| This was prepared especially for Dad's 80th birthday present, as a loving gift for The Greatest Dad In The World, at least from the viewpoint of his four grateful sons. Thanks Dad, from Pete, Jack, Willie and Chester. We love you for ever and ever. |
Dad
Dad's parents, Teresa Bohland Harich (1887 to 1924) and Peter Harich (1885 to 1933). Peter emigrated from Hungary. His photo is about 1910.
Dad's family - On the back of the photo we have:
Aproximately 1921. Aunt Theresa wasn't born yet! (Suitland, Maryland)
Uncle Philip, Grandmother Theresa, Aunt Elizabeth, Grandfather Peter
Aunt Kathryn, Uncle Karl, Aunt Lena
Father Fritz (Wow - Our Dad at 2 years old!!!)
Dog - Pit BullDad as a teenager, July 1938 when he as only 19 years old. What's that around his neck? :-)
A very early Dad and Mom, Fall 1947, before they were married, during a corn harvest.
Dad the innovator on stilts - This was rediscovered behind one of Granny's framed pictures, and was thought lost. It appeared on the front page of the Washington Post for Eisenhower's inaguration in 1948. If you look closely you'll see that date on the bus liscense plate. Also note the real shoes on the stilts, a nice touch. This was Dad's 15 minutes of fame. :-)
An unusual diagonal photo of Dad and Mom, Summer 1948. That's "Rip" the bulldog.
Dad on a Skyline Drive overlook, the week before Pete was born in 1948. Always the outdoor man!
Dad with Bille and Rip the bulldogs, 1949.
Dad the charmer with a bowtie. How about that handsome man!
The blind man commeth - Dad poses for a gag photo, as a blind man with beard, dark glasses and cane, in fromt of the AT&T building. This was shortly before retirement, May 1975.
Lois and Dad - On a gag Christmas card.
Dad the baseball player waiting for his chance in 1987.
The Harich family was big on scouting. We all got a lot out of it, more than we knew at the time. Here's the master scout.
Lois and Dad again, at the ocean. This is a truly great photo.
Pete's arrival in November 1948 was a big hit. Here he is, the star of the show, withTesie, Virginia, and Lizzie on the left. In the back row is Phil, Margaret, Fritz and Vinnie. On the chair is Daddy (Grandpa), Mother (Granny) and tiny Pete. Don't know who's on the lower right.
Pete with Tessie, Lizzie (with Pete), Lena, Eileen. December 1948.
One of the boys' baby bracelets.
The boys had their pictures taken at 9 months old, at Goldcraft Portriates, 716 13th Street, Washington DC. Here is Pete, Jack, Willie and Chester. Notice how they are all wearing the same outfit, which is a baby's dress!!! :-)
Dad at the Kenilworth Lily Ponds with Willie, Pete and Jack, June 1952.
Dad and three boys, November 1952. Pete, Dad, Jack, Willie.
The family with some of Dad's family. No info was on this photo, so we'll check with Dad about it.
Pete and Jack on a seesaw, backyard of the Washington home, Pete 1 3/4, Jack 1 1/4.
In June of 1955 we went to the circus. In those days it was the real thing - a huge canvas bigtop raised by hand, in a field, with wooden stakes and elephants. Dad took a series of photos showing the bigtop raising and a shot of the family in front of the elephants. On the left is Virginia and Leo Lewis. On the right is Marth and Mark Lewis in back, then Jack and Pete, and then Chester and Willie in front.
Snow house, backyard of Washington home. Willie inside, Pete standing. Jan 1955.
A handwritten note about the four boys, December 1953.
Pete with a pot in front of the Christmas tree, Christmas 1949.
Pete and Jack as babies.
Dad with Jack on his lap, 3 months old.
The Harich family with three boys.
The three boys hanging on a bunk bed, November 1952. What a bunch of darlings! :-)
In December 1952 Dad's brothers and sisters got together with Dad's new family in this rare large group photo.
The four boys when Chester was 8 days old. Pete's in front. Boys will be boys, so Pete and Jack were Indians that day. :-)
A little later, here are the four boys with Chester looking up from his crib. August 1952. Willie, Pete and Jack in the rear.
At a drinking fountain in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC was a popular place for our family to go. Here you can see why - There's lots for four little boys to do! May 1953. Jack, Pete, Chester, Fritz with Willie in front.
Those four boys sure do things together! :-) Here they are with their four Christmas stockings, order of their age, Pete, Jack, Willie Chester. 1954. Here they are in the back yard. And then came Halloween, a terribly overexposed picture we had to adjust the contrast on.
