He’s awesome.”īurd and Babula met a few Chase family members at a McDonalds in Farmington last month and handed the collection over. “Within two-and-a-half weeks, he had found the family,” Babula said. An old obituary, a list of survivors and Facebook did the trick. ![]() “I love puzzles and challenges, things that cause me to look under rocks and behind curtains,” Burd said. “He and I are both such random packrats,” Babula said.īurd immediately agreed to start the search, in April. Babula gave it to his friend, Mike Burd, an old photo collector, technology teacher and internet whiz, asking him if he might know how to find the family. He’d forgotten about the old picture collection but when he pulled it out after the fire, he knew just what to do with it. The album’s journey back to them almost didn’t happen.īabula’s house burned down in 2019 but, somehow, all his photographs survived, stored in a plastic tote bin. It starts with their grandparents’ Quebec City honeymoon in 1931 and continues through their first child’s toddler years in the 1940s. There are pictures of the big city, far-flung parts of Maine and New Hampshire, as well as close friends - and lots of dogs. Their names were Evelyn and Carroll Chase of Waterville. The album chronicles their grandparents’ family life in Maine and New York. “This is Facebook before Facebook was Facebook,” said Kim Burns of South Portland, looking over the photos and detailed captions at her brother Dan Chase’s house in Brunswick on Friday. The front and reverse of a photo from Evelyn Chase’s long-lost family photo album shows her dog, Peggy Girl, on Long Island, New York when her husband, Carroll Chase, was working on building LaGuardia Airport. The album is back with its rightful family and some members are coming face-to-face with their ancestors for the first time. Now, a quarter-century later, Babula’s compassionate act of preservation - combined with some modern internet sleuthing - has produced a happy ending. Babula bought the album for $5 and took it home, tucking it amongst his own family pictures and negatives. He couldn’t bear to leave the monochrome family behind, uncared for and homeless. It was clear that someone had spent decades putting the collection together. Each one of the hundreds of crisp images was documented with exact names, dates and places, written on the back in dignified, cursive script. Babula didn’t know a soul in the old, black-and-white photos but the leather-bound album was extraordinary.
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