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All these thumbnails
can grow if you click, but they were scanned at up to 1200 dpi so they are
big files, some up to 5 Mb.
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My Mom & Dad in the late
'40's. Mom died in September 2005 in Boulder. Dad died in February
2015 in Ojai.
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Mom with "Frank & Emma"
in 1946. I don't know these people, but I thought it was a cool
picture. Look at the balance of their hair, eyes and hand
positions. Why don't we pose like that anymore?
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My son Michael in little league
in 2002. He made the Majors at 10, and was nicknamed "Luis"
for his resemblance to the Arizona Diamondbacks' World Series hero (and all
around nice guy) Luis Gonzales.
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The California
Rancher my folks bought in Thousand Oaks, California in 1965 to escape
smoggy L.A. Check out my Dad's State Farm "company car" Rambler
in the right foreground. I scanned the tab on the right to highlight
the fact that this is a Polaroid taken on Dad's State Farm camera. We
had a lot of Polaroid pictures back then.
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My Mom was a volunteer
at Bette Davis' famous Hollywood Canteen
on Cahuenga off Sunset Boulevard while she worked at Columbia
Pictures. This is her volunteer armband. The club was a
USO-type hangout and fund raiser for servicemen. Mom's Hollywood
years must have been very exciting for a kid who grew up picking grapes
with the Okies in the San Joaquin Valley and canning peaches for Del Monte
in San Jose. She reminisced constantly about Hollywood when I was a
kid.
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My little league team
when I was first promoted to the "Majors" as an eleven year old
in 1969. We went from worst to first between my 11 and 12 year old years.
The coaches were abusive monsters when I was 11, and wonderful, caring men
when I was 12. My first lesson in management.
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My favorite photo
sequence of my eldest sons Xan (right) and Nicky (left). Taken in our
Ventura, California backyard in 1989. This was one of the few
Kodachrome slides I was able to recover and partially restore after the
Palo Alto flood of February 1998. I lost more than 4600 K25 and K64
slides. Very ouch baby!
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Xan, Nicky and our
dog Murphy in our Boulder, Colorado alley right before Nicky started CU.
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My son Nicky with my
Dad in Sedona, Arizona before we drove Dad's '86 Nissan Hardbody
to Boulder in June 2004.
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My maternal Uncle Carr (Arpiar) teaching my boys
to handle firearms shortly before his death. I always figured that
the best way to defuse the glamorized killing of TV and film was first hand experience with guns; they're loud, powerful
and scary in real life.
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My sons and Dad outside the Good
Samaritan skilled nursing facility in Boulder, Colorado after visiting my
Mom in the spring of 2005.
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My Mom, brother and I at our Mar
Vista home in about 1960.
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The whole family in front of our
Mar Vista (L.A.) home in the early 60's. Mar Vista was just west of
the 405 Freeway, not far from Santa Monica. It was quite urban and generally
"blue collar" back then.
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LEFT: My Mom's family
before she was born in Calcutta, India, circa 1909-1915. RIGHT:
The family in front of the Galstaun (?) Palace
celebrating my grandfather's sister Margaret's marriage (in about 1912) to Movses Movsessian, a highly successful
traveling dentist based in Kerman, Persia at a time when capable dentists
were rare and highly valued. Checkout the external plumbing on the
palace -- looks like a retrofit. My grandparents are standing and
seated, second from left, my uncle Yervand is
sitting cross-legged in the front. My grandparents and their children
emigrated to Sanger, California around 1920. I have speculated that
my grandfather was endowed by his uncle (either J.C.
Galstaun, a colorful philanthropist in Calcutta's
Armenian community or a Carr Phillips?). In
Calcutta, my grandfather was a teacher or headmaster at the Armenian
College and Philanthropic Academy . He was
known around Sanger and Fresno as "Professor Galoostian."
I suspect that the name Galstaun was an
Anglicization of the Armenian name "Galustyan,"
which in turn my grandfather re-"armenianized"
phonetically as "Galoostian." My
grandfather came to Calcutta around 1900 from Esphahan
Persia.
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What could possibly be better
than a mid-50's team shot of the Farmers Insurance claims team in front of
their Los Angeles offices? Dig the palm tree and curved awning over
the entrance. And check out the ties, tie bars, suits, and strategically
folded breast pocket hankies. These dudes were stylin'
big time. Dad is the guy with the blue arrow aimed at him. Does
this picture leave any doubt about why the 60's happened? The good
part was a regular guy could support a family of four on one income.
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My Mom Mariam and her sister
Carine around 1946.
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My Uncles Yervand
and Arpiar at home in Sanger, California with my grandfather
during WWII. My grandparents had a war flag with 2 stars representing
their 2 soldier sons.
