My father is on the right and his brother is on the left—Frank (my dad) and Elton (or, as the family called him, Chief) Russell, natural sons of Bruce Russell, who died when they were both very young. The father who raised them was technically their stepfather, my Grandpa Vogt, a man who married my grandma and took her little boys in, raising them as if they were his own flesh and blood. In current language, we’d call their family a blended family—they had step-siblings and half-siblings—but they thought of themselves as just plain brothers and sisters. Soon, perhaps, I’ll post a photo of them all.
My mother’s note on the back say this photo was taken “about 1945,” which means my dad is nineteen and Uncle Chief would be 21 or so. They look very boyish, don’t they? Both men had ruddy complexions, so I bet they looked even more boyish in person.
My dad, as you can see, is dressed in his army uniform. He just missed WWII, he says, and if this photo is truly from 1945, I’d say he’s not exaggerating his near miss, since WWII wasn’t officially over until well into 1945. Do you suppose his mother breathed a big sigh of relief when the war ended?
When my Uncle Chief was a boy, he had polio that left him with some lingering health issues. For one thing, he had difficulty swallowing, so he had to be careful what he ate and how he ate it. When I remember him at family dinners, I see him chewing, chewing, chewing before he swallowed and then sipping water to wash things down.
Uncle Chief also had hole in his heart—perhaps not yet discovered at the time of this picture—and that made him weaker and more easily tired. I’m guessing that it was in the early sixties that he had open heart surgery to patch things up. Whenever it was, open heart surgery was still a fairly new procedure and I remember my parents waiting anxiously for the phone call to tell them how things had gone during the surgery.
Although he was never entirely healthy, Uncle Chief ran a farm, raised a family, and lived into his seventies—all accomplished with a vigorous attitude that compensated for any physical frailty.