Teenage Years

He looks a bit tough in this photo, not the jokester.
He did love his car. Here he is taking Gram and some of her friends to Palm Springs.

Jim at Camp corrected

Jr. High graduation

I'm not sure when he went to live with Gram in LA but for sure he graduated from Le Conte Jr. High in LA.
He never spoke of going to camp but I found pictures of him at Little Green Valley.

At first I thought the woman was Gladys as she looks like Gladys later in life. Eventually I realized that the woman was too old. Looking at other photos identified as Gram it seemed clear that that is who this is.

Jimmy at Todd

Since the corrected version of this page would not enlarge on the original post I am giving it its own post.

Jimmy at Todd

It seems that Jimmy was at Todd for about three years. He was never clear about it but looking at the captions on pictures it would seem he went to Chicago some time in 1922 and left in 1925. He probably started Todd at the beginning of the school year and left mid-year.
He would occasionally talk of walking to church in the snow and going to the lake.

He was devoted to his grandmother and had little use for his mother. He always spoke highly of "The Aunts", and was nostalgic about his time in Salt Lake City. When we visited SLC he wanted to drive up into Bingham Canyon. That was where he had boarded with a woman he called "Simma". I believe that her name was Mrs. Smith but as he was a very small child he couldn't pronounce it. He kept in contact with Simma until her death sometime in the 1950s.

Young Jimmy

I was surprised and pleased to find these photos. It is hard to imagine my father as a little boy. In many of these pictures he reminds me a lot of Eric.
I was very surprised to see the inscription saying that the picture had been taken "when he came east with his mother." He had always insisted that he had almost no contact with Gladys until he left Todd. I keep wondering, he told of having been put on a street car alone by Gram when he was quite young, the driver put him off where instructed and while he stood there alone and crying a woman came up and asked him if he was Jimmy; he said that woman was Gladys and she took him somewhere and there was a man there. Could it be that Gladys put him on a street car in Chicago, Christine picked him up and took him to his father?

We'll never know. As he grew older he forgot a lot and reconstructed a lot. Researchers have found that every time we visit a memory it changes a bit when we re-store it.

John Wagner documents

I am way behind in posting to the family history. I have been too busy with my other blog.

I decided to revisit John one more time. Not for a page in the family history book but to preserve some supplementary documents. How, you might ask, can I be sure that this man was the father of James Wagner. (click on the documents to enlarge and make readable)

Well, one of the documents entered into evidence is the divorce decree of John and Gladys. The testimony of his sister-in-law also states that he was married before ( to Gladys) and had a son named James Julius. Evidently he had no contact after the divorce as Salt Lake City is the last place he knew his son to be.

Although hard to read, the petition for naturalization indicates that Julius Rozsa, who asks to have his name changed to John Wagner, is the same man. He has a son named James, he has the birth date wrong but the place of birth is correct. The name of his wife and the residence are the same as the John Wagner who is clearly the father of our James Wagner.

If further evidence is required, look at the picture of Dick Wagner next to the one of John Wagner. Dick is a little younger in this picture taken in 1961 than was John in the picture taken of him and his second wife. The resemblance is striking. Dick said it was like looking in a mirror.