The surprise tree party for the four boys on Christmas day, 1954. From left to right is Jack, Chester, Willie and Pete in front. Notice the manger scene about to be set up on top of the TV, and the Teddy Bear. And here they are with a train set, looking in a mirror at themselves and sitting on the piano bench. A busy Christmas!!! :-)
Swimming was a big thing in Maryland, with the Potomac River the Chesapeake Bay around. The four boys dutifully became genuine certified swimmers.
The four boys at the Aunt Dot's in front of Christmas tree, 1962.
Some of the boys and friends in front of the LaPlata Bank. No futher info known yet.
Mom and the four boys inside a giant tire.
Washington,DC went the way of all cities, and decided to eliminate its trolley cars. Naturally our parents took us for our first and last ride on a DC trolley car.
Pete, age 9.
Pete in third grade, November 1956.
Pete's first fish, at Grandma's house. He can remember going fishin' with Grandpa. They went to a lake together. They used long bamboo poles, no reel, with a line as long as the pole. They brought the fish back home. Pete wanted to eat it, but the adults buried it in the back yard. :-)
All of a sudden, Pete grew up! Here he is with beard and suit, 1994, and here casual.
Jack's fifth birthday party, when we still lived in Shipley Terrace, Washington, DC.
Jack in the third grade. On the back he wrote, "Mrs Barnheart, best teacher".
Magic was Jack's hobby for a few years. Here's the magician in action. That's a live bunny!
Jack's "Danger Quicksand" science project. He came up with a novel idea of simulating real quicksand. First he put a punctured, coiled tube of copper in the bottom of a container. The tube coil had a flexible plastic tube attached. The other end was attached to the bottom of a raisable can. In the photo you see the can raised, which caused water to be evenly forced into the bottom of the container of sand, which caused the particles to move apart slightly to allow the water to pass to the top and let the sand settle. Folks dropped in pennies and watched them dissapper!
Willie, age 7. And here he is at the beach in 1952, a prophetic picture. :-)
Willie, first grade, November 1956.
Willie in coat and tie, 60-61.
Christmas morning finds Willie with a kitten in his lap. The blackboard on the easel was an educational tool in itself. We took turns opening a present one at a time, and marked our turn off on the board. Who knows what valuable thinking patterns this exercise taught us at an early age?
The great outdoors beckons! Here's Willie about to go a'backbacking. That's the corncrib in the background, with grapes and apple trees on the left. Ahhhhh, what a great farm it was! Note the ample provision Will stuffed into his sweatshirt before taking off.
Willie in a school portriat, 1967.
Willie and Chester in a Pinewood Derby race. Dad made the track. This is a newspaper clipping from 1983.
Chester's Birth Certificate, with foot prints.
They threw Chester and Dad in the stocks at Jamestown, 1957.
Chester's "What Makes Rain" science project, 1960.
The Harich family at Christmas, somewhere. Mom is wearing "gimp" earrings Jack made.
We were a family of readers, as the four boys off to school with their school books shows.
Ludwig Van Alhaus, a foreign exchange student, came to live with us one school year. He and Pete were high school seniors. Here from Mom and Dad's shoebox of photos is the exact set of school photos for that year as Mom and Dad preserved them. Here they are out on the farm and bring home the Christmas tree.
Darlene Harich, 3 years old.
Scouting
All the boys were in the Cub Scouts, the the Boy Scouts, then the Explorers. Here's Willie giving the Cub Scout salute, December 1958. Here's Dad, Pete and Jack giving the Boy Scout salute, which is three fingers instead of just two for Cub Scouts. Here's some of the boys about to go off on a camping trip. Don't they look like old hands? :-) Here's Dad examining a scout's backback on the front lawn of Glasva High School, Summer 1963, and they go off to Camp Roosevelt.
Here the scouts are visiting a ham radio enthusasist. Dad's in the middle rear, with Jimmy Bowling left rear, Pete leaning, and Mike Harbin front right. We were probably working on our Morse Code merit badges.
We went camping many times, many places. Here we are camping on the farm. That's probably Leroy Dillon in the middle. Here we are at the grub table Dad built. Here we are around a camp fire.
Dad, Willie and Chester in a Boy Scouts awards ceremony.
Life on the Farm
The four boys on the well at the farm.
The five boys roasting marshmellows or hotdogs. Chester, Willie, Jack, Brian, Pete.
The Harich boys and others in a short lived pyramid on the farm.
Dad laying tile in the farm home.
Pete's hand made tent. One year Pete designed and made a very usable tent out of muslin and cloth tape, complete with reinforcement at the hanging point as you can see. To waterproof it he ironed in paraffin. Innovative!
Ever the engineer, Dad arranged this image of a solar eclipse through binoculars on paper in spring of 1970. It was emphasis like this that raised such a smart bunch of boys. Thanks, Dad!
Winter brought snow and long icicles, which the boys were fascinated with.
