How Family Albums Trigger Grandma’s Hidden History

A long-lost wedding photo sparks memories of a nearly century-old love story.

👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson, author of 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 my forthcoming memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Read the book's origin story.) 🍇 The Centenarian Playbook is my newsletter, which features longevity tips and stories from Grandma Kay’s long life. It also includes stories of the Gemello Winery, which her late husband, Mario, ran for nearly half a century. 📖 I’m sure you’ll find my maternal grandparents are quite lovable characters.

Nov. 17, 1940: Mario and Kay Gemello on their wedding day

If some of you recognize this post below, you’re not crazy. It originally appeared as a guest essay on the genealogy site, Projectkin Forum.

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How Albums Can Help Unlock a Centenarian’s Treasured Memories

Grandma Kay was flipping through a photo album when I arrived. She was looking for a picture from her wedding day just over 81 years ago. 

It was a December afternoon in 2021. Grandma Kay, now 100, had a couple of wedding photos of her and her late husband, winemaker Mario Gemello, prominently displayed in her Northern California home. But this group photo from the reception was different. It was one that she hardly ever looked at.

That’s because she hardly knew any of the wedding guests in the photo. My mother’s parents, Mario and Kay Gemello, had known each other since grade school. They had an out-of-town wedding in 1940. Of all places, it was in Las Vegas, well before it became a destination for couples to elope under the guise of parental disapproval. 

This wedding was no secret even though neither of their parents were there. Remote nuptials were a creative way for her and my grandfather to have a combination wedding and honeymoon on the cheap, because Grandpa Mario’s cousin ran a hotel in downtown Las Vegas and close to St. Joan of Arc Church. John Vinassa, the general manager of the Union Hotel, offered to plan and comp much of the festivities.

“I can’t find that photo with Silvia,” Grandma Kay told me. She was referring to Vinassa’s stepdaughter, who was seven when the photo was taken. Her curiosity in finding the photo was triggered by a somber event: Silvia had just passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 88. 

1940 Wedding Reception: Silvia (Vinassa) Pereira, 7, seated far right

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Over the years, my grandparents had gotten to know her. She attended college nearby, at San Francisco State, and would settle in the Bay Area, marry and raise a family in the East Bay.

“I don’t think the photo is in the album,” I told her, recalling that we were discussing it during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. My mom and I were splitting caregiving duties during the pre-vaccine era to help shrink Grandma Kay’s bubble. I frequently used photo albums to trigger different topics of conversation. Otherwise, Grandma Kay often retold her “greatest hits,” the same five stories that were at the forefront of her memory.

We found the wedding photo among some other loose pictures, which brought back a lot of memories for my grandmother, particularly transportation logistics in 1940. Getting to Las Vegas from Mountain View, California, under the pre-marital guidelines of Grandma Kay’s Roman Catholic upbringing was a challenge, she claims.

“We didn’t have a lot of money during the Great Depression,” she said. “And being Catholic, we couldn’t stay in a hotel together until we got married. So we had to make it all the way to Las Vegas without stopping,” she said with tension in her voice.

“And being Catholic, we couldn’t stay in a hotel together until we got married. So we had to make it all the way to Las Vegas without stopping,” Grandma Kay said with tension in her voice.

Las Vegas was such a small town in 1940, just over 8,000 residents, that when Vinassa’s mother died a year earlier in her home country of Italy, it made front page news in the Las Vegas Age newspaper. Vinassa’s Mother Is Dead In Italy, was the main headline in the February 10th edition.

Grandma said the weekend of her wedding, Vinassa took the newlyweds for dancing, drinks and a little gambling at the 91 Club on Highway US-91, the dusty road connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The 91 Club had a storied history, starting as The Pair-O-Dice Nite Club, a private club (Knock. Knock. What’s the password?) during Prohibition. It was the first night club on US-91, later renamed Las Vegas Boulevard.

A Centenarian’s Memory Lane

Grandma Kay turned 103 last June. One of the keys to her longevity has been her daily exercise routine. During the pandemic lockdown, we’d take a stroll - a half mile loop - around her favorite park.

It’s a nice tree-lined park with flat terrain. It has a mixture of sunny and shady areas. One day, I couldn’t help noticing the cracks in the pavement. Using my camera phone, I snapped a picture of Grandma Kay pushing her walker over the cracked pavement.

When we got back to her house, I figured there may be a reporter at the local newspaper scrounging for one more story to meet her weekly quota.

“We should tip off the Mountain View newspaper about the poorly kept walking path conditions. That’s just a lawsuit waiting to happen,” I told Grandma Kay. “What’s the name of your local paper?”

“The Register Leader,” she said. That didn’t sound right to me. I scribbled myself a note to Google later.

“I went to high school with the son of the newspaper’s owner,” she added. 

I grabbed her 1936 high school yearbook, and we sifted through it. 

“That’s him! Lee Keene,” she said, as if she was about to look him up in a phonebook.

“He’s probably close to or over 100, like you. Think he’s still alive?”

“Probably not,” she said.

Then it dawned on me: the local paper was the Mountain View Voice.

I googled “Mountain View Register Leader,” and found an historical Web site, which said it was founded in 1903 and closed in 1964.

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