We’re looking at the life and time of Helmut Quiram in this album of found Kodachrome slides. Collected by Thomas Hawke, we get to see the family – Helmut, Jeanne and Karl – at home, in Denver, Colorado, on a trop to Fort Bliss, Texas, young Karl sat on ‘a hunter’s kill’ (a dead, guts-open deer), Karl’s birthday in 1955, and a family trip to White Sands National Park in New Mexico, in 1953. Each image has a handwritten caption which we’ve included here.
handwritten on slide, “White Sands, Fleming and Plymouth Station Wagon, 1953”
handwritten on slide, “Karl April 1955”
handwritten on slide, “Dick Basseot, Jeane Thelmy, Lois Ocery, Pete”
handwritten on slide, “Jeanne, Karl and Helmut’s first deer, October 1954”
handwritten on slide, “Helmut, Alan, Walter’s Kids?”
White Sands, New Mexico
If we are here to go somewhere else, then a trip to White Sands, New Mexico, is as good a destination as any. If you want to go somewhere, why not head to a vast expanse of nothing much? White Sands is as close to nowhere as you can get on the planet. And when you are there the glare from the sun hitting the gypsum can make it hard to see anything.
As you saddle up the Plymouth Station Wagon, you and your kin can bone up on the facts: around 12,000 years ago, the land within the Tularosa Basin in which White Sands sits featured lakes, streams and grasslands. As the planet warmed, rain and snowmelt dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains and carried it into the basin. Further warming and drying caused the lakes to evaporate and form selenite crystals. Strong winds then broke up crystals and transported them eastward. Magical, right?
The family also went to see the sights at Fort Bliss.
handwritten on slide “Me beside a 120 AA Gun November 1953, Hueco Range, Fort Bliss, Texas”
handwritten on slide, “Karl, Alan, Jeanne Trip back to Colo after visit to Tex, 1954 in 1955”
handwritten on slide, “Jeanne Thelmy on wedding day, February 5, 1953, taken at 662 South Vine St., Denver, Colorado”
handwritten on slide, “AAA in Ground Support Role, Donna Ann A Range, Fort Bliss, Texas, November 19, 1953”
handwritten on slide, “White Sands, 1953, Jo, Sandy”
handwritten on slide, “some of vegetation at White Sands, 1953”
handwritten on slide “Me beside a 120 AA Gun November 1953, Hueco Range, Fort Bliss, Texas”
handwritten on slide, “White Sands, August 1953”
handwritten on slide, “Margaret, Jo, Carol Sanders and Alan at Christmas Party, Armstrong Field, Fort Bliss, December 12, 1953”
handwritten on slide, “Carol, Joan, Margaret Sanders, Alan, I, August 1953, White Sands”
handwritten on slide, “Alan , Mom, Warner, Jeanne Thelmy, Pop Warner, Helen Boline, Eldred Boline”
handwritten on slide “Jeanne and new Chev White Sands, NM, 1953”
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