A Christmas family tradition was to go out into the woods together, find a perfect tree, cut it down, bring it back, and decorate it with wonderous things. It was usually a Long Needle Virginia Pine, like this one. The sleigh was held up with invisible fine wires, from a spool for wire dad got from work. Jack kept trying to put the sleigh up by himself, and the very fine wires kept breaking. He figured out he was pulling them too taunt, and so settled for a droop. Here we are on Christmas morning with Granny.
One Summer the boys dressed up (or down :-) as Indians, and proceeded to attack everything, including the train when it came by, Mom and Dad, and in this photo, Pete!
Life on the farm was full of exploring and doing things. Here are the four boys striking a farmer pose on the steps of the Corn Crib.
North of the farmhouse was a long field with Mary's house at the far end. Here's Chester sitting on a bale of hay in that field. The photo is a little out of focus.
By the second barn was the hayloft. Here we are about to pitch in a load of hay.
We had a pony named Poncho for a few years. He was a little small for Dad. He was very popular with kids. Here's the Everett family and us with Poncho, our neighbors when we were in DC.
The farmhouse was a majestic clapboard two story classic. Here it is in snowfall. You can see the first and second barns, and the huge old Elm trees which surrounded the house. Here's another view.
We used to play outside on a swinging rope hanging down from an Elm tree. Here's Chester hanging upside down in June 1962. This is the very tree we used to climb a lot. One day Chester fell down from about 20 feet and landed hard. He started screaming, "I'm dead, I'm dead." Ahhhh, those were the days....
An old man named "Ed" lived in a shack on the farm, and helped out for $5.00 a day. Here he is in June 1962 with Chester, Jack and Willie, getting tobacco plants (for transplanting) from Arthur Welch's tobacco bed. Upon seeing this photo, Pete remember that Ed used to say, "One boy is half a boy. Two boys are a third of a boy. Three boys are are no boy at all." :-)
Every Thanksgiving the Thompsons would come to visit. Here are Mina and Alta (?) with the four boys and two critters.
Ponds, streams, creeks and rivers were all around. Allen's Fresh was 4 1/2 miles away near Glasva High School, where the four boys went. Here's Dad and the four boys off to go fishing, possibly at Allen's Fresh for a yellow or white perch run.
The farm abounded with wildlife. Here's Jack with a Black Snake. One Summer the boys climbed the huge Oak beside the first barn. Exploring it, they gradually made their way up the massive trunk, and found a "spunk hole" full of dark, dank water. Opon close investigation, it had snakes in it!!! The boys fearlessly clustered around it, but not too close. Jack worked up his nerve, inched up to the spunk hole, and believe it or not plunged in his hand and pulled out a Black Snake by the neck. The snake then bite him and Jack squeezed his neck so hard the snake couldn't even close his mouth. Jack remembers looking in the snake's mouth close up, and seeing a few broken teeth and some of Jack's own blood. Jack got excited, and started swinging the snake around so it wouldn't cling to him or bite him again. All this was 30 feet off the ground! The boys raised such a commotion that Mom came outside and could see the whole thing from the farm house. Wow!!! Jack eventually let the snake go, and watched it slowly move around the tree, and then drop off a branch into the barn roof, where it slithered to the roof edge and dropped into some bushes. Then he extracted the other snake! It turned out to be a pair. A few months later 4 baby snakes skins were found on the bark near the spunk hole.... Here's all four boys holding what we optimistically believed was one of those snakes, Summer of 1964.
One Winter Jack found a dead Blue Heron (or Grey?) in the stream by Happy Island. He brought it home to study and show to everyone. He even took the smelly thing to school. Here's Pete, Jack and Chester showing the big bird off inside the farmhouse.
Grandchildren
Paul Harich - He picked the "laser background" himself. Fall 1991.
Nicky Harich
Nicky and the cake from Grandpa Harich when he was born!
Second grade, November 1999.
Fourth grade in a frisbee T shirt and silly slippers.
With two stuffed toys from Grandma Virginia when the Alladin movie was out.
Doing a stunt on his trick bike.
His "best hair day ever" school photo.
Climbing a tree. Chester took this trick photo. The "tree" is actually horizontal!!!
Nicky and Chester in parking lot after frisbee game.
Safe at first. Note how Nicky can hit the ball and get to first base at the same time!!! 5th grade.
His Freshman year class portrait.
In the wrestling ring. Nicky is on the right. 1999.
Sandy Harich
Sandy the Sailor, September 1988.
Sandy making scary shadows, 1990.
Fourth grade photo, November 1991.
At Jack's furniture show, 1992, in front of a roll top desk that took Jack 6 months to make.
Easter Sandy, 1994.
Right after the Atlanta Braves won the world series in 1995, here's Sandy and Nicky with a pennant.
