More Family Mysteries

My grandpa Norman Lee Fox on the left enjoying his time in the Navy, before suffering the atrocities of being a POW to the Japanese in WW2.
Today, we got another box of old pictures my mom saved from California that we thought we had lost. Some of them were from my mom's dad's side and we probably will never know who any of them were...it's still cool to see old pictures, but we sure wish we knew their stories.
Some quick background about my mom's dad Norman Lee Fox. He was born in Missouri but raised in Wyoming where his dad worked in a coal mine. His dad died pretty young from some influenza, most likely exacerbated by his occupation. Norman enlisted in the Navy in the 1930's, and served during WW2 as a Chief Warrant Officer.
Here is a cute little post card he sent his mom and stepdad (Joe)--he was apparently on a train going to Idaho Falls (hey! we may be going there too!)--I am assuming he was going to school for some kind of training pertaining to the job he had in the Navy.

Here's another card showing the USS Saratoga--on the back he wrote about what a huge ship/landing strip it was:


Just before he was supposed to come home and be relieved from his duty, he was captured in the Philippines by the Japanese. He was a POW for 4 years until the war ended in 1945. He suffered horrible conditions and I would recommend reading personal accounts of how they were treated--I thought the "Bataan Death March" book was very thorough and scary. Here is his Bronze Star awarded for "Meritorious Service" when he was a First Class radioman:

He met my grandma, Elizabeth Eulilia Clemens in the 1950's in New Mexico, they married in 1953. They had 3 babies, Katherine, Jane (my mom) and Michael. Norman passed in December 1984 just 4 months after I was born.


These are my adorable grandparents when he was stationed in Hawaii ~1950's.

And here's an even older photo of someone from my grandpa's side---could've been his dad. We don't know--there is absolutely no inscription or date. But I looked up different uniforms and found out he was a field artillery man in the army in WW1. Pretty cool.

It was fun to research the uniforms down to the pocket flap, buttons, and collar disk. I felt proud that I found out!

And this one I have even less information on...in fact, nothing! But it's sooooo freaking creepy I had to post it..It actually scares me to look at. We think it may be Norman's grandmother or greatgrandmother. The house is probably in Missouri somewhere, looks to be in the late 1800's. Wonder if it's still out there somewhere.

In fact, the only non-creepy thing in this photo is the cute dog. Everything else is like specifically made to be scary...the way the tree branches look like veins, the odd stature of the people in it, the rickety old haunted house looking thing, the odd door upstairs leading to nothing lol...

Hope you all enjoyed this little mysterious bit of my family tree. More to come!