My cousin Andy emailed the family today. He was looking for an electronic copy of the memorable picture of our grandpa on the Colorado A&M (now Colorado State) track team. My parents had it, so my mom scanned the picture and sent it to everyone. As you can tell from the photo's caption, the year was 1938 and Dave Sudduth had some wheels. Obviously, this is where both my dad and I got our speed (good genes).On a hunch I Googled my grandpa and Colorado A&M and stumbled across the university's photo repository. They had saved, digitized, and uploaded thousands of photos from decades ago. Searching through the archives I was able to find a few more photos of my grandpa. Some of the pictures that I found and shared with the rest of the family had never been seen before, so I felt pretty good about my discovery.
To put this period of time into perspective, 1938 was also a fascinating time in world history. At the same time these pictures were taken of my grandpa (spring 1938), Hitler had just begun to "acquire" territory in Europe. In March, Austria was annexed and became part of Nazi Germany. The following year war broke out in Europe and the rest, as they say, is history. My grandpa, the college track star, went on to serve in the Navy aboard a ship in the Pacific. Interesting, interesting times, both in our family and in world history.
