Featured My new-ish avatar: Meet Bertha! (More photos added!)

Congratulations to all parties involved.

Another happy ending!!

The photos are fantastic.

 

@bluumz

 

Welcome Todd How wonderful to be able to get the album of your mom back!! We certainly have enjoyed looking at the photos.
Blumz, you are a shining star for tracking Todd down

 

Since you all have expressed such enjoyment and admiration perusing my mom's photo albums, I thought you might be interested in her back story, as well. Bertha Ida Thiel (Beezley) was one of three daughters and one son born to German immigrant parents. Her mother, Pauline, is seen working in the garden of their family home on the west side of Chicago. One of Bertha's sisters, Wanda, is seen with her in numerous pictures, including the tennis court shots. Bertha hated her name. It reminded her of "Big Bertha" the German artillery pieces used in WWI. She insisted that her acquaintances refer to her as "Bee." Whether or not her "re-christening" resulted from marrying Franklin Beezley in 1944 with the charming alliteration of her married moniker, "Bee Beezley," I do not know for sure. She frequently told my older brother Gary and me of the social whirl she had enjoyed during her young adulthood., and how "Judge Eldert" had even asked her to marry him. Sadly, he died of a sudden heart attack immediately after having popped the question. My mom met my father on one of her numerous summer vacation trips to Wisconsin. She discovered they lived just blocks away from each other, but had never met in the city because she lived within the Chicago city limits and my father resided across the border in suburban Oak Park, IL. My mother was born into a blue collar working class family. Her father was a plasterer who helped build the Field Museum in Chicago. But her obvious good looks and winning ways helped her to run in more elite circles, and my father was the son of a Vice-President at RR Donnelly Printing...the publishers of Time/Life magazines. Their family even had a live-in maid. LOL After the wedding, my parents moved to a suburb of Milwaukee where my dad established a successful career in advertising. I was the younger of their two children. My brother, Gary, worked for two Congressmen on capitol hill in the '70s, and went on to serve for more than 30 years as a PR employee at General Telephone (Sprint). I spent over 30 years in radio, the last 20 in the Chicago market. Eventually, I did freelance news and writing work for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, but I've been semi-retired for the better part of 20 years due to some health issues. Bertha has one, highly cherished grandson, who was born to us after 18 years of marriage. My father passed in 1984. My brother followed him in 2000. And my mom joined them both in Heaven in 2001 at the ripe old age of 91. Hers was a life well lived. And now you know, as Paul Harvey would say, "The rest of the story." I'm including a photo of our family standing in front of our Wisconsin home from the 1960s, so you can see the entire Beezley brood. God bless you al, Todd

 

Thanks, Todd, for filling in the details - and thanks again for "sharing" your family with us!

 

Incredible what Internet can do!
Welcome Todd, we seems to be Bertha's new family

 

Wonderful story, well told. And "Bee Beezley" is a fabulous name.

 

That's a wonderful back story to flesh out the images that @bluumz has/had!!! Thank you, so much for adding to it and sharing with us!! Sounds like you've had an amazing family!!!!

 

@bluumz - I believe you live in Michigan, is that where you found this album?

@TBeezley1 - Do you still live in Wisconsin? I am just trying to connect the dots as to how this precious album traveled over the years.

Kudos to bluumz for returning it to Todd!!

 

Thank you Todd for telling us "the rest of the story".

And what a story it is.

Accolades to you Bluumz.

 

An amazing story it has been. After graduation at the University of Missouri (BJ '72), I began my radio career managing a small station in Tennessee. One day, a young lady named Sherry called in to request a song. We will have been married 44 years, this July 4th. The old joke about radio is that the most successful DJ is the one with the largest U-Haul. A gypsy business it is. After a stint at another radio station in Tennessee, my dad had a stroke and I returned to my home state working in Madison for a time. From there it was on to Beloit, Wisconsin and then on to the Chicago market. Eventually, I worked at 50KW, WCFL-AM when it was broadcasting Christian music. In 1998, the station where I worked in Aurora, IL was being prepped for sale, and we followed God's leading to Roanoke, VA, where we still reside. And our best days are yet to come!

 

I'm including this link to a video testimonial of my story created by CBN in 2004. It contains additional family photos, along with the trail of my spiritual odyssey. If any of you are put off by spiritual things, this may not be for you. But the rest of you may enjoy it. Blessings...TB

 

I spent a fair amount of time in the late 1970's to early 1980's in Roanoke, when I worked for a DC-area company that was based out of Roanoke.

What I remember most about Roanoke:

.the Southern Railroad
.the Hotel Roanoke
.the Patrick Henry Hotel
.the star on the mountain
.the Children's Zoo
.feeling that we were dropping straight down out of the air to the runway when
landing at the Roanoke airport!

 

It's a lovely city. We live on the side of a ridge. A far cry from the upper Midwest but it is now home.

 

To answer your question, bercrystal. Here's what I THINK happened with the album. My older brother, Gary, and his wife lived in Durham, NC. He passed in 2000 following double heart valve replacement surgery. I suspect his widow was clearing some things out of the house, and that's how the album got into the public domain.

 

It will be interesting to see where exactly bluumz bought the album.

 

I bought the album in the fall of last year from a stranger who advertised it on Craigslist. I asked her where she'd gotten it and I think she said something about an elderly neighbor. I'm afraid I don't know if the neighbor had died or if the neighbor was simply culling her own collection of (possibly unknown) photographs. Sorry, I can't offer any more info.

The pencil drawing has Bertha's first and last names on it. Of course, I realized that she likely had changed her name due to marriage. I made an effort when I first purchased the album to find her family but couldn't find anything definitive. After I posted this thread, I decided to have another stab at it and luck was with me. With only about 45min of searching I hit upon solid leads that led me to Todd.
So, Bertha's wonderful album is going to its rightful home this week.

 

Bluumz, you're a star!

 

I hope you all don't mind but I have forwarded this thread to my cousin Darlene, the daughter of Wanda (Bertha's sister) who is depicted in numerous photos with my mother (tennis court, lakefront follies etc.) I thought it might be fun for her to see the photos and have the chance to offer any comments she could add.