Pee Paw and the Aquitania

Last week I ended my post by saying that I was on to other mysteries.  It was just a comment about finding new discoveries as I research my family lines.  I didn’t have any particular mystery in mind, but this photo was kinda in the back of my mind.  Not because of any mystery, though.  I was just thinking it was time to post a photo from the Landry side of my family and this is an interesting and nice photo of my grandfather from this period in his life.

As you can see from the writing on the photo, it is of R. J. Landry in 1938.  That would be Robert Joseph Landry, Sr. for those of us in the know.  But a few of us would have called him Papa or Pappy, and more of us would know him as Pee Paw.  Some others called him Uncle Rob.  Let’s just call him Rob.

Rob would have been 45 years old in this photo.  He and his wife Erie had been married for 17 years and they had eight children.  There are a few photos of their children from this time and some of them have Erie in them.  Rob is not in many of them.

So why is Rob posing with this print of the cruise liner called the Aquitania?  Because he is definitely taking a photo with the image.  It doesn’t just happen to be behind him.  He’s standing to the side as though the ship is another subject in the photograph.  What’s up with that?  And the nameplate that denotes the Cunard Line is intriguing as well.  Maybe this is when he was named the captain of the ship before he sailed around the world that time?  Oh, wait! No. That never happened!

Or maybe it was when his wife was shipwrecked on a deserted island for several years and he heard that the Aquitania had rescued her and was bringing her back to him.  So he stared at the image of the ship as he longingly waited on her return.  Oh, drats!  That never happened either!  How else could they have had 8 children in 17 years?

So why is he staring at that ship so intently in the second photo?  I guess we’ll never know.  It’s a good thing I didn’t say I was going to solve those mysteries that I was moving on to!