Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Brothers: 1941 and 2014

When they weren't turning furniture into boats, Bill and Pete Riddle looked cherubic. A Chicago newspaper featured the boys in 1941; the caption that appeared is retyped below. 


These little boys are the sons of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Riddle. The older boy is William, commonly known as "Billy," and the younger is Emmons, who is called "Petey." Both have blond hair and brown eyes. Five-year-old Billy's greatest joy is ice boating on Fox Lake, and he and Petey, who will be 3 years old April 2, on days when they must stay indoors, upset the house by turning all the furniture into boats and playing they are sailing on the ice. Billy likes to sail on the lake and both he and Petey get a thrill out of watching their Daddy fly an airplane. They have an older brother, Hugh, who will be 9 on June 1. 


Seventy-three years later, during a 2014 visit in Coronado, photographer and family member Ken Corr captured the two brothers  — who had lost Hugh 18 years earlier — in a quiet moment at the beach. Said Corr: "I had to work on [the picture] a bit to remove various extraneous visual distractions that were in the original image in order to bring into focus the two brothers, deep in conversation with each other — most likely their last one-on-one in person interaction."

It was, indeed.



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