Who was the Mystery Photographer?

  

            Who took pictures of Holly, Joyce and Wayne at Primary Children’s Hospital?

            In an envelope that Mama marked in lovely cursive—“IMPORTANT: PRECIOUS PICTURES OF HOLLY – DO NOT THROW AWAY”  we found slides that became the cover, page 85 and page 101 of Holy Holly: One Tiny Life A Family Memoir of Loss and Renewal.

It’s obvious to assume that a staff member at Primary Children’s Hospital took the slides, perhaps on Mama and Dad’s Kodak camera. But it doesn’t fit. We don’t have photos from that era, except those taken on Judy’s or Jeanne’s cameras. We are pretty sure Dad didn’t have his Kodak then. 

Dad and Mama were too busy to take photos. In this era of cell-phone cameras with automatic light adjustments, we forget how complicated photography was fifty-five years ago. Dad and Mama would’ve needed:

 1. A working camera; 

2. With film, properly loaded; and 

3. A working flash attachment and flashbulbs

With a gravely ill baby, they simply couldn’t take time to think of any of those things.

Besides, there’s something extra—something personal and sweet  about these pictures that seems to say they weren’t taken when Dad handed his camera to a nurse.   

I’m excited that we’ve discovered the “mystery photographer” since the book was published.

Mama and Dad had an especially close relationship with Dad’s sister Clara and her husband Darrell Wood, who grew up as a close friend to Mama’s brothers. When Dad took Holly to Salt Lake City on April 7, he wrote a letter saying he would “call Darrell and Clara” and other relatives to tell them about Holly.  So (fast forward to 2022) after reading the book, their daughter, Candace, discussed Holly’s story with her brother, Ted. Ted asked what year Holly was born. 

Later Ted called and said that in 1967, he was doing graduate studies in German and Russian; he and his wife lived in Salt Lake City. He texted Candace a screen shot of his journal, which said: 

“April 15, 1967

“We received an unexpected visit from Uncle Wayne and Aunt Joyce today. It was a rather sad occasion, however.  They had come to Salt Lake to take their newborn child to the hospital for treatment. The baby has a congenital heart defect and is not expected to live more than a few days. They asked me to go with them to the hospital and take some pictures of her, which I gladly did … I could certainly feel the agony in the parents’ hearts. After this visit they have to return home, never to see the baby again. [She] will die alone.” 

My parents drove to Salt Lake on April 14. Sometime on April 15, they were told nothing could be done for Holly and that she would die within days. Needing to return to Idaho for Dad’s work and to be with the rest of their children, they were desperate to have a record of Holly before she died. I picture them calling Aunt Clara, who told them Ted had a camera. I picture them knocking on Ted’s door and see him collecting camera, film and flash bulbs.  I picture him composing those precious photos in the nursery of the hospital, developing the film, and later mailing the slides to my parents.

Ted—who would later study photography  in-depth and sell some of his work—shot the tender photos.  

God is always in the details of healing hurting hearts. Holly was surrounded by loving hands and talented people all of her short life. And now you know the rest of the story. 

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