Probably taken at my birthday party in July 1985, so that would have been between my junior and senior years of high school. Michelle had probably just graduated as she was a year ahead of me. Jeff is his usual contrived, macho self making a homophobic remark to me (yawn) — but the wannabe bully showed up to my birthday party, after all. My sister then proceeds in another distorted clip to do the same to my little brother, who takes it in stride.
I don’t know where we were living at the time, but I suspect this was while we were visiting Italy in the 1970’s.
There were very few military brats (American kids) in the area (all our fathers were in the Coast Guard), so shortly after this picture was taken (I’m obviously the one in the middle) I was then home-schooled with a U.S. government correspondence course until we moved back to the States. I often wonder what the Spanish thought of us celebrating the Bicentennial that July 1976!
By an incredible coincidence, in 2014, the girl in the red dress above, Marlene Kurkierewicz (Houtz), was discovered to be in this picture by her daughter, Melissa Lee Gagnon. They reached out to me on social media to identify her. Now the challenge is to find out who the blonde girl is!
My siblings are flanking me here in Torroella de Montgrí, Catalonia, Spain, just in front of our house at the time. If you look carefully, you can see the castle we used to hike up the hill to. Dad had the wherewithal to write the exact date on the back of this photo with the comment “fresh egg run.” I remember regularly being sent to the end of that street to get eggs from a woman who I used to witness pick them out from under the hens right there in her home.
My siblings are flanking me here, as we sat for official holiday portraits in Spain. We are sitting in front of a sheepskin in our living room (it helped to keep the leather couch from getting too sticky). I still love having sheepskin rugs (even faux) around my house. My father was stationed in Estartit, but we lived in Torroella de Montgrí. I believe this was the 1975 holiday season since we only lived there for two years and by February 1977 we had moved to Governor’s Island, New York.
I’m estimating September 1973 this was taken. I went to Hillview Crest, in Hayward, California, for kindergarten. Fortunately my parents had started teaching me English, because even though I was born in San Pedro, California, I started talking when we were living in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy (my mother was from Calabria).
Just prior to their wedding my parents were chaperoned by my grandfather, Giuseppe Benenati. My parents had met when my father was stationed in Calabria right there on the beach in front of the station. They corresponded for a few years and send audio tapes back and forth to each (one of which I’ve digitized). They spent some time getting to know each other in Florence, close to where my mother attended college and took these pictures.
