Color Me Enchanted

Erma Johnson rides a bicycle in Dover, Ohio in a series of snapshots near Don Foutz’s home in 1941. The black and white photo, left, is the original. The photo on the right has been colorized by AI.

Photo Colorization Brings New Look to Family History

I probably talk about generative artificial intelligence a dozen times a day at my job. From churning out articles, to tagging content, to even understanding a creative brief and crafting a virtual photo shoot, AI is constantly evolving the toolkit I deploy for my global digital marketing clients.

Being the seismic disrupter it is, AI has now found a way to shake my family tree, too.

In this case, while assembling an entirely different story for this blog, scrolling through snapshots I’d saved on Ancestry.com, I noticed a hint nudging me to “restore your old photo” and try Ancestry’s new filters. What the heck, I thought, and did some clicking.

In the very next moment: WOAH. Like, double WOAH.

Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise Foutz, Thanksgiving 1949.

Thanksgiving 1949, Revisited

The first photo I tried colorizing was from a series taken at a Foutz family gathering at Thanksgiving, 1949. One of my goals when starting this blog was to share stories of my family’s history in a way that we can relate to, as if we were talking about our aunts and grandpas and cousins, instead of ancestors from hundreds of years ago.

The goal of genealogy, for me, was not plugging in names and dates, but coming face to face with family. I didn’t know what my great-grandfather Vance Foutz looked like. I didn’t know about my grandpa Don Foutz’s brothers, Roy and Carl. I had only met my great aunt Doris later in her life. These were family who walked the same streets and attended the same schools I did in Dover, Ohio.

As I made those connections, I gained access to records, and documents, and photos. Sometimes from distant relatives we didn’t know existed. Sometimes, as in the case of this trove of Thanksgiving pictures, buried in a box we happened to have at home – but whose names and faces and significance could not have been deciphered without first putting in the research.

When I first shared these pictures in this space, my cousin Whitney remarked that it was almost like we could step into the frame, say hello, pull up a chair, join the family. Well I re-experienced that revelation as I used Ancestry.com’s colorization tool on more and more of these shots.

• 

  Don Foutz and oldest brother Roy Foutz, Thanksgiving, 1949.

• 

• 

  Great candid of Great-Grandma Laura…

• 

• 

• 

• 

  Erma Foutz, Thanksgiving Day, 1949

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

  Erma Foutz comes in from the dining room to join mother-in-law Laura Foutz, brother-in-law Roy, and second son Bob, 1949

• 

• 

  Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise

• 

Grandparents Don and Erma Foutz in colorized, sharpened images from Ancestry.com.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Another series I couldn’t wait to try were photos taken of my grandpa, Don Foutz, with his then-girlfriend, soon-to-be my grandma, Erma Miller, as they biked and posed at his home in Dover in 1941.

Ancestry uses AI technology provided by Photomyne to colorize photos and offer a series of filters you can use to adjust the result, preset filers like Restore, Cool, Warm, Contrast, etc. The effect isn’t perfect: sometimes the spectrum skews too often to red, or the color washes out like the edges of soap bubbles, or people behind the main subject or scenery in the background don’t get the color treatment. You can also auto-adjust the sharpness, but that ended up giving me oddly-focused faces in an otherwise watercolor-washed composition, giving the effect of AI baring its unnatural teeth.

Yes, there could be value in being able to really hand-tune the results, like we’re able to do on even basic social media. But I confess the initial results left me just tickled. Like our relatives stepping out of time and waving hello.

• 

  Erma Foutz bikes near Race Street, Dover, 1941

• 

• 

  Don Foutz pedals a bike near his family’s home in Dover, circa 1941.

• 

• 

  Don Foutz, 1941

• 

• 

  Erma Foutz outside the Race Street, Dover, Ohio childhood home of her husband, Don

• 

• 

  Don Foutz with mother Laura Zeigler Foutz, 1941.

• 

• 

Vance Foutz Family – in Color

Like any old yearbook or photo album revisited, experiencing these classic portraits in a different light helps bring out details that might have been overlooked, like the shades of an expression, or texture in clothes or buildings or objects they used.

But the main effect is almost of meeting these beloved ancestors for the first time, as if they might just have passed by on the street, or posed for an iPhone snapshot at a backyard barbecue.

Maybe since so many of our photos today are filtered, and edited, and glossed to perfection, seeing these classic images with a different treatment, especially if it isn’t foolproof, bring out the life in them all the more.

