My grandmother: ahead of the times
As we come to the end of the holiday season and enter the New Year, many of us have spent time with family, or perhaps spent time thinking about family members no longer with us. As genealogists this can be the time we have opportunity to ask more questions about our family history. Here’s a story I uncovered about my Grandma, Joyce Young formerly Cowling.
A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to be handed a folder of family documents relating to my YOUNG and COWLING grandparents but it was the upcoming family gathering at Christmas, when I needed to return the folder, that spurred me on to look through and make copies of the documents contained.
This is how I remember my grandparents. Just like to many children: they were “just kind old people”.
My Grandma always used to say to me that she had been something of a “racey dresser” in her youth and I used to just look at her in disbelief I think. I vaguely remember a story about a swimsuit…
Amongst the folder of family treasures I found the following magazine clipping. It appeared in the edition of Woman magazine dated 23 October 1965.
So my Grandma had worn this swimsuit on the beach in Hythe in 1935? She would have been aged 17 years at the time. The original photograph was also in the folder:
Even more lovely was the letter that she had kept all these years:
She was even paid for the piece:
So, I think, less “old lady” and more “swimwear model”, wouldn’t you agree?
