Raymond Pierce all dressed up

Raymond Lamont Pierce (1923-1981) is on the right in this poor quality photo. The name of the boy on the left is not known. There is also a girl, barely visible, sitting in a chair on the porch.

Note the differences in the way Raymond and the other boy are dressed. Raymond is wearing a tie, although it is difficult to see. The other boy seems to be wearing just a T-shirt. Raymond appears ready for church or some other event, while the other boy looks ready for play.

Joining the World War II workers flooding into Mobile

Ella Lee Carley joined the workers flooding into Mobile from the rural areas of Mississippi and Alabama during World War II. The demand for workers at the city's shipyards and Brookley Army Air Corps Base was so great that the city's population doubled almost overnight.

Ella Lee, as she was always called, moved from Electric Mills, Mississippi, and counted herself lucky because she had friends in Mobile who gave her a place to live. Housing was very scarce. So scarce  in fact that many places rented beds for 8-hour shifts.

Ella Lee met, and later married, Raymond Lamont Pierce (1923-1981) when the two of them were working at Gulf Shipbuilding Corp. in Chickasaw, Alabama, during World War II. The above photo is of Ella Lee's worker identification badge.

Photos for a modeling career

For a time Velma Moree Pierce (1913-1993) tried her hand at modeling and the above photo appears to have been from that time. This photo was probably taken when Velma lived in Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

Written in the lower right corner of the photo is the photographer's name and location, “Maurice, Chicago.” This name offers a bit of a mystery. The photo is in the style of the well-known Maurice Seymour, billed in Hollywood's golden age as “the photographer to the celebrities.”

According to ChicagoMag.com, “Maurice Seymour was actually two brothers: Maurice (1900-93) and Seymour (1902-95) Zeldman. Born in Russia, the pair came to Chicago in 1920, and nine years later opened their own studio, Maurice Seymour, atop the St. Clair Hotel. Bestowing a dramatically highlighted glamour on the city, they photographed film, theater, and radio stars, judges and politicians, and the international luminaries of ballet, beginning, in 1934, with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. When Seymour Zeldman moved to New York in the 1950s, both men legally changed their names to Maurice Seymour and continued to photograph into the 1970s.”

The only problem with attributing the photo to Maurice Seymour is that the signature in the corner doesn't match any of the other Maurice Seymour signatures among the images found on the Web. The photo of Velma also doesn't have the studio's customary stamp on the back. So this photo may be from a different studio than that of Maurice Seymour.

In the left photo Velma is the second woman from the left in the above photo. The other women are not identified.

This photo was probably taken when Velma lived in Chicago. It is obviously staged and was probably intended to publicize some event. The barely visible sign on the wall behind the woman on the right says something about "fashion." This may have been during the time Velma modeled.

The women's hats really make the photo interesting. Generally, wearing hats went out of fashion after World War II, so this photo may have been taken some time during the 1940s.

Julia Moody Pierce

This photo of Julia Moody Pierce isn't dated, but the hairstyle suggests that it may have been taken in the mid-1920s.

Even farm wives in little ol' Wilmer, Alabama, kept up with current women's fashions. This no doubt was the result of reading magazines and newspapers and of watching movies. So from just a hairstyle we can infer a great deal about the lives of the Pierce family.

But the hairstyle does raise questions such as: Did Julia go to a beauty parlor to get her hair done? Did she do it herself at home? Or perhaps, did a neighbor woman fix her hair?

School photos: Carl and Bea

George Carl Pierce (1916-1989) always called Carl, and Beatrice Valara Pierce (1921-1993), always called Bea, pose for their 1930 Wilmer School photos.

Note Bea's eyeglasses. She had poor vision at an early age. But the glasses also show that her parents cared about her vision and took her for an eye exam. Both the glasses and the hairstyle appear fashionable.

The Pierce children may have been the offspring of a hard-working Wilmer farmer, but they weren't ragamuffins, even in the years of the Great Depression.

Pierce Creek Cemetery

A number of Pierce kin found their final resting place at Pierce Creek Cemetery. This is another in the series of cemetery photos by my good friend Larry Bell.

Pierce Creek Cemetery is located on Old Shell Road near the end of the Mobile Municipal Airport runways. The webpage with the photos also contains a map to the location.

Flying for business after World War II

Joseph Gibson (1900-1966), husband of Ina Mae Pierce (1903-1977), pauses on the boarding stairway of an American Overseas Airlines plane to allow his photo to be taken.

This is a publicity photo by the airline. On the back is stamped "American Overseas Airlines, Public Relations Department, Press Room, LaGuardia Field."

Gibson was one of the first American businessmen to fly to Europe after World War II, thus the reason for the publicity photo. He was a partner in Sweet's Foundry in Johnson City, New York. In a top-secret project, the foundry made casings for the atomic bomb during World War II.