Mystery partially solved; questions remain
Photographer Dan Harbaugh stands in front of the same brick wall where the men’s image was captured.
Marjorie Harbaugh and Helen Bosson pose on North Franklin Street in Washington, circa 1950.
The identities of these men are still unknown.
Several members of the Washington High School classes of the late 1950s responded to this week’s Mystery Photo after consulting their yearbooks to confirm their hunches.
Although no one contacted the Observer-Reporter with the identity of the two men posing in front of a stark brick wall, quite a few readers recognized Marjorie Harbaugh and Helen Bosson, who were next-door neighbors on North Franklin Street.
One of those readers called Helen Bosson Thompson at her home in Petaluma, Calif., and told her to look at the photo in the online version of the newspaper.
“It was Marjorie’s grandfather who took that picture,” Mrs. Thompson told us. “We lived at 252 North Franklin St., and Marjorie lived next door with her parents and grandparents.”
Mrs. Thompson guesses that the photo was made around 1950.
“There were three identical brick houses up on a bank, and that house in the photo must have been across the street,” she said, wondering if any of the buildings still exist.
They do, although the porch of the house across the street is gone.
Mrs. Thompson’s father, Theodore Bosson, was the owner of Aras Restaurant on North Main Street.
Mrs. Thompson has been in California for more than half a century. She went to nursing school at Shadyside Hospital, received her B.S. degree from Sonoma State University and, with another nurse, published a medical book that to date has sold more than 11,000 copies, she said. Her former husband was in the Air Force and later was a TWA pilot, and so the couple traveled widely around the world. She has a son, Matthew, 42. Another son died at age 30.
Mrs. Thompson, who last visited Washington five years ago, celebrated her 77th birthday last week.
Jane Popeck, who graduated with Mrs. Thompson, was helpful in supplying information about Marjorie Harbaugh Seeger, Wash High Class of 1954, whose last known address was in Chapel Hill, Texas. We were unable to locate a telephone number for her, however. Carolyn McGill recalled knowing Marjorie when they were young children, when Marjorie and her parents lived for a time on Franklin Farms Road in North Franklin Township.
The Harbaughs – Dan, his wife, Elizabeth, and their son, John – were all involved in the family photo business. With a little luck, we may be able to contact Marjorie Seeger and share with her the images made by her grandfather so many years ago.
Look for another Mystery Photo in next Monday’s Observer-Reporter.