How Family Albums Trigger Grandma Kay’s Hidden Stories
Family history storytelling and other insights from the Centenarian Playbook.
Our guest author, , joins us from Mountain View, California and writes . This is his second post for the Projectkin Members’ Corner. Monthly posts from members celebrate their contributions to family history storytelling — in all its forms. Posts may be written or recorded (audio or video) will be shared for free each month. Explore the entire Members’ Corner here.
When I arrived on a December afternoon in 2021, Grandma Kay was flipping through a photo album. She had been looking for a picture from her wedding day over 81 years ago. She had a couple of wedding photos of her and her late husband, winemaker Mario Gemello, prominently displayed in her Northern California home. This time, she was looking for a group photo from the reception. It was one that she rarely ever looked at.
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, though neither of their parents attended. Destination nuptials were a creative way for the couple to combine their wedding and honeymoon—on the cheap. Grandpa Mario’s cousin ran a hotel in downtown Las Vegas, 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 daughter, who was seven when the photo was taken. She was motivated to find the picture by a sorrowful event: Silvia had just passed away a few weeks earlier at the age of 88.
Over the years, my grandparents had gotten to know Silvia. She attended college nearby, at San Francisco State. She 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 had discussed it during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. My mom and I were splitting caregiving duties during the pre-vaccine era to help shrink the bubble around Grandma Kay, who was about to turn 100. I frequently used photo albums to trigger different topics of conversation. Otherwise, Grandma Kay often retold her “greatest hits,” the same five stories at the forefront of her memory.
We found the reception photo, among other loose pictures we’d looked at earlier. It brought back many 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 claimed.
“We didn’t have much 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 a small town of just over 8,000 residents in 1940. Its small-town feel was even evident in its newspaper coverage: when Vinassa’s mother died a year earlier in her home country of Italy, her death made front-page headlines in the Las Vegas Age newspaper.
Grandma said that during her wedding weekend, 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 nightclub on US-91, later renamed Las Vegas Boulevard.
A Centenarian’s Memory Lane
Grandma Kay celebrated her 103rd birthday on June 26th, 2024. One key to her longevity has been her daily exercise routine. During the pandemic lockdown, we’d stroll a half—mile loop around her favorite park.
It’s a nice tree-lined park with flat terrain and a combination 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 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 a historical website reporting that it was founded in 1903 and closed in 1964.
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