Old Pictures

 Photo Restorations

I recently obtained old photo albums belonging to my Aunt Carol who played an important role in my life. She was born in 1915, and I mostly remember her as an old woman. So it was very interesting to see pictures of her as a child and young woman. For example, the next picture shows her 101 years ago in first grade. Aunt Carol is third from the right in the first row. Check out her high shoes. The original picture was blemished and cracked. I manually repaired it, as you can see in the following animation. Another interesting photo was taken eight years later in 1929. I'm guessing Aunt Carol was in 8th or 9th grade at the time. Once again she is third from the right in the front row. This photo was less damaged than the 1st grade picture, but I still cleaned it up: Seven years later, at age 21 in 1936, Aunt Carol posed in front of a car that looks impossibly ancient today.

During World War II, eight years later, Aunt Carol joined the Waves (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a women's branch of the U.S. Navy. She trained pilots using a device known as a Link Trainer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer ). The next picture shows Aunt Carol at the controls of the flight simulator which is visible in darkness at upper right. Next is a brighter picture showing an occupied trainer along with controls in the foreground. Aunt Carol, with headphones, is seated on the right edge. Notice the amazingly outdated 1940 technology in front of the blond controller. There are big honking vacuum tubes instead of invisibly small transistors, analog dials instead of digital displays, and the controller is turning dials instead of using a mouse or joy stick.

Aunt Carol is actually sitting in the trainer in this next picture taken at the Naval Air Station in Melbourne, Florida in 1944. I assume the others in the foreground were part of the training crew. Aunt Carol was the youngest of my father's siblings. She was also the most independent and ambitious. She held a variety of jobs during her career and was a pioneering woman in many of them. A lover of warm weather and beaches, she spent most of her life in Florida where she lived to be 99 years old, just 25 days short of 100. Here she is in 1941, 26 years old, on one of her beloved beaches.