Thanks to my mother, I have this piece of Ettie’s life, picking cotton in 1930 Texas. I gaze at her photo, longing to have met her. My grandmother, Ettie Belle Harris Shults, died much too young, at the age of 46. Remarkable photos, fewer in number, but capturing people and places I never knew. My memory keeper mother not only kept her childhood family albums, but when she married my dad she began to collect the Shults family photos. My grandmother, Ettie Belle Harris Shults, picking cotton in Texas, circa 1930. The farmhouse we visited every Sunday until my Grandmother’s passing. What is the value of a photograph? The statement, “a picture is worth a thousand words” holds true as I thumb through her photo albums. She continues to work on her albums, though, keeping the family memories together. Now at 89 years of age, she has slowed down in her photography duty, leaving that to her children and grandchildren and digital photography. Included are historical photos from the 1800’s and current photos from this year. Looking through her collection, it would seem that she had the magic touch of nosing out photos from all sorts of family members. The photos range from the candid to the formal. Her collection of photo albums takes up an entire bookshelf and because of her, our memory keeper, we have photos giving us a peek at her early life on the farm. That photo album began my mother’s love of arranging her photos into albums. Ermie gave me a pair of socks, fingernail polish, a roll of film and mother gave me a photo album.” On her 13th birthday in 1941, my mother recorded in her diary: Inexpensive film and developing costs made photography affordable for everyone. The formal posed studio photographs of the late 1800’s gave way to photos of farms, cars, and everyday people. The Brownie was inexpensive and became hugely popular.īecause of the Brownie camera, our ancestors started taking snapshots of daily life. My mother, Anna, and her sister, Erma, both had box cameras as teenagers, probably a gift from their mother. The box camera named the “Brownie” was originally introduced by Kodak in 1900. As easy as it is today to take a quick video with our phones, are we remembering to record life’s important moments?Ĭousins Marilyn Creer, Anna Kelsey, Carol Creer, Erma Kelsey circa 1938, Kelsey farm, Declo, Idaho Grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews, my husband, my babies: the people of my life are recorded in their place in time.
#MEMORYKEEPER MOVIE#
But I’m grateful for my mother’s desire to keep the memories, because now I have a cherished collection of movie clips. The images are a little fuzzy and the lighting isn’t always great. Until the purchase of a “high tech” video camera in 1988, my mother recorded snippets in time with her small movie camera. I treasure this moment from a summer afternoon in 1964, on the front lawn of the land he homesteaded in Declo, Idaho. He passed away when I was nine years old and my memories of him are sparse. Her simple 8 millimeter movie camera, purchased in the 1950’s, captured priceless footage including this clip of me as a toddler with my grandfather, Edward Raymond Kelsey. Those photos went into picture frames and albums.
Do you know a memory keeper? The person in the family who captures a moment in time with a photo or video, sharing and displaying, collecting and keeping? I have the good fortune to be the daughter of a memory keeper.Īs long as I can remember, my mother, Anna Mae Kelsey, had a camera in her hand, snapping photos of birthday parties, family vacations, babies.
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