Monday, March 21, 2011

Family History Photo Monday: Camping with Carol Chester

My Grandma Carol Chester Furniss was single for a while - she was 32 years-old when she married Grandpa Lloyd Furniss.  She went to college and taught elementary school in Wyoming and Utah, she did quite a bit of traveling on road trips and beyond, and she had a lot of friends.  Grandma saved every letter ever sent to her and from reading a sampling of those letters, being a pen pal with Carol Chester meant you got all the news.  She had saved many pictures of her with her friends out doing things and for some reason some photos of her camping made me smile more than the rest.  The women in my family are not known for our camping skillz.  (A couple of Grandma's camping photos were of some ladies washing what looks like underwear in a stream.  Yeah - that wouldn't have been me.)   So, for a smile today, here are two of Grandma's girlfriends (the photo isn't labeled, of course) and Grandma on the far right.  She's in her twenties here, but I don't know exactly how old she is.  I do know that she looks GAME for this camping business.

4 comments:

Mom said...

This is so unlike my mom! Thanks for showing another facet of her life.

allyn said...

yeah, apparently gma was a real tomboy. i went to a family reunion in henry and heard stories of her running with her boy cousins to catch a moving train chugging across the prairie.
she looks pretty cool in her boy clothes here.
that other girl is totally in her underwear.

koryn said...

Sometimes I struggle to put the quiet, hair-tucking Grandma Furniss of our youth together with a picture like this. The struggle lies not in the idea that she felt and did these things, just that I realize how one-dimensional my memories of her are and I wish I would have known more. Definitely the nautilus shell, that lady.

melissa said...

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this version of Grandma, too. Thanks for sharing, Nicole. Thanks for verbalizing what I couldn't, Koryn.