Sepia Saturday: Last Stop Newburyport

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

Five years ago and six years ago I wrote about my dad’s scrapbook of photos he took as a 19-year-old in the Coast Guard. If you care to read them, they are HERE and HERE. The stories were about how my sister and I came to donate the scrapbook to the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport, Massachusetts and about the museum’s plan to enlarge some of my dad’s photos for a special exhibit about the work of the Coast Guard in Thule, Greenland following World War II.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt reminded me of this photo

Mary, Cam, Barry August 2016
at the Newburyport train station

and that I never really finished the story.

The reason? Because I was heartsick over what happened after I shipped the scrapbook to the Custom House Maritime Museum. In fact, I couldn’t even tell my sister about it until over a year later when we made the trip to see the exhibit.

Here’s the story

The week of March 20, 2015, I took Daddy’s scrapbook to my local UPS store in Chesapeake. They wrapped it securely for me. When the clerk asked about insurance, I was caught off guard and did not know how to respond. What is the value of a teenage boy’s scrapbook of amateur photos anyway? It can’t be replaced. Finally, I just picked a number: $100. Heck, I don’t know. The clerk said the package would arrive probably the next Tuesday.

Tuesday came and went without word from the museum letting me know they had the package. A week went by. Then another. I called the UPS store to ask about the status of the package. The clerk said the packages from her store go to a location in nearby Virginia Beach, a 35-minute trip any given day, and that she would call them to check.

The processing center in Virginia Beach had NO record of my package. UNBELIEVABLE.

The next step UPS took was to issue a special trace for the package. A trace could last up to two weeks. After that the package would be considered forever lost.

LOST

Yep, I got the call – no sign of the package. I sat and cried. I was sad for my dad’s scrapbook, and I was mad that I had thought UPS would be a safer carrier than the regular post office. All I could offer the museum then were copies of the photos I had saved on my computer. My hope was that they could be enlarged enough for the kind of exhibit the director and curator had envisioned.

Thank goodness for that measly $100 insurance because a few weeks later I received the check.

The money was nothing to me. I wrote a check for $100 as a donation to the Custom House Maritime Museum and put it in the mail. 

The very next day I received a phone call.

“Hello, Mrs. Mathias. This is Michael Mroz, director of the Custom House Maritime Museum. I want you to know I am holding your father’s beautiful scrapbook right now.”

What???

I am pretty sure I was screaming in the poor man’s ear.

How the scrapbook was lost yet managed to show up in the right place after over a month is still a mystery, a miracle, a gift.

Boston and Newburyport Trip

In August 2016, the exhibit called “Frozen in Time” opened at the Custom House Maritime Museum and ran through December. Of course, we had to see it. My sister and I along with our husbands flew to Boston for a long weekend.  

The ticket for the exhibit used one of Daddy's photos

Promotional materials 

Newburyport is the last stop on the commuter train, about an hour’s ride from Boston. Had we understood how to read the schedule, we would have gotten to Newburyport sooner, but it was still a wonderful day. The director met us at the station and drove us to the museum.

Barry, Wendy, Cam, Mary
("buoys and girls" ha ha)
in front of the Custom House

As I stepped inside the historic Custom House, the sight of all those photos lining the walls of the great hallway took my breath. 

 

Pictures were arranged by 4 themes: Nature, The Inuit, The Men, The Work of the Coast Guard. The photos were beautiful. They looked like art.

Icebergs and mountains

Inuit families

Cam, Barry, Mary
Behind them are photos of men at work
and at play. Daddy is in the 4th photo
top row in white with his thumb in his pocket.

Work on the ship

A gallery that focuses on the history of the Coast Guard holds a model of my dad’s ship, The Eastwind. It was fun to see in the model the steps my dad descended in this photo:

Wendy and Mary
with 2 photos of our dad

 

 

Model of the Eastwind

Looking back, I marvel at whatever gods watched over my dad’s scrapbook on its journey from Virginia to Massachusetts. I don’t know how many places it went to between March and May of 2015, but I am glad that its last stop was Newburyport.

Climb aboard the Sepia Saturday train – no insurance needed.

Wendy

© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.