Since 1917

The best of times, of course, was the development of our acquaintance into a wonderful period of romance, I introduced SW to my family on several occasions. My sister Reggie was first to entertain us with dinner in her apartment on 47th Street. I then had her visit family at my home, our two story brick apartment house. To this day, I tease Shirley that she married me for my family wealth, she was so impressed by our home.
As I search my photo albums, I realize that photography aided me in capturing the heart of SW. I recall the scene of IRV carrying a black suitcase that held his 5×7 view camera and film holders plus in his other hand, he held a wooden tripod plus lightstands. He was on his way to Shirley’s apartment to take portraits. This was exciting for him. Who knew what this would lead to? The photo session turned out great. She was an excellent model and he fell in love with her, so much so that he wanted to marry her and he did. He used her as a model for all his travel shots. She had the most captivating smile and a gorgeous figure.
SW became my muse, who inspired me to create a card for her 19th year birthday. I used one of the portraits I had taken and drank a toast to her expressing my love for her, etc. The toast was done in poetic form and really captured her attention. None of her other boy friends could compete. I bowled her over. (However, this has become a tough assignment for me in all of her future birthdays. All cards are expected to be original and poetic.)
My next recollection is introducing her to the entire family, by bringing her to the Roth family Passover Seder. When I entered with Shirley and introduced her to the entire family, some of them had not met her, I seated her next to Nat. Nat turned to her and exclaimed in a surprised voice, ” I know you, you’re in my accounting class in City College”. ” How can you do this, I had my eye on you?”. Well, we all got a good laugh. Shirley attended her first Seder and became acquainted with the entire extended family. (Seders seems to be the current method of introducing new members to our family structure, as evidenced by the Colodner experience}. An aside to the readers…(Barbara has a photo of a Roth Seder dated from 1941-2 and a movie film taken by me during this period.)

On Valentines Day of 1942, I presented her with a Gruen watch, depleting my entire savings. To get the best bargain possible, a friend of Reggie’s, Esther Weissberg introduced me to a Jewelry store, located on Canal Street. By this time, I was working for a photo retailing shop, Fotoshop, 42nd St., owned by Sam Marcus, who built up a large retailing and photo finishing business. I was now a retail sales person, selling darkroom equipment and instructing buyers on how to set up a lab and do developing and printing film and photos. I was now earning more than SW and decided to pop the question.

Hanging over our heads was the War and my low draft number. We knew that my turn would come and were prepared for it . We would wait and see what happens to see what fate has in store for us. On August 8, 1942, I received the order to report for induction. I went to Grand Central Station for a complete physical examination. I was 1B, a non-combatant, given the number 32434119 and ordered to report for active duty in the Enlisted Reserve Corps. I had orders to report to the local Board on 13th Avenue, and to proceed to Fort Dix, N.J. on August 22.

The evening before was a very poignant time. Shirley and I decided to postpone any decision to marry until the war ended. We were engaged on Feb. 1942, after an 0n again-off again courtship and indecision on my part, due to economic depression and wartime. But, we were madly in love and were exceedingly suitable for each other. So, it was with a great deal of sorrow and an uncertain future, that we parted on the evening of August 21, 1942.

The political environment showing the headlines for this period indicated one disturbing factor in our lives. Another factor was the depression still with us, since 1929. FDR,had introduced many business programs and also government services, to offer jobs to the unemployed. He initiated building projects, such as highways and also dams throughout the country. One such program was PWA, a program to employ artists to decorate public buildings and photographers to record the US.
I worked in the darkroom mostly, thus getting experience in photo processing and also composition. I got a knowledge that aided me with my later work in portraiture and other photographic work. My resume got better as I got an assortment of jobs. Due to the depression and the wartime action in Europe, our own economy was going though an upheaval. During these three years I worked in a variety of photo related jobs. In a Carnegie Hall portrait studio, I did retouching and darkroom work with the owner, a woman refugee from Europe. This job lasted two months, due to lack of business. Downtown, near City Hall, I worked for a man who was a violinist, but to make a living his father bought him a photostat machine that made reductions or enlargements of advertising layouts to fit the ad agency requirements. He was a really sad case. I moved to another job in a passport studio shop close to the City Court Buildings. It was a tiny street store front, with a camera set up to shoot the ID photo. Delivery ! hour. Above this little studio ,was a darkroom, where another employee developed the film and made the prints. I took the photo, put the film in a basket that hung from the darkroom. It would be lifted up, processed and printed and sent down within the hour. The shop was so tight, that both of us couldn’t wait until lunchtime arrived. We would both rush out to Chinatown, where we ate every day. We couldn’t resist the $2.50 lunch. I left this place after several weeks to work in a camera shop nearby. Business wasn’t too great and when the owner’s brother-in-law came in to work, I was dismissed. I then joined the Camera Vogue Studio, on 28th Street, where I worked for about six months. The owner would be out soliciting jobs. I would mind the store, which did not draw many customers. But we did go out on some interesting photo shoots. We did a sport clothes ad with the tennis champ , whose name I can’t recall. We worked on a book being produced to list three high society families living in the Kips Bay and Gramercy Park area. We took photos of ancestral portraits. We entered many of the brownstone, elegant houses and met the elderly descendants of famous families. To take photos, we required good even lighting. So we often had to remove the paintings from the room and bring them outside on the porch or in the rear garden. Daylight provided the best overall light. It also gave me the experience to visit these mansions and see how the rich lived. And then , we did a wedding job in a Lutheran Church. This was a new experience. Wedding pictures, in those days were merely Bride and Groom portraits. Taken with a view camera and with floodlights.