Each generation of my family has had a photographer. My grandfather was a chemist by education and career and, once he determined that my dad was also interested in photography, he gave my dad his first camera, built a darkroom next to the garage, taught my dad enough chemistry so that he could mix developers, etc., and let him run. My dad was very artistic (a trait I did NOT inherit) - drawing, painting, watercolor, sculpture - and his pre-war photos reflected that tendency.
My dad was drafted into the US Army in 1942. With a couple of years of college and no immediately-discernable skill set, the Army wasn't quite sure what to do with my dad and sent him to a variety of training camps after basic training: winter warefare, jungle warfare, etc. One of the camps had a Signal Corps base and, once my dad demonstrated he could type (a rare skill for men in that era), he was pulled out of combat training. The Signal Corps had a darkroom and that's where his wartime saga begins.
One weekend, my dad asked if he could use the base darkroom and, thus he became a lab tech and spent his time in the UK at RAF Alconbury attached to a B-17 reconnaissance squadron, developing and printing recon photos with the directive, "print three of everything, put it in a pouch, and send it to DC."
For this first batch of photos, the shot of my dad photographing his younger sister was taken in 1938; he would have been about 17 at the time. That's the earliest photo of my dad with a camera. The subsequent photos depict a typical Army lab.
