Photo Album Archive
family album | The Road to Bright City
My grandfather John Bernard “Barney” Hynes and his brother, Thomas J. Hynes emigrated in their…
Chicken Today, Feathers Tomorrow
Chicken today, feathers tomorrow. That’s how my mother described life with my father, James McQuilan…
Dorothea Lange’s Ireland
When photographer Dorothea Lange, best known for her haunting series of images from the Depression…
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Photo Album: Nanna’s First Fourth
“Kate, be careful when you get to America, the streets are full of gangsters!” That is what my grandmother, we called her Nanna, heard before she boarded the ship to America in the 1920s. […]
Photo Album: Dad and J.F.K.
My father Cyril DeFever grew up on a dairy farm near Detroit, Michigan. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. from Belgium. My mother, Marie Clancy, the daughter of an insurance man, […]
Photo Album: A Visit to Santa
Christmas, 1959 One Christmas was so much like another in those years, to borrow a line from Dylan Thomas. Mother began the preparations in late autumn. The plum pudding was […]
Photo Album: As My Mother Would Say
I can hear her now – “If I weren’t Irish, I’d be ashamed of myself!” Yes, my mother Annie Burke was Irish, and full of Irish sayings, and they came […]
Photo Album: Who Was My Grandmother Kate?
My maternal grandmother Kate Whalen and I were very close. As a child, I would go to Jersey City to stay with her for two or three weeks during the […]
Photo Album: The Old Irish of Burlington, Vermont
My family never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at our house. When I got older and realized how Irish I was, I asked my mother why. She said she did not […]