Featured My Grandmother Had Sassy Style

Hi Antiquers,
This photograph, of my Grandmother and Grandfather, was taken at the Memphis Zoological Gardens (ca. 1940.)
Shortly after the photo was taken, my Grandfather was sent to Japan-WWII.
Sadly, he was killed there and I never had a chance to get to know him.

 

Interesting photo! I'm located just south of Memphis, TN. I was surprised to see the name Memphis Zoological Gardens. Today there is nothing in Memphis called Zoological Gardens. There is the Memphis Botanic Gardens, but they weren't fully developed and called that until the 1960s. Now there is the world class Memphis Zoo that has been in existence since the early 1900s. It has had one of the earliest Panda exhibit. No doubt that is where this pic was taken even though no part of it is called or considered a garden today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Zoo
http://www.memphiszoo.org/

As your grandfather was stationed in the Memphis area and appears to have on a sailor cap, was he stationed at the Millington Naval Station just north of Memphis? It was a Naval air station for training air and ground crews. It was the biggest inland Naval base in the **world.** After the end of the cold war the base was drastically down-sized, but to this day it has quite a military presence in the area.
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=921

Also there were Army air base all up and down west Tennessee as well as one of the largest Army Depot in the country. In 1944 a POW camp was established at the Depot.

"The Memphis Army Service Forces Depot was built as one of the major supply houses for WWII. At its peak, the depot supplied some 100,000 troops in the South and moved 100,000 items monthly. It handled about one-tenth of all quartermaster supplies during WWII."

Edited: Meant to add that what drew my interest to your posting was your grandmother. She is a dead ringer for my MiL (my mother in-law)!!! If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was a lost photo of her. There are several photos of her pictured with her 3 brothers in uniform during WWII looking identical to your grandmother in face, clothes and hair style. She died in the 1970s.

--- Susan

 

Great photo and SO very sad for your loss.

 

Thank You, Susan.
I was born in MS but grew up in Memphis.
Even though I live in Honolulu, I miss Memphis very much... Especially Top's Bar-B-Que.
I appreciate the interesting information.
Again, Thank You!

 

".............your grandmother. She is a dead ringer for my MiL (my mother in-law)!!! If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was a lost photo of her. There are several photos of her pictured with her 3 brothers in uniform during WWII looking identical to your grandmother in face, clothes and hair style."

Cousins?? By marriage??????

 

Doppelganger?
(Yes, new vocabulary word)

They ARE a sassy-looking couple!