JFZ writes: "Look at the wedding photo on the wall. Ludwig and Victoria? I doubt their circumstances in a partitioned Poland would have allowed such an apparent extravagance. On the other hand, perhaps this was at a time when marriage was much more honored. Any thoughts?"
That's the best I can do here on the zooming-in.
I could imagine Ludwig and Victoria having wedding clothes like that even under Partition. It could have been an old gown, remade. Since they were cabinetmakers, they were handy folks. Anyone have any family lore to pass on in relation to this?
If a photo like the one on the wall up there turns up in a box in anybody's house, I hope the finder scans it and sends it on to Gene & Clara's.
Also, in order to date this 1940s party photo, it would help to know what month and year Casimir John, he of the potted plant, came home from Japan at the end of the Second World War. Could someone provide that information, please?
(Casimir John's homecoming, at the train station in Buffalo, was filmed by his brother Eugene John, and is in Zdro Films I.)
You know what else springs to mind here? Uncle Stanley (directly under the wedding photo) got his nephew Eugene a job at the Buffalo steel works after the war. Eugene had been pressing pants at a dry cleaner's. He went to Canisius somewhere in there also. Can you imagine paratrooping down to fight the Japanese, then coming home to press trousers and sit in classrooms?
JZ