Tag: kitko

This was a toughie.  The Sepia Saturday theme this week is a drawing, not a photo, so it  poses a bit of a challenge, but if I take it as a drawing or doodle, I actually have something that works!  Grandpa Leon Kitko was quite the doodler, and in his sophomore year in high school at Beccaria Township High School (BTHS, which merged to become Beccaria-Coalport-Irvona high school after his sophomore year), he had a bunch of doodles of coal mining machinery.  Having been fascinated with machines and how they work his whole life, and growing up surrounded by them in the coal mining country of central Pennsylvania, it’s no wonder he took to drawing them in his notebook.  From a D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer, work  truck, to a Bay City coal shovel, he covered the more commonly seen pieces of equipment.  The work  truck is even labelled, “George B Lynch, General Cont, Wil, Del,” presumably, Wilmington, Delaware.  I don’t know of anyone by the name George Lynch who was friendly with the family, but he apparently saw the truck often enough to commit the name to memory.

There are some other things still in the notebook other than blank paper – there’s an assignment for English II dated May 25 and May 10 of 1949, so I have to imagine these doodles date to about the same time.  There’s also what looks to be a final exam schedule along with room numbers, dates, and times.  There’s a page with two addresses that don’t seem to correspond to any family members.  It’s interesting though to see what he jotted down and left behind in the old notebook and it makes me wonder if there’s some old notebook of mine out in a box in the garage with odd notes and addresses scribbled inside!  My high school friends and I had a habit of stealing eachothers books and writing weird notes and sayings all over the school-required brown paper cover, and I’m not sure I can even remember what they were about at this point.  I’d have to imagine that even if Leon was still alive, he might not be able to explain addresses from over 50 years ago!  One last image as this Sepia Saturday draws to a close, the cover of the  tablet including his name, school and grade.

Another “Nailed-It” sort of entry for Sepia Saturday!  Going back to last week’s image, we have two more from the set of photos taken during grandpa Leon Kitko’s senior year of high school.  His senior class took a trip to Washington, D.C., in May of 1951.  Apparently they stayed at the Hotel Harrington, and Leon took a bunch of photos in front of the hotel as they stepped off the bus.  As you can see from the Google Street View image below, the scenery has changed a good bit – the big Hotel Harrington sign along the side of the building is gone, and the only remaining structure to let me know I had the right side of the building is that fire escape ladder.  Going back to the trusty yearbook for the 1951 class at the Beccaria-Coalport-Irvona high school, we have in the left photo above, a gal who looks to be  Cleo Grimes.  In the right photo, well I’m not entirely sure who that is.  I have a hunch that, in the class trip photo at the bottom, the center two people are teachers, possibly Marcella Papcun and Dale Troy, and we’re missing the student Martin Auberzinski.  The dress/hair match the woman in the center back row, so I’m pretty sure that’s Marcella, plus it makes sense to put two teachers who served as chaperones in the center back row.  A news story about graduation is below as is the big  group photo in front of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.  This post ended up needing a bigger room in the Sepia Saturday hotel, but it’s all for a good reason – we’ve got some extra luggage this week!  It’s a lot of data, photos, links, etc, but as usual, I hope this all helps someone else in the long run.

Another Sepia Saturday gets written, or typed, into the books!  It took me a few seconds to think of a photo that might have typewriters in it, and in case it wasn’t obvious at first, the photo above fits the bill.  The photo is of a classroom, presumably at the Beccaria-Coalport-Irvona High School in 1951.  On the desks?  Typewriters in their dust covers!  There are a series of photos presumably taken around the time my grandpa, Leon Kitko, graduated high school, and this fits the size/theme of the others.  I can’t be 100% positive since there’s no date or label, but I’d call it 99.9% likely.  Grandpa happened to save his high school yearbook, so I took a peek through to see if I could identify the student.  He appears to be  John Finch.  The class was pretty small – they graduated only 50 in 1951 – so it’s pretty easy to pick out who’s who.  I have no information about him and it’s too common of a name to sort out what’s he’s up to now.  All I can find is a census record that has him living in Gulich, Clearfield County, PA in 1940 which fits with the John Finch who’s in this photo as far as location goes.  Beyond that, I can’t find anything in newspaper searches or anything else.  Perhaps though, one of his descendants may stumble upon this page and find the photo.

There were a couple of different directions to go this week for Sepia Saturday, so I chose two that fit pretty well.  The above photo was taken on peel-apart Polaroid film on March 20, 1970 and is of my grandfather, Leon Kitko.  Why such a specific date?  It was his 37th birthday.  I’m not sure there are exactly 37 candles on that cake, but there certainly are quite a few!  He’s also got a package of socks and t-shirts on the table, presumably his practical birthday gifts.  There’s an open magazine on the table next to a pile of spent matches and a matcbook.  I can only imagine it took at least that many matches to light so many candles.  There are quite a few photos similar to  this one and it appears that grandma took special care to bake a cake and have a little celebration for his birthday every year.

Grandma and grandpa were both animal lovers, and here we have a photo of Ed the cat perched on Leon’s shoulder while he lifts a fork to the cat.  The date on the back is July 2, 1968, and there are a few photos of Ed in just the same position.  I’m told this particular cat just wanted to eat at the table with you and was happy to sit on Leon’s shoulder during any meal.  Pretty funny.  I suppose I need to apply for bonus points this week since I have a post that is both appropriate for Sepia Saturday and Caturday.

 

Another Sepia Saturday, and another great match for the prompt!  I had posted this about a month ago on Google+ just for kicks because I liked the photo.  In the photo is my grandpa, Leon Kitko riding a piece of machinery, a Clark CA1 Airborne Tractor.  If I have my facts straight, this tractor is still hanging around albeit in a state of disrepair.  The neat part about the tractor is that it was built during World War II for the purpose of being light and small enough to be able to be flown in by glider or even dropped by parachute  to the ground to help clear land for  landing strips for larger aircraft.  It’s a pretty neat machine!  I’m not sure how my grandpa came to own one though, but it was in working condition at some point as the photo shows.  Grandpa wasn’t a farmer and I don’t think he had any real need for a bulldozer, but he was a tinkerer and mechanic who could fix just about anything, so I’m sure when the opportunity came along, he was more than happy to add this machine to his collection.  The back of the polaroid is labelled, “Aug 1969, Leon and his bulldozer,” and was likely taken by his wife, Romayne.  It’s a bit of a newer photo than the prompt photo and probably one of the most recent I’ve used for a Sepia Saturday, but I couldn’t resist since it was such a good fit.  There are SO many in this series (more recent photos from grandpa’s collection) that I really ought to delve into them more, but we’ll bulldoze through them soon enough!