A couple of years ago, I wrote an article about a friendly face from the past. We knew her as Aunt Rita – an artist, a wife, a mother, a world traveler, an adventurer and a lovely woman. Aunt Rita and her family lived on a Chinese junk, The Amoy which was moored in the harbor of New Rochelle (NY), a few blocks from where we lived. Since my article appeared, I’ve had several email exchanges with Aunt Rita’s family which in turn made me go hunting for this classic painting that she gifted to my mother years ago. I remember her painting vividly since it decorated our childhood home for many years. And when my folks moved to their new home, the painting was part of their spare bedroom.	Aunt Rita, Mom, my sisters and me

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These photos are a pleasant way to enjoy the people and events from days gone by. Photos such as these should be a constant reminder to share your memories with others. Yes, photos matter.
 
 
 
Written by Arnie Lee
 
 

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I have a lot of fond memories from my growing up years in suburban New York. Photographs have helped me recall many of these memories.

About four months ago, I was preparing for our bi-annual family reunion. My project was to design an album of family members to be auctioned as part of the reunion fundraisers. I looked through hundreds of Mom’s “shoebox photos” from the 1940’s and 1950’s and found forty or so pictures for the album. I carefully scanned each photo, chose the layout for each album page through an online service, completed and ordered the album online and received the finished photo book by mail in plenty of time for the reunion.

This by itself is reason enough to demonstrate why photos matter, but this article goes a step further.

While looking through Mom’s photos, I found one that I put aside. A few weeks later when I had some free time, I again retrieved the photo.

Here was a picture of Mom, my sisters and myself and a familiar face from the 1950’s.

 

We knew this lovely woman on the left as “Aunt Rita”. Looking closely, you’ll notice that we are standing on a boat. To be precise, we are standing on “The Amoy”, a Chinese junk that she and her husband Alfred owned and lived on. They raised three sons on the Amoy. The Nilson’s moored their boat a few blocks from our house. Somehow, Aunt Rita had befriended my mother and we would frequently visit the Nilsons on their junk. The photo also reminds me of the painting gifted by Mrs. Nilson. The still-life painting graced our living room wall for so many years with her signature neatly tucked at the bottom, right-hand corner of her artwork.

I searched the Internet by googling “The Amoy”. One entry linked me to a postcard of the same Chinese junk that brought back even more memories.

I bought the postcard which helped me recall the exact coloring of the junk and also reminded me of the boat’s dark teakwood finish and many “interesting” rooms below deck. I am now trying to track down one or more of the Nilson’s three sons (success, please see Comments below).

Postcard caption: Chinese junk moored at Echo Bay (New Rochelle, N.Y.). As an aside: the Nilsons later moved their boat from Echo Bay to the Bronx along the Hutchinson River Parkway near the defunct Freedomland.

Photos matter to be because they help me reach back to memorable times of the past. They’re a constant reminder to me to take lots of pictures and show them to the world!

Written by Arnie Lee

 

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