Two ID’d in Mystery Photo
Joseph Veranese has lived in his home on Greenbriar Drive in Venetia for 47 years. It was a bit of a shock for him to pick up his newspaper last Monday and see on the front page a picture of his garage, and of his wife, Laura, who passed away just a year ago.
“It was such a pleasure to see that beautiful picture of her,” Veranese said over the telephone in a voice breaking with emotion. “Such a pleasure for my daughter, for everyone, to see her.”
In this photo, one of hundreds of unidentified images from the Observer-Reporter’s photo archive, Veranese’s 1965 Cadillac is in the garage. He said he had that car and a boat he kept on the river when he and Laura, who is seated on the tricycle at right, were married, but he had to get rid of them after a couple of years as the family grew. “We had to have vans.”
The couple raised five children. A daughter and son now live in Finleyville, and two sons are in Johnstown. Another daughter died last year.
Veranese also identified the woman standing at left as Shirley Kopac. I asked him if she was still living and how I might contact her for this article.
“I’ll run across the street and tell her to call you,” he said.
As it turns out, Shirley and George Kopac moved into their house on Greenbriar Drive in 1966 – the same year as the Veraneses – and still reside there.
“That picture was taken so long ago, I don’t remember it or what we were doing, but it was probably a garage sale,” Kopac said.
Neither of the neighbors can identify the woman in the middle or the two children holding puppies. Veranese, who can’t recall her name, said the woman and her children moved from the neighborhood and that he and his wife lost touch with her more than 20 years ago.
And so, this puzzle is only partially solved.
Look for another Mystery Photo in next Monday’s Observer-Reporter.