About That Listing

The other day, I mentioned our impromptu project using the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner to conquer a seventy-year-old rolled-up photograph of my father-in-law’s boot camp company. I say “conquer” because the thirty-two-inch photo would have been a bear to replicate any other way.

I had also mentioned that we discovered several signatures on the back of the far end of the photo.

I’m thinking now would be an excellent time to share what those names were.

I also think that, since it is near-impossible to discern which dot of a face was which on the group photo, shrunk to size in this itty-bitty blog space, that I’d like to post a sequence of the segments of the photo, as scanned in their pre-stitched format.

Of course, I’m hoping that some other genealogy researcher will stumble upon this post—aided, of course, by the ubiquitous Google traffic director—and be able to retrieve some memorabilia from their ancestor’s past. (I always like to play that “Some Kind Soul” role, hoping to stumble upon such a site with pictures of my own ancestors in some grand gesture of cosmic genealogical karma.)

I tried doing some research to find background information on any of these signatories, but without much luck. For some, the name is too common. For others, the name is too illegible. And some would be near impossible to track for sure, given only initials for first names. And for one, possibly, there isn’t much information now online because he made the ultimate sacrifice early on in his Navy career.

So here they are: the men of Company 162-42 at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station on April 6, 1942—and the list of the twelve close companions of my father-in-law, Frank Stevens, written on the reverse of our copy of the photograph.

May their pictures find their way into some appreciative descendants’ research files. For all they have done for us, they deserve to be remembered.

Sherwood J. Hanford – Rockford, Ill.

John O. Clark – Harvey, Iowa

Stewart MacIntyre – Chicago Ill.

Raymond R. Schultz – Chicago, Ill.

Gilbert “Bud” Becker – Racine, Wisc.

Harold Hinze [Hinz?] Chicago Ill.

C. F. Soucy   Des Moines, Iowa  “42”

D. R. Rickard – Rockford, Ill.

Edwin Alfred Warchol “42”  Tilden Tech

Howard Thomas Cunningham “Chi” Lane Tech

Robert James Stafford – Janesville, Wisconsin – Hospital Corps.

Fred Q [O?] La Norci    Winter Park Flordia [sic]

A note about recommendations: in mentioning the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner, this author has not, in any way, received any financial remuneration for this or previous posts regarding its use. There. Now I've officially said it.