Dear Friends,
This week we received a gift from Josephine’s relative in Cleveland, Ohio: Herrick family photographs, Josephine’s personal letters, Christmas cards with her images, and exhibition announcements. What a wonderful way to start JHP’s 75th year! Take a look at this photograph of Josephine, circa 1910, as a young teen holding a camera while boating, most likely at the family summer house on Lake Erie. Her long braid swoops across her back as she concentrates in the moment before clicking the shutter. This is the same magical moment JHP program participants experience today! In a letter from 1927 she grieves her father’s death: “I am so desperately lonely for daddy tonight, it doesn’t seem I can stand it. Another year is ending, and without him right here, though I feel him everywhere, always.” In a letter, decades later, two years before her death in 1972, she wrote, “This Wednesday May 27th I plan to leave for my fiftieth Reunion at Bryn Mawr. My dear friend Peg Biddle is sending her car over for me…” Thank you Dorothy Herrick! At long last, we can pair Josephine’s words and images to tell her story.
-Maureen