My mother and father, before they were married in 1953.
They're in a San Francisco neighborhood called Saint Francis Wood, at the intersection of St. Francis Boulevard and Santa Ana Avenue.
The fountain beside which they are standing is still there, and is clearly visible in aerial images on commercial web sites.
My mother would have turned 91 years old this week of May 2020. She died in 1982.
My father is still living. Because of COVID-19, it's been a couple of months since I've been able to do anything other than wave at him and talk from about 12 feet away, standing outside his home wearing a mask while he stands in the doorway.
Tags: Mom Dad 1953 San Francisco Saint Francis Wood St. Francis Boulevard Santa Ana Avenue vintage family photograph photo
My father and mother met at a social event at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on November 2, 1952. My father, in his words many years later, “was smitten,” and he asked this wonderful young woman named Jeanne for her telephone number. She gave it to him, and shortly afterward they had the first of many dates that would lead to their engagement and marriage.
My father had been commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy the previous June, and he was stationed aboard the destroyer USS John W. Thomason, DD-760. At the time that my parents met, Dad’s ship was at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, located about 35 miles northeast of San Francisco.
Several months later, on the way to Korea, Dad’s destroyer spent some time at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
While he was there, Dad went out to NAS Barbers Point to visit a naval aviator friend named Jim Williford. Jim was a few years older than my father, and he had been Dad’s “Big Brother” when Dad joined the Georgia Tech chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. Jim graduated from Georgia Tech and was commissioned as a naval officer a couple of years before Dad graduated, but they had stayed in contact. When Dad visited Jim, Jim was flying helicopters out of NAS Barbers Point.
Dad had told Jim about the young woman he was dating, Jeanne, who lived in Oakland, California. Jim said that he could arrange to send Jeanne a fresh orchid lei by air mail. Dad gave Jim $20, which was real money in 1953, and didn’t think any more about the orchid lei. He was on his way to the Korean War, and he was busy.
My mother-to-be was living with her mother in Oakland at the time, and she was working as a nurse. As it turned out, the lei arrived on her birthday in May, when she turned 24. She mailed this photograph to Dad, thanking him for the beautiful flowers. The original is badly faded, but it still conveys a sense of my mother’s beauty.
My parents married in December 1953. My mother died in August 1982. In July 2021 I made a recording of Dad telling this story, and I’ll always be grateful to have done that. Dad died in March 2022.
As a footnote, Jim Williford went on to have quite a career flying helicopters in the Navy. In 1965, he led a crew of three that set a distance record in what was then the new SH-3 Sea King. His flight began from USS Hornet, CVS-12, in San Diego. See:
www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/james-r-williford/
www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nnam/educati...
Tags: Jeanne mother mom orchid lei birthday 1953 20th Century faded snapshot remember
My father as an Ensign aboard the U.S. Navy destroyer USS John W. Thomason, DD-760.
This photo isn't dated, but there's a good chance that it was taken in the western Pacific in 1953.
Which leads to the story associated with this photo of my mother:
flic.kr/p/2oAWdhi
Tags: Ensign William B. Abbott III U.S. Navy father dad USS John W. Thomason DD-760 naval officer 1950s 20th Century snapshot remember
My father, on the right, with two other officers aboard the U.S. Navy destroyer USS John W. Thomason, DD-760
This photo may be from 1953 or 1954.
Photographer unknown, using my father's camera:
Captain William Benjamin Abbott III, U.S. Navy (Retired)
1930-2022
My father and the other two officers are standing by Thomason's forward stack. I believe that the two "blade" style antennas mounted on the stack, whose bases have partial ground planes, are derivatives of the AN-104 VHF antennas mounted on many U.S. military aircraft from WWII into the 1950s. My father told me that there was at least one AN/ARC transceiver mounted in Thomason's bridge to enable communication with aircraft.
LICENSING INFORMATION: This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Here's what that means:
creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
USS John W. Thomason, DD-760
(U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command)
www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/da...
Tags: USS John W. Thomason DD-760 crew officer officers Sumner class destroyer Western Pacific WestPac 1953 1954 1950s Korean War Navy ship forward stack AN-104 VHF aircraft band antennas
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My mother in my grandparents' home, with their dog Charlie
Tampa, Florida
August 1954
Scanned print,
From Edith Abbott's photo album
Tags: vintage family photos snapshot 1954 1950s 20th Century Jeanne interior Tampa Florida