Filed under: Vintage Photo Album | Tags: 1970, godmother, lost family photos, mummy, vivyan photography
In 1970, a man from Vivyan Photography walked into the lobby of the Pittsburgh Hilton and noticed two pretty girls working at the front desk. One was a blond with dark blue eyes, short, bobbed hair and pale skin, and the other had big green cat-like eyes, her hair framing her face like a jet black curtain. He liked their contrast of dark and light, so he asked them to model. The blond is my mother and the raven-haired beauty her best friend, my godmother. They were 19 in these pictures.
Out of all the jobs my mum had over the years, working at the Hilton was her favorite. She was right out of high school, sharing an apartment with 4 other women, wearing mini skirts up to her bottom, taking weekend trips to Virginia Beach via stand-by flights. I remember as a kid all the trinkets she had saved from those trips before she met my father: a TWA mini-purse that I used as a pencil case; a towel that said ‘Virginia is for Lovers,’ the o in lovers a heart; the endless pictures of her and her friends, windswept and sunburned in gingham bikinis. When I look through her photos, I swear I still smell the amber perfume that permeated my godmother’s house, hear the chime of my mother’s gypsy hoops as she talks about needing a long over-due vacation.
Mummy and Maggie, 1970
folded into fours, then found again
