Sid & Esther while on a Mediterranean cruise in 1996
Taken in 1931, this picture shows Margaret, Maggie's namesake and great grandmother. Born in 1902, she is the lady on the far left holding the baby. The baby is Logan's mother. The seated older folks are Maggie's great great grandparents Catherine from Loughrea Ireland and Patrick from Athenry, County Galway Ireland and one of 17 children. They are the parents of Phillip, Logan's maternal grandfather and Margaret's husband. Phil is the standing man on the left with his head chopped off. The other standing man is John Capaccioli jr., Margaret's father and an expert photographer who took and developed his own photographs. His father, John Capaccioli sr. was from Genoa Italy where he ran away on a ship eventually becoming a ship's rigger rather than become a priest. John jr. was a natural engineer who was widely known for fixing problem. Among other things, he cut and erected the Woolworth's monument in New York city; he re-engineered the "Maid of the Mist" at Niagara falls when its boilers failed for unknown reasons. Many of the granite monuments in and around New England were put up by him. He retired while in his early forties after selling his business for $40,000; a tidy sum in those days.
This is Maggie's great grandfather Phillip, at work in the MIT Radiation Lab where he was a machinist responsible for building radar parts and later, cyclotron parts. Born in 1905, he was originally from Waltham Mass. Looking at the calender, I think this picture was taken sometime in the 1940's. In 1967, I remember going with my grandfather in to MIT for their annual open house and meeting Harold Edgerton, the man responsible for many of the earliest stop action strobe photographs. His lab struck me as mostly a wonderful collection of cool toys and made me want to pursue electronics as a career. I shorted out the house the next week with a reconstructed electric clock sans insulation so you could see all the wires. My grandmother (Margaret) restricted me to batteries only for life. Undaunted, I built my first variable rate neon tube stroboscope the next year when I was 11.