Steinhoff family Archives

January 6, 2013June 23, 2015

71 Years ago

I make it a point to call Mother every Sunday night at 7:30. Now that I’m retired, I have a hard time keeping track of the days of the week, let alone the time, so I have an alarm set in my cellphone to remind me that it’s Sunday. When I made the call this week, Mother casually mentioned that Monday would mark 71 years since she and Dad got married in Advance.

I remember her saying that she and Dad had gone to a movie. When they got out, my grandfather, Roy Welch, told them that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. “If you kids are planning to get married, you’d better do it right away.”

Florida honeymoon

A month later, they were married and on their way to Florida for a honeymoon.

Dad was luckier than many men his age. He was working for a contractor who won defense contracts to build airfields and other essential projects, so he was deferred from the draft.

One of my favorite photos

This photo was part of a series I didn’t remember shooting. It’s one of my favorite shots of the two of them in our back yard in 1970. It’s obvious that they weathered well as a couple. I wrote about discovering the series just about this time last year.

You expect your parents to be there forever. When I shot this, none of us dreamed that Dad would be with us only another seven years. I guess that’s only partially true. He’ll live on forever in our memories.

Photo gallery of honeymoon

Here are some additional shots of the honeymoon from 71 years ago. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

December 26, 2012December 24, 2022

Christmas Snow in Cape

If news reports are right, there’s gonna be a lot of stale bread in Southeast Missouri in the aftermath of the blizzard warning that predicted as much as 18″ of snow. There was a rush on the stores for staples in the days leading up to the storm.

The Cape area received from 4 to 6 inches, but winds gusting as high as 40 mph piled it up to look much higher in some places. The hard blow caused the wet snow to stick to vertical surfaces. Fortunately, there was very little sleet and ice in the storm.

Video of spinning ornament

Here is a video Brother Mark shot with his iPhone of Mother’s snow-covered lawn ornament spinning in the wind. (You can see the same ornament spinning in an afternoon thunderstorm last summer.)

Mark: I should have bought her a pony

Mother’s cordless phone was getting a little iffy, so I bought her a new one with three remotes for Christmas. Brother Mark called and said, “I wish you had bought her a pony.”

“A pony?”

“Yeah, ’cause if you had bought her a pony, we could be out riding it and having fun…”

“Instead of setting up the phone?”

“Yep.”

Here is an Amazon link to the Panasonic phone I bought her. The range is great: it worked all the way to the far end of the basement. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t reach all the way to the clothesline in the back yard. Sound quality is excellent and she loves the speakerphone.

Of course, I’m not the guy who had to set up something more complicated than a missile defense system. (Gee, do you think I might have planned it that way?)

More snow photos

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery. Click here if you want to see what our snows looked like in the 1960s.

December 23, 2012

Matt and Adam Make the Paper

Since I was the only photo staffer with kids, Son Matt and, later, Son Adam, showed up in a lot of newspaper illustrations. You can click the photos to see how cute the boys were.

Matt is on the front of the Palm Beach Times Trends cover on Dec. 11,1978. As best as I can remember, the story was about picking age-appropriate gifts for your child.

Over the years, he was photographed having night terrors, walking to the bus station at night holding his Poo Bear accompanied by his “abused” mother, and more situations that don’t come to mind.

Jet Pilot Adam

Adam was drafted for a story about flying with children. We talked an airline into letting us shoot some photos while it was at the jetway. The pilot let Adam get the feel for what it was like to sit up front.

Don’t forget me after Christmas

When you get ready to spend the cash Santa left you under the tree, don’t forget to use the Amazon link on my page or this Big Button to make my New Year a little brighter.

You all will probably be too busy to read the blog on Tuesday, so here’s an early wish for the best for you and your families.

December 21, 2012

Graham and the Christmas Lights

There’s a neighborhood around Gabriel Lane, just down the road from us that has been known for its holiday decorations for decades. Wife Lila wanted to walk Grandson Graham through it in his stroller like she had done with our boys.

Unfortunately, she picked the first night of the winter when we were under a Wind Chill Advisory. Temps in the low 50s don’t sound cold to you folks who experience wind chills in the negative 50 range, but this is FLORIDA.

Traffic is usually heavy in the neighborhood, so the game plan was for me to drive to a side road where Lila, Adam, Carly, Graham and all the paraphernalia a nearly-two-year-old needs would be off-loaded. When they were through walking around, I’d swing by and load up the survivors.

As it turned out, we found a parking spot close enough that we could all go. That’s when I realized that I had dressed to sit in a nice, warm car, not face Arctic blasts. It’s hard to hold your camera steady when you’re shivering.

Photo gallery of Christmas walk

I shot everything available light (available dark?). From time to time, I’d try to time my shot for when a car headlight would throw some fill onto Graham, but it generally made for an ugly effect. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the photo to move through the gallery.

We’re getting into a few days when folks are going to be busy with family activities, so I’ll probably post some light-weight topics until after the holiday. Since the Mayans didn’t get us, our family wishes your family a Merry and a Happy.