Pictures of Yesteryear - V
Jun. 6th, 2005 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoBack in 2001, I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the Boston Police Department, asking for the personnel file of my grandfather. There was lots of material there from the course of his 37 year career as a patrolman, but one of the standouts was this.
This is the only image of my paternal grandfather, Harold Bruce O'Brien, that I have. What's interesting to me is that the face doesn't look too much like my Dad to me, but the profile really does.
Some of you who know me really well will realize that I'm my grandfather's namesake.
Grandpa was born in 1896 in Roxbury, Mass. He was in the Army during WWI, from 1915 to 1919. Family legend has it that his unit marched from Vladivostok to Berlin during the Russian Revolution and Civil War. This was met with mild skepticism, until Mom one day ran into an elderly man while working in the Big Bear Lake, Calif. library, asking for a book on the Russian Revolution because, you guessed it, he'd marched from Vladivostok to Berlin. She asked if he'd known Grandpa. "Harry? You're his daughter-in-law? Oh my god!" (The man in question was of the Barton family, for whom Barton Flats in the San Bernardino Mountains is named.)
After the war, Grandpa was in the Manila PD for two years, 1919-1921. He was known later to curse in Tagalog, Chinese, and any other language at hand.
In 2001, when we went to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cluefairy_j's wedding in New Hampshire, we stopped off in Boston, so that, among other things, I could visit my Dad's grave for the first time ever. (Recall that he died in 1970.) He's buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery, in Mattapan. When we were in the office, we asked where he was, and they dragged out this huge old ledger book. On the line giving the site of the plot, it also listed the purchaser - "Harold B. O'Brien". While I knew, intellectually, that Grandpa and I shared a name, seeing my name as the owner of a grave site, in a record decades old, was a very spooky experience.
(Grandpa was the owner of the plot because Dad is buried with Grandma, neé Marjorie McIsaac. Oddly, I have no idea where Grandpa is buried.)
This is the only image of my paternal grandfather, Harold Bruce O'Brien, that I have. What's interesting to me is that the face doesn't look too much like my Dad to me, but the profile really does.
Some of you who know me really well will realize that I'm my grandfather's namesake.
Grandpa was born in 1896 in Roxbury, Mass. He was in the Army during WWI, from 1915 to 1919. Family legend has it that his unit marched from Vladivostok to Berlin during the Russian Revolution and Civil War. This was met with mild skepticism, until Mom one day ran into an elderly man while working in the Big Bear Lake, Calif. library, asking for a book on the Russian Revolution because, you guessed it, he'd marched from Vladivostok to Berlin. She asked if he'd known Grandpa. "Harry? You're his daughter-in-law? Oh my god!" (The man in question was of the Barton family, for whom Barton Flats in the San Bernardino Mountains is named.)
After the war, Grandpa was in the Manila PD for two years, 1919-1921. He was known later to curse in Tagalog, Chinese, and any other language at hand.
In 2001, when we went to
cluefairy_j's wedding in New Hampshire, we stopped off in Boston, so that, among other things, I could visit my Dad's grave for the first time ever. (Recall that he died in 1970.) He's buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery, in Mattapan. When we were in the office, we asked where he was, and they dragged out this huge old ledger book. On the line giving the site of the plot, it also listed the purchaser - "Harold B. O'Brien". While I knew, intellectually, that Grandpa and I shared a name, seeing my name as the owner of a grave site, in a record decades old, was a very spooky experience.(Grandpa was the owner of the plot because Dad is buried with Grandma, neé Marjorie McIsaac. Oddly, I have no idea where Grandpa is buried.)
