Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/01/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Peter, thank you so much for sharing this with us. I really appreciate it. Our best wishes, and from what I read, she is far from gone and will live on in thoughts and prayers. All the best Alastair and Helen --- pklein@threshinc.com wrote: From: Peter Klein <pklein@threshinc.com> To: lug@leica-users.org Subject: [Leica] My mother is gone... Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:41:47 -0800 LUGgers: My mother, Emilie Klein, is gone. She passed away at dawn on Thursday morning. Her younger sister and I were with her throughout the final night. Emilie's years (1921-2009) spanned the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, WWII, the 50s, the Age of Aquarius, the Space Age and the digital revolution. She was a courageous woman whose mobility was impaired by polio when she was just a year old. Through most of her life, she could walk, but one leg was shorter than the other and she wore lifts on one shoe. The last couple of years, she was mostly in a motorized wheelchair. Though she never got a college degree, she took courses at the New School in New York, was an avid reader, and became a self-taught librarian. She created the library at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Mass. and ran it for about 30 years. She was a "people person" who became friend, confidant and surrogate mother to many. My mother's influence formed the humanities half of my makeup, as my father's formed the scientific/technical. It was her example that sparked my interest in photography. On all our trips and family outings, she would carry her Bolsey B2 rangefinder and Gossen Pilot light meter. She shot only Kodachrome. I have a heritage of hundreds of slides, dating from about 1950. And she was a Leica user--after I got my M2 about 1970, she bought a IIIf and brightline viewfinder, which she used until she couldn't see well enough to focus. She didn't know much about photographic technique, but she did fine. Here are the three pictures that will stand with her memorial candle at our house this week: From 1951-52, with my Dad (Kodachrome, slightly overexposed): http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/family/Misc1950s/19EmMilt52.jpg.html October 2007, my favorite recent picture of her (B&W, of course): http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/family/SuzyOct07/L1002138EmBW-w.jpg.html May 2008, at the Tulip Festival near Mt. Vernon, WA: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/family/tulips08/L1003317-prf.jpg.html --Peter _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information