All I know is I can’t stop looking.

100th Anniversary of Bob Ley’s Birth

Too cool dudes lounging on a back deck at Sunset Beach, 1989. Robert Earl Ley, Jr., left, and his grandson, Colt Foutz.

 

Happy 100th Birthday, Robert Earl Ley, Jr.

 

I’m a bit late to the show with this one.

One of the joys of digging into genealogy is, for me, not just discovering the names and dates and wheres and whens of ancestors back, back, back, back up the family tree, but the stories. Nothing seems to crystallize all of that information in a personal, intimate way than discovering photographs of our relatives from long ago.

I’ve been able to gaze upon great-grandparents, dead long before I was born, and in some cases barely a memory to my parents, and feel that connection.

But there’s a similar tickle in collecting photos of your familiar grandparents and parents from a time before you were even a glimmer in their story. To see their familiar faces as infants, or teenagers, or off to college. To imagine their thoughts and hopes and dreams at a moment where they can’t see the future we are only too well-versed in as our family’s history.

Some interesting ways I’ve drawn those parallels have been in projects that snapshot my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives when they turned 60 as a birthday present to my mom and dad. And I turned the camera on myself, in a way, when I shared the pictures of my male ancestors growing into men up to the age of 40 in the year I turned 40. (Hint: it was 2016.)

How much more poignant it is, then, to gaze upon photos in order chronicling an entire life. On the 100th anniversary of my grandparents’ births, we did that, first for grandpa Don Foutz’s birth, then for Grandma Sue Weible Ley.

We’ll have to wait a couple years for Grandma Erma Johnson Foutz, the youngest of the bunch, born in 1920. But Grandpa Robert Earl Ley, Jr., is up this year, a few months later than Grandma, and now, a few months after the fact.

Maybe it’s because I was blessed to grow up just down the road and across the town from my mother’s parents: I was used to seeing them in so many daily situations, and at holidays, and birthdays, and just ordinary Saturdays, that the collection below seems so skimpy. That I ought to have more words to say. Though, I guess I have said them in this space many times.

And I’m well aware of albums and slides and troves of photographs that exist elsewhere, which leaves me to wonder and worry about this selection being incomplete. Not really a chronicle, then, but a collection of images that capture the way Grandpa was throughout his life.

From the remarkable infant portrait of him with his mother, Zula, to the shot a short few years later with his father, Robert Sr., knowing that they both had already lost that remarkable, dynamic mother and wife when Grandpa was only 2 — and the sister that might have joined their family portrait.

Grandpa would spend a time with his Fisher grandparents while his father rebuilt a life and remarried. Snapshots of grandpa in the 1930s show him after rejoining his father and stepmother, and, for a time, a little half-brother, Dickie, who would tragically succumb to illness before age 6.

He followed his father’s path into dentistry and public service, and early shots from college yearbooks capture him in the band and on the football team at Ohio Wesleyan as an undergraduate, then transitioning from OWU’s Delta Tau Delta fraternity to graduate school for dentistry at Ohio State, where he’s a fixture on the Psi Omega fraternity page.

Grandma and Grandpa, who’d known each other since their days as Dover schoolmates, were married during a busy time that saw Grandpa enlist in the Marines and serve in World War II. Upon returning home, he thrust himself into civic life, earning election as an at-large city councilman was he was still in his thirties (following a long line of Leys in politics), and working alongside his father, Robert Sr., in their dental practice, by then longest standing in Tuscarawas County.

Snapshots from the 1960s record his civic life (happily, I was able to see these shots in the archives of the local paper), and by the 1970s, his family had grown to include daughter- and sons-in-law, and grandchildren. Some of my first snapshots, on a Kodak Instamatic camera I’d gotten for Christmas (with the disposable flash bar) are of Grandpa and Grandma at home on Parkview Drive, or vacationing with them at Sunset Beach, NC.

Life moves irrevocably forward, and it’s been years since I felt I could still drive up to their house, park by the big pines and walk right into their kitchen to find them sitting around their big, circular table on the other side of Grandma’s purple kitchen cabinets. A last photo in the series below is a poignant shot later in the year after grandma died, when we were able to introduce Grandpa Bob Ley to one of his namesake descendants, Jonah Robert Foutz.

Yeah, I guess there’s some magic in my small collection after all. And a lot of memories. Love you, Grandpa.

