Edgar Allen Beem’s “Pictures of Childhood” column brought back these memories.

My mother’s first sojourn out of northern New Hampshire was a summer job at a hotel in Old Orchard Beach in 1927. After taking snapshots of Lindy’s airplane, she and another 18-year-old girl defied security precautions and ducked under the rope in order to quickly touch the Spirit of Saint Louis.

A picture she took of me about 10 years later shows a little boy in a white first communion suit outside St. Kieren’s church in Berlin, N.H. I was thinking of that snapshot a couple weeks ago when our television screens showed little Martin Richard proudly smiling in his white suit. No wonder I found it difficult to hold back the tears.

Ronald MacDougall
Scarborough


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