By HENRY FREDERICK / Headline Surfer
Blog: People, Places & Things
LAKE MARY, Fla. -- Who is this inquisitive baby in the studio portrait photo with big almonnd-shaped hazel eyes and reddish brown hair?
Yes, it was yours truly taken in July of 1962 back home in Putnam, Connecticut when I was 5 months old.
I only know this because my Mom wrote it on the back of the photo and told me when I was little boy. This was a studio portrait. There are no other photos of me prior to this.
Why? My Mom said parents invested money in portrait-style photos. They were expensive but even one portrait photo was the signature shot - the keepsake in a family album.
At 5 months, I was more attentive and a good studio photographer could capture my natural expression - or so I was told by my Mom who said I was an intense little guy and that is captured perfectly in the baby portrait, according to my Mom.
Not much has changed: When I was a toddler - 2 or 3 - I had long curly hair like a girl and my hair had a distinctive reddish color with some brown mixed in. Then after that first real haircut in a barber's chair - those red curls were on the floor. Within days, the red was gone and the brown began to turn black as it grew in.