
{"id":28153,"date":"2012-10-04T11:13:54","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T15:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=28153"},"modified":"2012-10-04T11:13:54","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T15:13:54","slug":"uncle-jerry-the-last-photograph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2012\/10\/04\/uncle-jerry-the-last-photograph\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle Jerry, the last photograph"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Thousand Words<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>By Jock Lauterer<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2012\/10\/04\/uncle-jerry-the-last-photograph\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/1kwords100412.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"1kwords100412\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-28154\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/1kwords100412.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/1kwords100412-113x113.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/1kwords100412-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/1kwords100412-360x360.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps last\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death of 98-year-old Gerald Angier Vernon of Darien, Conn., should not have surprised anyone, given his age. But Uncle Jerry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s passing rendered me vaguely disoriented and deeply moved. For what claims of family do I (a come-lately-nephew-in-law) have on the indefatigable old salt? Only that as a kid without a proper father, I saw in Uncle Jerry the dad I never had \u00e2\u20ac\u201c gregarious, loving, funny, never judgmental but always attentive. My favorite memory is Uncle Jerry showing me his yoga moves at 95. Last April when the family let it be known that Jerry had but months to live, we hightailed it 18 hours round-trip to New England for a single evening\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dinner and photo-taking. So how does it feel to be making a last photograph of someone you treasure? All I can say is that as a photographer, it was my small and almost silent (click) act of love. And of course, the family patriarch soldiered on for another six months. Meanwhile back home, I stowed that old \u00e2\u20ac\u212250s-era Rolleiflex, not having the nerve to develop the film \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 until now, after his death, when again we see the bright happy face of my Other Dad, (with his child-bride, 90-year-old Aunt Mary, glowing in the background) as he cheers us on to embrace life as fully as did he. <\/p>\n<p><strong>A THOUSAND WORDS<\/strong><br \/>\nDo you have an important old photo that you value? Email your photo to jock@email.unc.edu and include the story behind the picture. Because every picture tells a story. And its worth? A thousand words.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/sections\/a-thousand-words\/\">More &#8220;A Thousand Words&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps last\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death of 98-year-old Gerald Angier Vernon of Darien, Conn., should not have surprised anyone, given his age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-thousand-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28155,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28153\/revisions\/28155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}