BABY BADERS

Say "hello" to the next generation of Baders!


Pictures of Carl and Edna Bader's children as babies, or even young children, are very rare. So I was delighted to stumble across this grouping when going through my mom's things. These vintage snapshots are all plastered together onto a single sheet of thick black paper, which was probably a page in a photo album, once. They are undated, of course, and whatever may have been written on the back is mostly lost to the misty depths of time.


I recognized Edna right away in this picture. (Who was, by the way, fondly referred to as "Maudie" by all of her children for the rest of her life.) That "Hello!" is also in Maudie's handwriting. But which of her six children are these?

But I knew immediately as soon as I saw this photo:

This is first-born Robert Elsner Bader, born June 7, 1916, on the right, and second son, Ernest Birney Bader, born August 5, 1919, on the left.

40+ years later, in the early '60s, both Uncle Bobby and Uncle Ernie used to come stay with us in Hermosa Beach for the summer (they were both university professors in the Midwest). And they look exactly like themselves in this photo! I would know them anywhere!

This is the only photo in this group that was loose, and Maudie has written on the back, "My boys!" The only boys she had at this time.

Which mean the baby in these photos must be Barbara!

The time period is perfect. Barbara Anne Bader was born March 13, 1921. If these snapshots were taken in the summer of 1921, when Barbara was an infant, Bobby would be five years old, and Ernie two, which looks about right.

Bobby was born in Worcester, Mass., and Ernie was born in Malden, Mass. Barbara was the first of the Bader children to be born in Nebraska, where the family would live until the Great Migration westward to California began in the '40s and '50s.

In her letter/memoir "My Mother," Barbara writes that she "was born while (the family) lived in Clay Center (NE), but delivered in the Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebr." Some intrepid peeling on my part reveals at watermark on the back of one of these photos: "W.S. Reed, Kamera Kraft Shop, Clay Center, NEBR."

Maudie writes on the front of  this photo (above, right) "Doesn't she look like Bobby?" I was impressed with how much Toddler Ernie looks like baby pictures of Jeannie and Philip, that you'll see in the next couple of posts.

 Anyway, here's Maudie and her children, ca: 1921 — Bobby, Baby Barbara, and Ernie. I can't quite peel  enough of the black paper away from this photo to read the entire inscription on the back, but it looks like Maudie has written "She's (meaning, Barbara, I presume) sure the beauty of this group."