Dean Shalhoup

I’m one of those folks who really digs checking out old photos – whether or not I know where they were taken or even who is in them.

So it’s always a bonus when these types of what we of a certain age once called “snapshots” find me and I’m able to recognize someone or someones, or if not, be tipped off by someone who does know who they are.

That very scenario recently presented itself to me, but in truth, “recently” isn’t quite accurate. It was at least one year ago, but I’m betting it was two, that Nashua native Bob Stawasz invited me over to check out some long-filed-away family scrapbooks full of the very types of old photos I love to analyze with a fine-tooth magnifying glass.

Many old-timers both to Nashua and The Telegraph may remember Bob’s father, Frank Stawasz, from his decade or so as the then-Nashua Telegraph’s young sportswriter and photographer who, legend has it, was something of a shutterbug who toted his camera everywhere and captured snapshots well beyond his Telegraph assignments.

The scrapbook Bob showed me has a bunch of those snapshots, many of them taken at Hampton Beach on the Fourth of July weekend in 1942, a little more than a year after Frank graduated from Nashua High School.

Courtesy photo Frank Stawasz, with one of his cameras, on a July Fourth weekend vacation in 1942.

The photos he’s in – almost always smiling, sometimes sporting funky, white-rimmed sunglasses – is evidence there was a second shutterbug among the group of young Nashua men and women who made Hampton Beach their holiday weekend destination.

It appears from some of the photos that Frank and his friends were part of an organized bus trip to the beach for the weekend, something that, along with passenger trains, was a preferred mode of transportation at the time.

To me, photos – and yes, silent, Super 8 moving pictures – of the beach, any beach, really, are always special, which sometimes makes me wonder if I had a previous life as some kind of sea creature or, perhaps, as a tuna or swordfish that the commercial fishermen and the novices on deep sea-fishing charters never caught up with.

But it’s far more likely my affinity for the ocean and the beach stems from being fortunate enough to spend chunks of each summer in the waves and on the sand since I was a toddler.

I never got the chance to meet Frank Stawasz, whose Telegraph tenure ended before I was born and whose “kids” I didn’t meet until after Frank’s untimely, and too-soon, passing in the early 70s.

Courtesy photo From left are Frank Stawasz, "Doc," Jimmy, "me," and "Slick." "Me" is the woman, who wrote the note under the photo in the Stawasz family's scrapbook depicting the group at Hampton Beach in 1942.

But it appears, at least from this collection of photos, that he also enjoyed the beach, and, judging from one of the photos, enjoyed brandishing his faithful camera, which as far as I’m able to tell is of the twin-lens reflex variety.

In the background in a few of the photos is a Hampton Beach landmark called Garland’s Fairview Tea Room, which, according to my quick research, occupied the first floor of the Fairview Hotel and was operated by two generations of the Garland family, which came from Manchester.

Even cooler is the parking situation: Cars, ranging in vintage from 30s Fords to a newer, snappy, smallish convertible are parked side by side right on the edge of the line between pavement and sand.

In the scrapbook, meanwhile, notes that someone jotted under most of the photos identify those in the photos, but only by their first names.

Besides Frank, who isn’t in many photos because he was behind the camera most of the time, there is Johnny, Jimmy, “Doc,” Steve, Norma, Pat, Ruth, Don, “Slick,” Pete, Joe, Evelyn and Lynn.

Courtesy photo "Steve" and "Norma" perform some acrobatics on Hampton Beach on the Fourth of July weekend in 1942. They were in a group of Nashua residents who took a bus to the beach.

Frank and his contemporaries came of age during the Great Depression, and entered adulthood while a global war was raging, so they clearly knew the meaning of sacrifice.

But assuming they could collect enough coins for bus fare, they could at least count on the beach for a little respite now and then – without having to worry about whether they would even be allowed on the beach, and without the need to make sure they stayed at least six feet away from their friends.

—

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

Courtesy photo With vintage cars parked at the edge of the beach and the former Hampton Beach landmark Garland's Fairview Tea Room behind them, Frank Stawasz, left, and a group of friends enjoy the Fourth of July weekend in 1942. From left are Stawasz, "Doc," Jimmy, Norma and "Slick."

Courtesy photo "Norma" hangs upside down as she and "Steve" perform some acrobatics on Hampton Beach on the Fourth of July weekend in 1942. They were in a group of Nashua residents who took a bus to the beach.

Courtesy photo "Johnny" successfully balances "Norma" on his shoulders as they perform some acrobatics while at Hampton Beach with friends in 1942.

Newsletter