Susan Phillips

This is a story not of a picture of an object, but of pictures as objects.

On the left, that’s my father in 1913 as an infant, who grew up without his own father, Ernest. It wasn’t a happy marriage, and Ernest bugged out shortly after the birth of my father’s little brother. Family lore was that Ernest deserted the family to join the Army and died around 1922. Over the years the mystery of Ernest became an unchallenged fact. This photo is all that we had of him.

Fast forward three decades after the deaths of my parents, and I joined the bandwagon and had my DNA tested.  The report came back showing a close relative and a link to a mystery cousin’s family tree. And her grandfather. Named Ernest. Different middle and last names but same year and city of birth. I remember the shock, elation, disbelief, typing a message to the cousin, not knowing how to delicately phrase it. The rules of etiquette for such occasions were elusive.

Turns out my cousin had made the connection, too, but it wasn’t real for either one of us. And then we exchanged these photos, hers taken soon after he left, still in the Army (seated on the right). And seeing them we both truly knew. After his stint in the Army, Ernest found a new wife and became the father to two more children. And ironically, my bigamist grandfather was an exemplary family man until his death in 1969.