Arthur Rothstein was one of the Farm Security Administration photographers. He was born in New York in 1915, and had been a student of Roy Stryker at Columbia University in the early 1930s. Stryker later headed the FSA, and Stryker hired him. During Rothstein's five years with the FSA, he travelled extensively, documenting the lives of farmers all over the US who were receiving assistance from the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression. Many of his subjects were not farmers, just people that Rothstein felt exemplified the economic struggles of the times. In January of 1939, he spent a short time in Bush, Illinois, and took a few photos, mostly of coal miners, some recently laid off.

I saw this photo in A Southern Illinois Album: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1936-1943, by Herbert K. Russell. The handsome father looked so pleased and proud, that I wanted to know immediately who he and his daughter were, and what happened to them. So I tried what has proved to be a successful method of identifying unnamed persons in old photos. I contacted the local newspaper, the Southern Illinoisan. The editor, Gary Metro, agreed to publish the photo and an article.

It ran on St. Patrick’s Day, which brought this Irish lad some good luck. By the end of the day, I received three phone calls from local residents who knew the family, but were not related. One of them told me: “That’s John Garavaglia and his daughter Rose Marie. They moved to the Chicago area in the 1940s. He died, but Rose Marie is still living up that way. Her name is Rose Marie Coburn now. I’ll give you her phone number.”

I called right away, but there was no one home, so I left a message telling her why I was calling. The next day, with the photo staring up at me from the coffee table, I called again, and this time she answered. She knew about the photo, having learned of it when the aforementioned book came out. When I started asking her some questions, I could tell she had already prepared for my call, since she seemed to be consulting some information she had placed by the phone.

After we had a delightful conversation, I asked her if she had any photos of her or her father she could share. She said she was headed up to her son’s house in Wisconsin for Easter, and that he had a computer. She told me that she would get together some pictures and bring them up so he could scan and email them to me. Oh, the wonders of technology. By Easter afternoon, I had the photos.

See my interview with Mrs. Coburn on the next page.