He often told his own children stories of playing hide-and-seek among the tombstones by moonlight in the cemetery behind his childhood home and being paid to cry at funerals.
While preparing my grandparents home in Mesa, Arizona to be sold after the death of Leo, my father, Jeff, Leo's third child, found a thumb drive that had been forgotten in a desk drawer. On that thumb drive, he found a photo of a home supposedly located on a street or avenue named Horning. The name "Horning" sounded familiar to my father and he assumed that it was from Pittsburgh where Leo grew up. After searching on Google he discovered Horning Street and by using the street-viewing feature on Google Maps he searched house to house along that street until he found the house in the photo from the thumb drive.
Still, he didn't know who the house had belonged to until he zoomed out and saw that it bordered a big Jewish cemetery, the same cemetery that Leo, his siblings, and friends would have played in. This was Leo's childhood home.
That is an incredible story. What an awesome way to use technology to discover more about your grandfather's life! It is cool to think you could, at least in theory, go visit his childhood home and the area surrounding.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great way to identify old photos. I have so many pictures with no identification (and I am guilty of the same thing!), so I love having lots of tools available to solve photo mysteries. It's amazing that the house was still standing and could be identified in current images.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story about finding the house.
ReplyDelete