Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/01/10

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Subject: [Leica] My mother is gone...
From: tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)
Date: Sat Jan 10 15:48:39 2009

Peter,

Irene and I send our condolences and our prayers. She will always be close
to your heart in any event. But the pictures in this case are a wonderful
keep sake as you will forever see her smile beyond that of a memory image.

God Bless lad! 

Irene & Ted.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+tedgrant=shaw.ca@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+tedgrant=shaw.ca@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Klein
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 1:42 PM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] My mother is gone...

 

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.htm
l

 

--Peter

 

 

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In reply to: Message from pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein) ([Leica] My mother is gone...)