Restorations

I'll try to keep this post relatively short. I'm taking my retirement seriously, so I don't do a lot of what anyone would call work. I spend a lot of time at my computer - doing some writing, but mostly working with photographs. The way I take pictures, I had to learn something about salvaging them. That came in handy when I started scanning Mom's family photos so I could put them on DVDs for my brothers and sisters. Some of the older pictures were in a pretty poor condition, so I thought I'd see what I could do with them.

This first one, a Wernet family reunion photograph from around 1900, made me begin to think I could do just about anything. It's certainly not true, but I'm proud of it just the same. It's probably a good thing that no one in the photograph is around to complain about how I "fixed" it.




This is the original portrait (left) of William Wernet, my great great grandfather. The picture was in pretty good shape, actually. Restoration consisted of cleaning up a few minor dings and redoing the background. The portrait was taken about the same time as the reunion photograph (above) in which he is the central subject. He died in 1901 at age 82.


Periodically, I surf the 'Net looking for new photographs of my old ship. About 20 years after we parted company I started saving and collecting everything I could find from the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42). I wish I'd started earlier, but I'm certainly glad that the Internet is around. The original above was taken on 17 November 1945 as the world's largest ship (at the time) cruised past Manhattan. She had just been launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and is sailing south down the East River.




Among the family photos I was scanning for Mom I found a color slide of an F4U-4 Corsair turning up on the ramp. The slide was old and beaten up, with no markings suggesting the date or location. With no visible squadron or air station markings and a very plain, flat background, I've decided that the picture was probably taken at the overhaul and repair (O&R) facility at the Marine Corps Air Station in Elizabeth City, NC in the mid-1940s. Dad was stationed there after flight training at Pensacola and he and Mom lived down the road in Edenton.

Dad told me about his first flight in a Corsair, there at Elizabeth City. When ordered to do a post-maintenance flight check on the bird, he asked if someone would give him a check-out in the airplane since he'd never flown that type before. The maintenance officer's only response was, "You're a Naval Aviator aren't you?" Following the flight check he was coming in to land and started drifting left. When he decided to go around for another approach he shoved the throttle forward. The torque on a Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engine with a four bladed, 13 foot prop (2,450 hp) can easily ruin your whole day. In this case, Dad had an opportunity to check out the drainage ditch beside the runway before going around. One of the controllers in the tower remarked to him afterwards, "Captain, you're the first one we ever saw come out of that ditch."