With her Dahlonega friends, Sophmore year in high school, Christmas 1997. They are Stephanie Seitz, Amberlee Hershberger, Sandy, Alisha Adams and Heide Seabolt.
Visiting Grandma Virginia, holding an oval portriat of Grandma as a child.
Sandy and her best friend Ashley, getting ready for the Junior Prom, 1998.
Sandy and Chester, February 1999, at the Elbert County Wrestling Regionals.
Sandy and Trey, prom 1999. Trey Kelley is into wrestling, soccer and football. He's now going to Georgia Sourthern and playing football there.
Sandy Summer 1999.
Senior year, 1999.
Marina, Sandy and Nicky clowning around on Marina's birthday, 1991.
Nicky and Sandy in a pile of colored balls.
Sandy and Nicky on a Pine tree. Chester took this shot at Pine Lake.
Chester, Sandy and Nicky at a pool party at Grandma Virginia's house. This was on Nicky's tenth birthday, July 4, 1994.
Stephen Oberbillig the tiger baby, Sandy and Nicky's brother, 1990.
Harichs of Maryland Family Pictures
1982, Will and Connie's Wedding Day
1986, Will and Paul (Paul is about 8 months old here)
1986, Fritz and Paul. This was Fritz and Lois' first time to see Paul.
1990, Paul in Kindergarten (5yrs old)
1992, We just came back from a weeklong camping trip to the mountains and the beach in Maryland. We were happy to be home!
1993, All of the Brothers. We were in Atlanta for Christmas.
1995, This was during a trip to Maine. This shot was taken in Acadia National Park.
1996, Paul and Scouts deep in a cave in West Virginia.
1996, We went to the Olympics in Atlanta. This is in front of Olympic stadium, the torch is on the left and the stadium is on the right.
1996, More from the Olympics, a family shot in front of the Atlanta skyline.
1998, Will at an overlook in West Virginia, we were on a camping trip that summer.
1999, Lois and Connie at Golden Gate Bridge. This was our visit to California this past summer.
Little one year old Paul, by himself and with Connie, June 1986.
Jack and Martha Run Off and Get Married
They were married on the sweetest day of the year, February 14, 1992, on a tiny island in the middle of the Tallapoosa River, Alabama. JC Dollar, our cousin, along with Carol Dollar performed the ceremony from the bank, while Jack and Martha were alone on the island.
Preparing the canoe with JC
Putting the canoe into the river
The island - As JC and Carol saw it during the ceremony
The couple celebrating - At JC and Carol's house
The bride and groom's wedding bands
Various Interesting Photos
Possibly the oldest picture of the Harich family, taken November 1952 in Washington. On the couch from left to right are Willie, Virginia, Chester, Pete, Jack and Fritz. (This is my favorite family picture - Jack)
Connie and Will at a picnic, August 99.
Jack and Martha long ago, around the time they first met in 1981.
Jack and Martha traded a cedar chest for this painting a few years before their marriage. The Tower is in the background in the upper right. Painting is by Ouida Canady of Atlanta.
Here's Dad, Lois, Pete, Jack and Martha in 1984 at the Stone Mountain laser show.
Chester's wedding - In Atlanta at Brother Juniper's Restaurant. This may be the last photograph of the entire Harich family together. It became rare for Pete, Jack, Willie and Chester to all get together. Here's the fine couple, Chester and Marina.
Chester's family long ago - In 1984. This was taken in the front yard of his fabulous Fairmont, Georgia home. We can see Jack, Pete, Marina, Dad, Chester, Sandy and Nicky.
A great portrait photograph of Chester.
A "fool the eye" painting - At Chico University, with Jack barely visible on the right, 1989. This is actually a painting on the side of a building, not a wall with a hole in it. This kind of art and talent is what distinguishes Chico. :-) Tell me, has the artist sprayed the concrete white near the "door" for that extra touch of realism?
A portriat of Granny Frazier at her smilin' finest. And here's her church in Dawson Springs, built in 1907. Another portriate of Granny in vignette style. Here's Grandpa (aka Daddy) in 1948 doing a funny pose in the gas station he and Granny owned, about 200 yards down the hill from their house in Dawson Springs, Kentucky.
JC Dollar rides again!!! On a pony, 7 1/2 months old.
Dad's digital photo album has 227 photos. They were scanned in on a HP ScanJet 6300C and resized in Photoshop. Some had color corrections and touchup in Photoshop. They are sized for 1280 by 1024 resolution, so eventually we settled on a max of 1200 pixels wide or 900 pixels high. This fits Dad's new laptop beautifully. Last photo added 2/16/00.
Later Photos
Time marches on. The following photos are in 1600 x 1200 resolution.
On December 17, 2005, Martha, Pete, Jack, and Chester got together for a day of Christmas tree decorating. Here is Chester in Martha's flying rocker.
Back to Jack's personal page.