 

Bob Ley: 89 Years in Photographs

(Scroll to view the gallery below, or click any photo for a closeup slideshow.)

A 1918 portrait shows my great-grandmother, Mary Zula Lucrece (Fisher) Ley, and her newborn son, my grandfather Robert Earl Ley Jr.

A very young Robert Earl Ley Jr. and his father, Robert Sr. My grandpa would sometimes accompany his father as they worked their bird dogs in the Ohio prairie country.

A snapshot of Grandpa Robert Earl Ley Jr. in the early 1930s. After graduating Dover High School in 1936, he first attended Ohio Wesleyan, where he played freshman football and joined the marching band and Delta Tau Delta fraternity.

Bob Ley, back row, on the reserve basketball squad.

Bob Ley as an undergrad at Ohio Wesleyan was in the band.

Grandpa played football as a freshman at Ohio Wesleyan.

Bob Ley was a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity at OWU.

The former DTD-er at OWU had joined Psi Omega (dental fraternity) at Ohio State.

1942’s Psi Omega page at Ohio State.

Fast- forward to 1943 when Grandpa attended dental school at Ohio State.

In this picture from the 1940s, Colt’s grandpa, Robert Earl Ley Jr., stands by the dental college at Ohio State, where he completed his DDS after undergraduate studies at Ohio Wesleyan and Baldwin Wallace colleges. He would return home to Dover and succeed his father in their dental practice, eventually retiring in 1991.

Sue and Bob Ley about the time of their 1943 marriage in Oxford, Ohio.

Grandpa Robert Earl Ley Jr. in a 1955 Republican announcement for his reelection as Dover city councilman.

Robert Earl Ley Jr. (right) returned home from Navy service in World War II to rejoin his father, Robert Earl Ley Sr. (left) in their dental practice in Dover, Ohio.

Grandpa Ley in Dec. 1960, as the timestamp indicates, at 42.

Grandpa Robert Earl Ley Jr.

Sue and Bob Ley family, minus son Robert III, 1968.

Bob and Sue Ley attend the wedding of their oldest son, Bob III, in Germany.

Bob and Sue Ley attend the wedding of their daughter Janet to Fred Foutz in 1975.

Circa 1978. This hung in my grandparents’ kitchen for a long time. Front, from left, Colt, Robert Jr., Dan, Sue, Jennifer, Liz. Back: Nikki, David, Andrea, Doreen.

Bob and Sue Ley attend a backyard picnic with the Foutzes in 1980.

Bob and Sue Ley with children, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley with grandchildren, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley with children and grandchildren, 1984.

Robert Earl Ley Jr. and Suzanne Abbott (Weible) Ley at their home in Dover, Ohio — 1987.

Grandpa, Sunset Beach, 1989.

Too cool dudes lounging on a back deck at Sunset Beach, 1989. Robert Earl Ley, Jr., left, and his grandson, Colt Foutz.

Grandma Sue Weible Ley, grandpa Bob and grandsons Sam, Dan and Colt. There’s that Georgetown hat again!!!

Bob and Sue Ley with cousins Dorothy and Scoop Weible, 1990s.

A photo from the reception following Sue Ley’s funeral, 2007. We definitely felt her presence, and miss her still.

From 2007: An ailing Robert Earl Ley Jr. and his great-grandson, Jonah Robert Foutz.

100th Anniversary of Sue Ley’s Birth

Me and Grandma Ley, her house, 1979.

Happy 100th Birthday, Suzanne Abbott Weible Ley

 

I was blessed to grow up in a town where I was only a short drive — or bike ride — from my grandparents.

It’s not so usual today, with families spread across the country, or, in some cases, the globe. But Dover, Ohio had been home to both sides of my family for better than 100 years, with the roots of the Leys stretching back to the next county over in the early 1800s, and the Weibles just south of Dover and its sister city, New Philadelphia, about a decade earlier than that.

It was important to my parents that we grew up knowing both sides of my family, and we sure did. Birthdays, grandparents days at school, rides to and from track and cross country and band practices, piano recitals, spelling bees, Thanksgivings, Christmases and vacations every year to the Carolinas — these were occasions made all the more memorable and sweet by sharing them with my grandparents, my mom’s parents, Bob and Sue Ley.

In fact, I shared the same elementary school, Dover Avenue, with both my mom and grandma Sue. She grew up just about two blocks east of our house right on Dover Avenue. And lived most of her married life within a mile of her childhood home and grade school.

