Grandpa was a photographer, and that gave me an idea.
First published in The Study of Light, on Substack, on December 9, 2025
A brief interlude: just after my birth, just before his stroke. But the stroke did not finish him. He lived thirty more years yet.
It is easy to take this for granted: In this time and this place it is possible to choose one’s occupation, and then to choose a different one. As many careers as you wish to have, and as time allows and you are willing to do the work, you are welcome to pursue.
The studio Christmas card, 1954. Grandpa at left, Norm to his immediate left, poised to deliver prints. Ron is cutting and matting. My mom, Marge, holds a glue brush in her hand. Grandma spot tones prints in the front right corner.
My mother’s father, Richard Hanger, earned a degree in business from the University of Minnesota, then studied photography in New York City. After a few odd jobs, he opened a studio in Yankton, South Dakota. He operated this business into his late fifties, when he and Grandma retired to the one stoplight town of Naples, Florida.
I also studied photography. By the time I graduated, I’d burned out on it. So I worked in mental health, then education. With a few dozen very odd jobs sprinkled into the decades (department store santa, disaster relief crew leader, restaurant chef, to name a few) I finally worked in my field of study, starting in 2013 with this venture.
We had a brief period of overlap. Grandpa had retired in the early 1960s. Just after he began to live his Florida retirement dream he had a massive stroke, the sort that doctors say “should have been fatal.” He did not die that night, and the subsequent strokes and heart attacks also did not kill him, and those went on for thirty more years. It was at this time in his life that I was able to sit at his feet and hear him ponder and wax. He was thoughtful, erudite. He refused to complain about his degrading body. My mom was fond of pointing out that he was a reader, and he never passed a word that he didn’t know. He looked every one of them up, using his one functioning arm to heft his chair-side dictionary to his lap.
At the nursing home in Viborg, South Dakota, 1990.
About twenty-five years ago I had a big idea. That Grandpa (long since passed) and I would make a book together, about the one subject we know a lot about — his daughter, my mother. It took 22 years to get it started, but we did it. The first half of her life was well documented by him. The second, I had that covered, more or less. I interviewed my mom, and collected and edited a few dozen additional photos, trying to include the significant persons and events in her life. After a few design reworks by my dear Geri, we have it.
The Long, Wonderful Life of Marjorie Louise Hanger Shonka, by Richard Hanger and Drew Shonka.
Mom passed a year ago. I am grateful that she was able to enjoy this gift.
At the start of a life: Richard and Helen Hanger, recently married, relaxing on the sand beside Bde Maka Ska, the lake formerly known as Calhoun.
Portraits of a young family -- a contact sheet by Grandpa, before I showed up.
Helen and Richard Hanger. I enjoy old photographs. The paper frames and embossed logos/signatures make them even better.