McLean, single again

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I’m guessing that this picture is after about a year after the divorce, after we moved back to McLean, Virginia, and before she met Ralph Jenkins, her second husband. The picture has been touched up by the photographer. I think she had just started work, the first job since her secretary job after high school. As an ex-officer’s wife she landed a job at the Pentagon, with a high security clearance. I was in my last years of high school, and already half-way out of the house. Only Scott and I were left with her in McLean. Four years later (1969) she married again.

Hawaii

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A lot smile in the photo, except me and my mom. This is certainly the officer’s group with wives and children. The happiest couple sits together. I am observing, my look is neutral. Sandy smiles, and Bobby tries to smile. It’s at this time the marriage started to definitely break up. My mother was 37, father 38. In 6 years the first separation took place (my father was posted to Laos in 1961-62), then the divorce in 1964/5. From 1965 to 1967 my father was posted to Turkey, and on the airplane to work he met Hanny, his future wife, and offered to light her cigarette.

Again no smile

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So why isn’t she smiling in this picture? Was she unhappy to leave Japan? She was very impressed by Japan artefacts; they stayed with her and she used them in her homes the rest of her life. But maybe she is not happy here because my father and mother were so very different, and the cracks in the relationship are showing. Personally I think so.

 

 

Into to Buddism

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The 3 Reusche kids in Japan.

 

Japan

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I’m not sure why she would keep this picture, she is clearly not happy about something. It’s 1953, she is 35 y.o., she has 3 children. Maybe she didn’t know that the next stop was Hawaii.

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World War II ended 2 September 1945, Bobby was born a couple of years later. Somehow I don’t have photos of Bobby’s birth in 1947. He was born in Nebraska. Soon after his birth dad was sent to Europe for the Berlin airlift (1948-49). It wasn’t too long after Europe that my father was sent to Japan as part of the Korean War. I was born in 1951 and in 1952 we travelled to Japan. The Korean War ending 27 July1953.

So my next picture is in Japan, around 1952. I assume the picture is at the Officer’s Club in Tokyo. Here we have the officers and their wives. I think they had a rather privileged life in Tokyo. It was at the end of the US military occupation of Japan (1945–52) after World War II. My mother is learning this life, exciting after Nebraska, cigarette in her hand, and flirting with the men. It was all part of the officer’s life as I understand it.

 

 

One year old?

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Sandy, I guess she is around 1 y.o.

Sandy’s birth

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This is around mid-1944 and that’s Sandy.

 

a different look

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I’m not sure when this two photo was taken. It’s a studio shot, touched up. The studio is Hollywood, and Sandy was born in Los Angeles in 1944. So this could be 1943, her husband has been at pilot’s school since May of 1942. My intuition is that she sees something in her life that she is not very happy about.

 

Separate from the beginning?

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On the left wide of this picture is Phil Storm’s family, on the right side Claire’s family. My mother is on the end. As much as my mother worked for the nuclear family togetherness, she couldn’t keep the extended family in line. I have no idea about Claire’s children.