When my parents died back in the 1980s, I was left with the family's photos. I divvied up the photos of my brothers and sister, so they had their own pictures. But I still have boxes of fading photographs dating back to the early 20th century.
We don't have much in the way of home movies. But a visit to my cousin a couple days ago yielded a treasure that has helped provide motion the pictures of my parents younger than I've ever seen them.
The movies date from the 1940s, many of them taken in the backyard of my Uncle Andy's house on Seeley Avenue., in Chicago's Back of Yards neighborhood. My immigrant uncle had been the patriarch of the Cuprisin family, the oldest sibling, and the first to settle in Chicago after coming to the U.S.
My oldest brother recalls Uncle Andy's house as a regular Sunday gathering spot after church. It's not a place that I recall. My uncle was gone before I could remember him.
I looked through the home movies -- transferred to DVD -- in search of familiar faces. Then I caught a glimpse of ma and dad, younger than I'd ever seen them.
Yes, it's just a few seconds, and hardly clear.
But there's my father, John, being a smart guy as I remember him. My mother, Helen, is seated at right. She's blonder than I remember her. The little boy is my older brother, Ken, who looks to be 3 or 4 years old, allowing me to put a date on the clip.
For just a few seconds, I have a glimpse into 1947 or '48, a good decade before I came on the scene.
It's not much, but like the Zapruder film, I've been watching it over and over, looking for any little detail I can find.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
