Okay so tonight we were looking through some old photo albums with my mom. And I mean old, some dating back to the 20s, but mostly in the 40s-60s. And I realized I need to tell the internet about my grandmother’s boyfriend Joe.

Joe Marion was, it seems, a character. He went off to WWII and sent Gram a ton of pictures from training and overseas. Some of them were basically normal. Here is a perfectly nice headshot. Cute guy! A nice Italian boy.

But the volume...the volume gets to be a little much. Especially considering that these are just the ones she kept. Some of which were, in fact, printed as postcards, which makes one wonder how many he was sending out to various girls

And then some of them were...well, the guy liked having pictures taken of himself. Here’s this heroic pose plus one from an earlier, more sensitive era

I’ve been saving my favorites. Ready?

Okay. This is the first runner up.

And here...here is, I think, my personal winner

It’s just so artful. So sensual. Such...a lot of effort to go through in an era before everyone had a great camera in their pocket

Now I would think absolutely nothing of this in these days! But in 1944? That was a whole photo shoot. A couple of these were professionally shot. Then there’s printing, inscribing...while trying to fight a war! When did he find the time?

Anyway that’s nothing compared to the notes

As far as I can tell, Joe was the one who gave himself the name “Lover.” It’s written on the back of some of the other pictures, in his handwriting—just in case she forgot

Sadly, things did not work out with Joe. I don’t have the details, since Gram passed away a few years ago and had lost her memory long before then, but Mom thinks she may have found out he had other girlfriends. But she landed on her feet. She found another GI to write to.

This is my Pap, Mike. And I think he’s not too bad himself, tbh.

They were together happily until he died May 3rd, 1987—which happened to be their wedding anniversary and also his 67th birthday. Don’t smoke, kids. My Gram, Marge, went on to remarry to an even bigger character than Joe, but that’s a story for another day.

*actually I think it was 1989, come to think of it, but he was indeed 67. I just got his birth date wrong in my hear, then remembered hey wait, I was definitely 6 when he died

Hey people liked this thread, so here, have a few more pics. My Gram was a bit of a card herself in her youth, as we can ascertain from the pics titled just LEGS, and FACES NOT EVEN A MOTHER COULD LOVE. Her friend Irma, who grew up to get married 7 times, is also pictured

Here's another WWII pic of my grandfather . He was an Army sergeant who went on to be awarded a Silver Star and participate in the liberation of Mauthausen. After the war he stayed on for a bit with the Army to act as a translator in then-Czechoslovakia (1st gen immigrant kid!)

He and my Gram raised 3 kids, and occasional foster kids both unofficial and official. He was a welder and then a foreman with a barge company. She was a nurse. They'd alternate their shifts so someone was always home with the kids, but it must have been rough

Okay, wedding pictures time. 1) with their flower girls (who were wearing pink) at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh 2) with Mike’s tiny, adorable Slovak immigrant parents (I think there is some forced perspective here, they were not THAT tiny)

3) with Marge’s adorable Italian immigrant parents and 4) Gram’s very early “how it started”/“how it’s going” post in her scrapbook

Incredible update, everyone! I have located Joe’s 1943 high school yearbook on Ancestry!

I also found his draft card, which gives his complexion as “ruddy” (oh, 1940s) and his height as 5’5”. My Pap was only 5’7” or so. Clearly, Gram had a thing for short kings

Oh, also, in finding his yearbook entry I was able to confirm he went to the same high school Gram did. Which means he, like her, went to high school with Andy Warhol.