Cape Town Lens: Ed and the Yourdon clan – Utah, summer 1947

A Cape Town University of Cape Town tagged image from photographer – Ed Yourdon as published on Flickr.

Ed and the Yourdon clan – Utah, summer 1947

Image by Ed Yourdon

I put these photos into the "Denver 1947-50" Flickr album, even though they were all taken in Utah — because they were apparently taken during the period after my family had moved from Washington out to Denver, where Ray attended college on the GI Bill.

Apparently we visited Ray’s parents sometime during that first summer; they had a farm in a very small town called Jensen — east of Vernal,and near the Green River.

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This is me, at approx 3 years of age, at the (Ike & Mabel) Yourdonfamily farm in Utah.

Left to right:
Marvin (Ray’s older brother), Ike (Ray/Marvin’s father), me, Mom, Ray.

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All of the photos in this album are “originals” from the 3-month period that my family spent in Denver from 1947-50 — i.e., the period before I lived in Omaha, Riverside, Roswell, Ft. Worth and a separate stay in Denver in 1951-53 (which you may have seen already in my Flickr archives).

Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 65+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants. (Actually, I should listen to my own advice: unlike my subsequent visits to Roswell, Riverside, and Omaha I did not even track this early home down, let alone take any photos.)

So, what do I remember about the 3 early-childhood years that I spent in Denver? Since I was only 3 years old when we first moved there, the simple answer is: hardly anything. Here are the few random memories that I can dredge up:

1. I don’t think my Dad had even seen the ocean as a boy, but that didn’t stop him from enlisting in the Navy a while after he graduated from high school (there weren’t many other jobs on the Utah-Colorado border in those Depression-era days). He got sent out to the Pacific on some kind of naval vessel … and as it turned out, his ship was behind schedule getting back to home port in Hawaii on the evening of December 6, 1941. The submarine nets into Oahu harbor had been drawn closed, and his ship had to anchor outside … which helps explain why his ship didn’t end up at the bottom of the harbor the next morning.

2. Fifty years later, on December 7, 1991, I happened to be in a big park in downtown Tokyo, surrounded by thousands of young Japanese citizens, cheering as they waved their red-and-white national flags back and forth — waiting for a glimpse of the new Japanese empress, who was being presented to the public for the first time after her wedding. I heard someone near me speaking in English, so I asked him if he thought there was anything special about the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. He was polite, but he was also puzzled and confused: he had never heard the phrase before.

3. But I digress … Dad eventually got back to the U.S. and left the Navy in 1947 while stationed in Washington, DC. Like so many of his generation, he decided to go to college, with most expenses paid for by the G.I. Bill. He managed to get into Denver University, and he went on ahead of my mother and me. I vaguely remember that we took the train all the way out there. (I probably don’t remember it at all; but my mother repeatedly told me about some strange man grabbing me out of her arms, and dashing off to the restroom on the train … all I know is that we arrived in Denver safely.)

4. We lived in an old form of military housing, known as Quonset Huts, at the edge of the D.U. campus, and I had a tiny bedroom to myself. I have only a few memories of the place: during the brutally-cold winters, Dad would use a garden hose to fill the tiny patch of grass outside the front door with a sheet of water … which froze, and provided the neighborhood kids with a place to ice-skate.

5. Though it wasn’t a hardship, I do remember that we had relatively little money for food. My grandparents still lived out near the Utah-Colorado border (just south of the small town of Vernal), and once a week they would send a dozen fresh eggs to us, packed in a carefully padded wooden box. We also made our own ice cream, and I’ll never forget the time Dad used some food-coloring to make blue ice-cream. I had no idea that ice cream could be any color other than brown (chocolate) or white (vanilla).

6. During our last year in Denver, I attended kindergarten. I was allowed to walk to school, which felt like it was miles away, across several interstate highways. But there were no Interstates at the time, and it was probably just a two-lane street a few blocks away…

7. At Christmas and a few other times of the year, we drove from Denver to spend the holidays with my grandparents. Not only were there no Interstate highways in those days, but there were also no ski resorts: no Vail, no Aspen. I think we drove on the old highway U.S. 40, and we went through a mountain pass (Rabbit Ear pass?) that was always snow-filled, bitter-cold, and dangerous in the winter. Invariably, Dad had to stop to put tire-chains on the car, a process that entailed much cursing and yelling. But we always got there.

8. Dad went to school 12 months of each year, and got a B.S. in Electrical Engineering after just 3 years, in June of 1950. I was allowed to wear his graduation cape and gown for a few minutes, and I snuck a paper airplane into the huge gymnasium where friends and families gathered to watch the graduation ceremony. We were way in the back, way up high; and I was convinced that my airplane would sail all the way across the gym, if only I could throw it. If only, if only … but I didn’t.

9. Dad must have gotten a job (back in Glen Oaks, NY) right away, and their lease/rental of the Quonset Hut must have ended at about the same time. I mention that only because he drove back East alone, leaving me and my very pregnant mother behind. We lived in a tiny apartment at an old Air Force base at the edge of Denver (Buckley Field?) until July, when it was time for my mother to head to the hospital and deliver my sister, Patrice. Meanwhile, I was picked up by Dad’s older brother, and driven all the way out to Utah to spend a week with my grandparents … before everyone reconnected in Denver, and we took an airplane flight back East.

10. There is probably more … but that’s all I can remember at this point…