But grandma was a lot closer than that. On the day I was born, June 2, 1976, — so the story goes — she just had a feeling and drove down to our house near Columbus, Ohio. When she and grandpa looked in the window and saw our dog, Shannon, but no mom and dad, they headed straight for Riverside Hospital.

They were there not long after I entered the world. And they were there for so many occasions during my childhood and young adulthood.

Once, when grandma was out hauling me somewhere and a car warning light went on, grade school me helpfully piped up, “Should we check in the manual, grandma?” She got a kick out of that.

Some of my first inklings of freedom as a kid was being able to bike to their house at the top of the hill on Parkview Drive. There, my cousins and brothers and I would play for hours in the pine trees bordering grandpa’s grapevine and apple trees, dubbing out hideouts Cousins’ Castle and the like. Grandma was always ready with a glass of Pepsi with ice to relax with in the shade of their patios. Over the years, the glass wore smooth and squeaky with their constant trips through the dishwasher.

When I was older, she was always ready to request a song or five from their living room piano. And always responded with enthusiastic applause.

We could walk into their house, day or night, and call out and be greeted by them.

She enjoyed sipping cold beers and talking about our adventures. She’d had several herself. She attended Miami University and Kent State University in Ohio — rare, in her generation — and worked in Columbus for the State of Ohio during World War II. She was also, I found out much later, an avid writer and, rumor had it, had authored a book of stories that was secreted away somewhere. They have not turned up.

We were blessed to share her 88 years, 63 of them married to my grandpa, Robert Earl Ley, Jr. But there are many times I wish I could walk right into their house again, pull up a chair, enjoy a Pepsi — or a cold beer — and hear her characteristic laugh.

As with my blog commemorating the 100th anniversary of my grandpa Don Foutz’s birth six years ago, I’m happy to be able to share so many great pictures of my Grandma Ley to celebrate her 100th.  Even happier — so many of these photos have family in them, including me.

They’re a mark of how family was always at the center of my grandparents’ lives. They were blessed with a big one. Seems to me we should find a way to celebrate them both this year — Grandpa’s 100th is Sept. 30 — and get the gang back together again.

Sue Ley: 88 Years in Photographs

(Scroll to view the gallery below, or click any photo for a closeup slideshow.)

Beatrice (M.A.) Weible and son Robert Colt, left, and Suzanne Abbott, about 1918.

Sue Weible and brother Robert Colt (Arry), 1918.

Sue Weible about the time of her high school graduation, 1936.

Miami University yearbook in Sue Weible’s early college years.

Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

Sue and Bob Ley about the time of their 1943 marriage in Oxford, Ohio.

Sue and Bob Ley family, minus son Robert III, 1968.

Bob and Sue Ley attend the wedding of their oldest son, Bob III, in Germany.

Bob and Sue Ley attend the wedding of their daughter Janet to Fred Foutz in 1975.

Bob and Sue Ley greet their grandson, Colt Foutz, shortly after his birth.

Bob and Sue Ley with their oldest grandchildren, 1978. (More would follow!)

Bob and Sue Ley attend a backyard picnic with the Foutzes in 1980.

Bob and Sue Ley attend a backyard picnic with the Foutzes in 1980.

Bob and Sue Ley with children, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley with children and grandchildren, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley with grandchildren, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley at their home in Dover, Christmas 1987.

Bob and Sue Ley with Foutz grandsons Dan, Colt and Sam (front), 1992.

Bob and Sue Ley with cousins Dorothy and Scoop Weible, 1990s.

A photo from the reception following Sue Ley’s funeral, 2007. We definitely felt her presence, and miss her still.

 

Sue Ley 100th Birthday Slideshow

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Erma Johnson, Don Foutz Wed in Early AM Ceremony

 

 

Don & Erma Foutz, on their wedding day.

 

Details Bring Life to Foutz-Johnson Wedding

Awhile back, I shared the newspaper account of the 1942 bridge card game at which my grandparents, Don and Erma Foutz, announced their engagement and pending early-morning May wedding.

The article from our hometown Dover, Ohio Daily Reporter shared some great details of my grandparents at the time, including their employment, and paired with the engagement card that was in my parents’ possession, was a neat window on who they were as a newly-wedded couple.

But there were — of course — some questions. For instance, cool on them for getting married at Grace Lutheran Church in Dover, where my dad and his brothers were confirmed, and where Grandma worshipped until her death in 2000. But why were they married at 6:45 a.m.?

