My Dad

My Dad would have been 114 years old today.   Wilburn Helge Sven Swanson.(1903-1985)      I think about him a lot but especially after our book club book talk last week, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” about immigrants in Brooklyn in the early 1900s.    My Dad lived in Brooklyn with his family then so I wanted to find a photo from that era and place.   He didn’t come there from Sweden until he was about 12 (He was born in Chicago in 1903 but his parents took him back to Sweden and his siblings were born there before the family of 6 returned) .  There are very few pictures of him as a boy, (one does deserve a future blip, .later) but after spending much too much time looking thru old boxes of photos, (and alas, just putting most of them all back)  I found this very foggy snapshot with that telltale ear sticking out, that I like.  I used to have a favorite snap of him rowing a boat but it seems to be lost... He loved boats and sailing, built one in his yard once.   He did study to be an architect at Pratt Institute  ( probably the main campus in Brooklyn...there is one in NYC too)  but became a mechanical engineer.   This is an old set of tools I have (I’m not sure what one does with them ..It says WHS in upper left corner) that he may have used then and the sign “ARCHITECTS” makes me think this is where he was..  so …early 20s.  (Maybe a slide rule in his hands?  anyone remember slide rules?)  The pin up was not my Mom.   As I said in that former blip, I’m actually wanting to find out more of his Dad’s side of the family tree… why did they go back to Sweden?  H and I did find the house he lived in near Kalmar, Sweden.    Lots of questions.  Again, I may have to get some help from Connections or Musings, bite the bullet, and spend some time with ancestry.com…I have asked the cousins that I do keep up with,  but no one seems to know much.   So it will be lost…unless….