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My Mom and Dad with Columbia
Pictures pal Zenzi "Rusty" O'Mara
boating in Los Angeles around 1947.
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My Uncle Arpiar
lighting a butt on a troop transport during WWII. "Arpie" was an artilleryman who was later seriously
wounded by shrapnel. The family lore was that he had punctured
eardrums so he couldn't swim with his head under water. In 1970, he
had shrapnel removed from near his spine. I remember that jagged
scrap of metal on his bureau. Arpie lived
with my grandparents his entire life after WWII. The war obviously scarred
him inside and out. I remember he drank a lot of Jim Beam.
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My Mom with some Columbia
Pictures pals near Palms Springs in the 1940's.
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The Calonne family in Mar Vista,
California a few days after my second birthday. Check out my Dad's
bonsai collection. We had many Japanese neighbors in Mar Vista, and
my Dad had a big Japanese gardening phase during which he learned the art of
Bonsai from a gardener friend Mr. Morimoto. He also actually imported
bonsai pots from Japan, and went down to L.A. Harbor at San Pedro to pick
them up shipside. Back then in L.A., gardening was a pretty
stereotypical Japanese trade. Dad befriended Mr. Morimoto and seemed
fascinated with the Zen and artistry with which he approached gardening.
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Graduation Day 1979. Yes
my eyes are closed and yes I was 20. Dig my hair. I miss my
dead pals Steve and Cader. Steve died of
AIDS. Cader died on a Montana highway
driving the 1971 Dodge Polara 440 (very fast used CHP pursuit car), I had
sold him after my Mom got it from Uncle Arpiar.
Killed his wife too.
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My father Pierre's
law school graduation in 1970. Note the pants my brother David and I
are wearing. My mouth is open because I was probably giving the
photographer vital instructions on how to use the camera. My Dad had
recently been fired from State Farm after 13 years because he was caught
going to law school. The tort of insurance bad faith had not yet
fully developed, and State Farm absolutely, positively did not want their
adjusters practicing law after learning the vicious games of the insurance
industry. Our family suffered through close to 4 years of
unemployment. My brother and I both lost "prestige" private
college opportunities for lack of funds. We gained the privilege of
attending a great UC system built by those foresighted Californians who
believed in public education.
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My Persian (Iranian) cousins Bijan, Eskandar, and Dariush Bakhtiar visiting my
parents in 1973 or so. Their Armenian mother Stella was the daughter
of my maternal grandfather's sister Margaret, i.e., Stella was one of my
mom's first cousins.
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Mom, David and I getting an
introduction to tract house yard work in
Thousand Oaks, California on October 21, 1965, about 2 weeks shy of my 7th
birthday, Note the iron-on knee patches on my pants.
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This picture was probably taken
in Esfahan, Persia. My Uncle Yervand is the
tallest man, standing on the left. He was the only of my aunts or
uncles who was born in Persia. Judging from his apparent age in the
photo and what look to be military epaulets on his jacket, I'd guess this
was taken in the mid to late 1940's. Yervand
was a U.S. Marine from about 1929 to 1934; when WWII started, he
"re-upped" as an Army intelligence officer; he served in North
Africa. My "Aunt" Mary (another of my mom's 1st cousins by
Margaret), seated on the far right, is wearing a wedding band; she was
married in 1937. She emigrated to Argentina
with her Jewish husband (Rubin). Her son Alex is my dear cousin, and her
daughter Alicia spent quite a bit of time with my family in the '60's.
The man standing the farthest to the right is Sultan Moorad Bakhtiar, the father
of Bijan, Eskandar and Dariush. Their Mom was Stella, Mary's sister.
Christians, Muslims and Jews all in one family!
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This shot has much of my
grandfather's sister Margaret's family. Margaret is the older woman
second from the left. Her daughter Lena is on the far left, my cousin
Alex's mom Mary is just to the right of Margaret and just to the left of
her father Movses Movsessian.
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My Mom, brother and I with my
grandparents in their Sanger, California living room. The background
photos show the Galstaun palace in Calcutta.
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Here's my family in front of
Boulder's famous Flatirons in November 2004.
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That's me on top of 13,233 foot
Mt. Audubon in Colorado's Indian Peaks Wilderness. I still have some
fight left in me.
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A nicely posed shot of my
maternal grandparents and uncles Arpiar and Yervand, probably in Calcutta.
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Mom's maternal grandparents.
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My son Tyler posing with our
Yellow Labrador, Murphy.
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Tyler and Michael fishing at Big
Creek Lake near the Colorado-Wyoming Border. Good times . . . .
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Michael dwarfing the Old Man
near the Encampment River.
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