Today’s photo, a cute but slightly over-exposed picture of a boy and his dog, is a shot of my grandfather Tex De Haven and his dog Old Jack in his youth in Nebraska. Normally, such a shot would elicit feelings of warmth and affection but to me, this is a profoundly sad photo. It’s sad because I know a few years after this photo Tex’s mother will pass away and then a couple years after that his father will die as well, robbing him of the rest of his childhood. After the deaths of his parents I heard that Tex was taken in for a while by relatives but when they couldn’t afford to support him, he was on his own in his mid-teens. I can only piece together through family stories a general idea of what his life was like after that but it was certainly hard.
