kind of program where you went directly into the military after graduation. They also accelerated students through college at that time because of wartime.

Really nobody in my family with much military experience.....

These sorts of pictures of my parents always causes me to reflect....their peers, Jewish young people in Europe, were being slaughtered at this very same time. Yet, the American Jewish young people prospered and were safe. They didn't know. And could do nothing about it even if they did.

But Allen grew up, graduated from Cornell, got a masters from Harvard in aeronautical engineering, married my mom, had a successful career, raised his 3 kids, had a comfortable retirement and died at age 80.

He also shared the name with the famous beat poet; they were born the same day! I always wanted to get them together but, alas, they are both gone.

Wish I knew the date for this picture....