My grandfather was in the Navy during the Second World War. He served on submarines (most notably the USS Harder) in the South Pacific. I never knew him, because he divorced my grandfather when my mother was still a young girl, and he subsequently disappeared. Grandma burned all his pictures.
So now I’m trying to learn more about my grandfather, and Grandma won’t help, so I’m working on finding out what I can from the Navy records and genealogical research. I need your help in finding a photograph of him, though.
He was on the cover of a 1942 Collier’s magazine (the year he joined the service). He was in a line of soldiers in mess hall. It had to have been after April, as that’s the month he joined, and I know it wasn’t the July issue because I’ve seen that one already. Since that might very well be the only picture of my grandfather that still exists, I want very much to track it down.
The county library is no help, nor is the regional library-resource-sharing program; their periodicals only go back to the '60s at the earliest.
Where else can I turn to see the covers of the '42 Collier’s issues?
Thank you very, very much in advance for your time.
After you’re sure you’ve exhausted the resources of your surrounding communities (have you asked at university libraries?), call a library that is guaranteed to have a copy.
Whenever I run into a research roadblock, I do as much leg work as possible and then call the reference desk at a larger library. For a small fee, they can do this research for you and send you the results. The information you already have should be enough to go on. Depending on the library’s research backlog, you may not get results for a few weeks. However, in my experience, librarians love this kind of challenge.
The board’s are acting up, so I’m not sure if this will get through. I wanted to add more to my last post. It’s funny that this subject came up. I spent this evening putting the finishing touches on a project I’ve been working on for a few months - to digitize 130 years worth of mountaineering journals and magazines. It’s finally done. Whenever there was a gap in my collection that even the biggest libraries couldn’t fill, I haunted eBay. With some patience, I was able to find most of the missing items. WWII magazines are a common item on eBay. You might want to check there periodically.
Yeah, go to your local Univeristy. I know it’s at UH Manoa.
eBay is also a great suggestion. In fact I see a “Collier’s Photographic History of WWII” up for sale in 8 hours.
Well it wasn’t August, that one featured an Indian in full dress. Nor was it July 42. It also wasn’t March Or Feb which featured a Navy tuba player, also at Barnes & Noble.
Boy enter “vintage magazines” into google and you get tons of places selling old magazines and especially Collier’s although 1941-1945 seems to be msising from all of them. It looks like Manoa has their Collier’s in bound form meaning I could get a nice color copy of the cover for you if you wish. Then I could either scan it in or simply mail it to you if you can’t find it anywhere else.
I had a similar experience. Around 1962, when I was around 8 years old, there was a paricular comic book that I wanted to buy, but couldn’t and when I was finally able to, it was no longer on sale.
It stuck in my mind, because the cover was particularly intriguing, and it really stuck in my mind. For 35 years it gnawed at me, and I’d often stop in a comic book store to look for it. Problem was, the stores – and especially the mail-order places – want to know the title of the magazine and the issue number. I had no idea what the issue number was, I wasn’t even positive that 1962 was the correct year, and had no idea whether the title was Superman, Action, or one of the other related magazines. So I would browse around, and always come up empty.
Then the internet was born, and found that there are loads of people selling old magazines on ebay, usually with a photo of the cover. This was perfect! I browsed and browsed, and in less than two weeks I found the cover that was stuck in my head for almost 40 years. It was ever so slightly different than I remembered, but I had no doubt that this was the one. I no longer needed to own it, but I bid on it out of gratitude to the system. My bid lost, no harm done. At least I was now sure that it was not a dream, and that memory was a real one.
Best of luck on finding your grandfather’s photo!!!
Call the Magazines & Newspapers department at the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County: 513.369.6973. They can fax or photocopy & mail the cover to you for buck or two.
So should any major metropolitan public or university library. Periodicals are sometimes really sketchy in the public catalogs, though, which is why they can be hard to find.
I pulled the bound issues of Collier’s from 1942 and now have them sitting in my cube.
After I get all of my actual work done, I’ll flip through them to see what I can find. A quick inspection reveals that some jackass has torn about every fifth cover off, so cross your fingers.
I went through every Collier’s cover from 1/42-7/43 and found no such picture as described in the OP. In fact, most Collier’s covers are illustrations, not photos, but I didn’t even see one of those with the mess hall rendering. Are you sure you have the right dates and/or magazine? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was inside one of the magazines for the year in question (or even on the rear cover; didn’t check those), but it wasn’t on the front cover in the date range listed above. Sorry.
Whups. I didn’t refresh this page before I posted, and I see that not only did ArchiveGuy beat me to it, but his patrons aren’t a bunch of dingleberries.
From my experience as a librarian, most people who think they remember a photograph in a particular magazine or newspaper, usually are wrong.
It’s sort of like the Uncertainty principle. You may know the name of the magazine, but be way off with the date. Or you may have the date nailed, but are way off with the title.
In WWII there were often special editions of magazines just made for soldiers and sailors to be used overseas. Smaller and without ads normally.
Well, she says it was definitely Collier’s, and “If it’s not on the cover, then it must be inside - it was with a story on new recruits in the Navy.”
I’ll have to go up to the state library in Albany and see what they’ve got. It’ll take a while for me to get a free day, but it’s not fair for me to expect anybody else to read an entire year’s worth of weekly magazines!
I’m sure once I can actually get to the state library it won’t take me too long… it’s getting the time off all three of my jobs that will take time!
Reading those old magazines might be fun. And if they have any of the Lady’s Home Journal type of publications back there in readily-accessible form, I might not re-emerge for days…