And was the picture above, which my wife and I featured prominently with those of our other grandparents at our wedding some 60 years later, really from that day, May 9? Could it have been, since Grandma is pictured in a suit, not a gown? And if no gown, was the rest of the ceremony more traditional, or matter-of-fact, hence the unusual time?

Well, we don’t get all the details served up, the way we might in a conversation with them, could we ask. I say might, since memory and company have a way of shading some things, hiding others. But the official record, this time from the crosstown New Philadelphia Daily Times, fills in a lot of blanks. And helps confirm some cool pictures we have from that day as, yes, being genuine wedding-day shots.

Of course, some errors in the account needed some extra research to untangle. See editor’s notes in the excerpt below.

Early Morning Wedding ‘A Pretty Affair’

From Saturday, May 9, 1942:

Spring and early morning combined to make the wedding of Miss Erma Johnson of this city and Mr. Donald Foutz of Dover a pretty affair today. Miss Johnson is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Johnson of New Philadelphia and Mr. Foutz’ parents are Mr. and Mrs. Vance Foutz of Dover.

The two exchanged marriage vows this morning at seven o’clock in Emmanuel Lutheran Church (INCORRECT — Emmanuel was in Phila, but Pastor Ebert presided at Grace Lutheran Church in Dover) in Dover where two large white baskets of Madonna lilies and Star of Bethlehem were grouped at the altar. The Rev. Paul F. Ebert, pastor of the church, officiated for the ceremony, which was performed with Miss Margery Taylor of this city as maid of honor and Mr. Dale Andreas of Dover, best man.

At six-forty-five o’clock, Miss Maxine Renner of Sugarcreek played a recital of organ numbers as a prelude to the marriage service and included in her selections “Ava Maria,” by Schubert; “The Rosary,” by Nevin, and “O Promise Me,” by de Koven. During the ceremony, Miss Renner played “I Love You Truly,” by Bond, and used “The Bridal Chorus,” from Lohengrin as the processional with Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” as the recessional.

With her smartly tailored brown and beige shepherd checked suit, the bride used dark brown accessories. At the shoulder she had a brown-throated white orchid.

Miss Taylor’s becoming ensemble consisted of a beige suit with aqua and brown accessories. Her shoulder arrangement was of Johanna Hill roses. Miss Renner had a Briarcliff rose corsage.

After the ceremony, members of the bridal party were served breakfast at the Johnson home.

Mr. Foutz and his bride left for a short wedding trip and when they return, will reside for the time being in the Metz Apartments (by the location of Goshen Dairy in Phila today), this city.

 Mrs. Foutz was graduated in 1939 from New Philadelphia high school and is employed in the offices of Greer Steel Company in Dover. She is a member of Mu Chapter, Alpha Pi Sigma Sorority, of Dover.

Mr. Foutz is a graduate of Dover high school, class of 1931 (incorrect – that was his final year of terrorizing Phila on the football field; he graduated in 1932), and is an employee of the Fred P. Potschner Garage in Dover.

Don Foutz, probably on the day of his wedding, May 1942.

Happy Birthday, (for real), J. Lou Ley

Janet Ley, age 5, 1958

Janet (Ley) Foutz, Birthday Gal

My mom and I have a (fun?) routine where I will pretend not to know the real date of her birthday, and will call her up enthusiastically to wish her well, and insist that I am right, and that she, in her increasing dotage, must be mistaken.

Well, maybe that’s my routine. Meant in all loving son-ness.

Mom is also an avid follower of this blog and attempted matchmaker of genealogical connections to people sometimes related, often not, but always interesting.

So I know she’ll see this and verify what she already has called me on: I do know the date of her birthday. And have used it as an excuse to share some of my favorite J. Lou pics. Such as the one above, which, I swear, reminds my wife Katie and I a lot (a lot, a lot) of our youngest son Caleb, born two years ago this May 30 (and sharing not only a birthday month with Mom, but a birthday with great-grandpa Robert Ohio Weible as well). He shares grandma Janet’s blue eyes, too.

Below, find a pic of Mom which my files tell me is from 1954, and would put her about Caleb’s age. (But I invite arguments….) And, for the heck of it, check out this “wild art” from the November 9, 1963 edition of the Dover Daily Reporter showing one Janet Ley, age 11, second from right, cheering on at a football game.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

 

Janet Ley, circa 1954, about 2.

 

Dover Daily Reporter, November 1963