For those who don’t recognize the little girl in the photo booth picture, she is Nancy Howell, longtime partner and wife of Leader photographer Ted Howell, and the little boy in the photo, well, he is not Ted.
The young man is Norman L. Sloan, 79, of De Soto. He sent the picture to the Leader and said it was taken at a carnival set up on East Mineral Street sometime in the mid- to late- 1940s.
Nancy, 76, of De Soto was Nancy Love at the time. She said Norman and his family were her neighbors.
“Their house faced Second Street. Ours faced Main,” Nancy said. “We (Nancy and Norman) used to play cars in the dirt pile,” she said.
Nancy was 6 or 7 when she accompanied Norman and his family to the carnival.
“I don’t remember a whole lot. His mom and dad were taking him to the carnival. They asked my parents if I could go with them,” she said. “That was my first big date.”
Her husband, Ted, just laughed when he saw the picture, Nancy said.
“This is small town stuff. He thought it was funny,” she said.
Nancy, Ted and Norman all three grew up in De Soto, Norman said.
They “grew up together, went to school together and have remained friends through the years,” he wrote.
LOOKING BACK is a regular feature of myleaderpaper.com. If you have a historical photo and story, submit them for LOOKING BACK to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail them to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St. (P.O. Box 159), Festus, 63028. Please include your name, phone number, a brief description of what’s in the photo and tell us how you came by it. Please also include when it was taken, where and by whom (if known).
