First Communion - An angel dressed in all white. Still an angel but not dressing in white these days! An Ovesen photo. |
St. Patrick's School - White shirt, khaki pants, green tie. Were shoes black? Can't recall grade I was in when this photo was taken. |
St. Joseph's High - Photo taken a few days before the 1969 graduation. |
Graduation day. Ceremonies held at St. Patrick's Church since St. Joseph's Chapel too small. |
Promotional photo taken at Social Security while I was a trainee. Taken in 1973 or 1974. Helene and Pat in photo. |
Looking cool. Don't I look Arab? Photo was taken in 1973 or 1974. |
Believe it or not, I used a similar photo as my passport photo, June 1974. Got in a lot of problems with Customs with this hair style. Asked many questions, bags always searched! |
From lots of hair to no hair. Always kept the beard. Went from 1969-1989 without shaving. This photo taken by Henry, a close friend, at Belmont Racetrack. |
In November 1989, after 20 years without shaving, I decided to shave. Feeling the blade on my skin was not easy! Here I am with no beard! I felt naked!! |
Part of my watermarking includes what looks like a man, the sun and a fish jumping into the ocean. This image was done by Shane Sobers (a grand nephew) on my laptop in 2004. On the photos above the image can be seen on the lower left corner. Below is a larger copy of the image |
| 02/12/06, 05/23/20 |
| My Different Looks |
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| Drawn by Shane Sobers, St. Croix, © 2004 |
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Getting the Christmas lights ready to decorate for Ma, December 2006. Photo taken by Nilsa without my knowledge! My beard is trimmed close to my face. As you can see, the beard is mostly gray! |
The photos from my expired passports, 1974 to 2003. |
| Left - This photo appeared in my 1974 to 1979 passport. The hairstyle created a few problems for me. See similar photo above but with glasses on! Right - 1979 to 1984. |
| Left - 1985 to 1995. This passport almost kept me out of Germany in 1993. One corner of the photo had somehow come loose and the agent thought the photo may have been replaced. He told me to get a new passport as soon as I got back to USA. Same passport used to get into Spain, Portugal and Morocco but nothing said at those points of entry. Though passport was good through 1995, I had it replaced in 1993. Right - 1993 to 2003. As you can see, I replaced passport as the German custom agent had suggested. This photo is from a special celebratory passport honoring Benjamin Franklin as a diplomat and the bicentennial of the U.S. Consular Service. |
This photo was taken on July 4, 1980. It is part of a group photo which can be seen on Page D. I let my hair and beard grow for an entire year, October 1979 to October 1980. |
Received the following photos from my sister, Maria. |
Photo at left are: Paco, Javier and me. Cropped the photo to show you how long my beard was. I let the hair on my head and face grow for one year. Presently, I am doing the same. Photo taken in 1980. If I am not mistaken, this was on a ferry to Bear Mountain. |
| Jessica |
| With Alex |
| Nelson |
| Don't know what year this photo was taken. Looks like Nilsa's residence in St. George's. |
And why did I buy this card? Recently, I was discarding things I no longer needed and came across this card. Who was it intended for? Did I buy it just for the words? Since I like it, I decided to include it here. |
| © HALLMARK |
| Dorsch Beach, Frederiksted, 1991 |
What I look like today, six months after I started growing my hair and beard. Will let hair and beard grow for a year. See you in six months! Photos taken December 23rd using web cam. |
| Wall is not pink, it's Ballad by Behr. You can Google that color! #1 - Photo taken at Hams Bluff, St. Croix many, many years ago. #2 - Poster of Carnival Miracle, gift on 2007 cruise. #3 - Group photo taken on cruise of 2007. #4 - One of three plates I have of Star Trek characters. #5 - Kit with "wild" male Betta (the one that should have been a female). #6 - See photo at right below. The 5 gallon tank. |
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Two photos below: March 2011 UPDATE: May 3, 2020 - My hair and beard are about the same length due to the pandemic. Barbershops are not open. |
| Taken at work. Different tones on face due to camera and/or printer used. |
What happened to my face? This is what I remember. I was in bed, told myself I had to get up and go to the bathroom. Sometime later, I found myself on the floor in a pool of blood. How long was I on the floor only God knows. I ended up in the ER since I could not get the gash over my right eye to stop bleeding. All tests came back normal. What do I think happened? One of the medications I take is known to cause dizziness. I must have gotten out of bed too fast! All this took place September 22, 2012. By the 23rd my right eye was swollen and completely closed. The photos below were taken on the 24th. I am writing this on October 9th and all is back to normal. As we say in France, "c'est la vie!" |
| Right eye! |
| Update, July 28, 2013 - Everything healed nicely. |
The above was done through Ancestry.com. I was curious and wanted to see what the results would show. Grandma said that her ancestors were from Spain while Grandpa believed he was part Taino. We know that in all this there was an African mix. In case you can't make out the Regions and Approximate Amounts: Africa - 23%, America - 14%, Europe - 56%, and West Asia 7%. The highest subregion percentages are: North Africa 8%; Native American 14%; Iberian Peninsula 34%; and Italy/Greece 9%. You can believe what you want to believe! May 21, 2018 - See information below about the DNA done using Geno 2.0 (Helix) via National Geographic. |
I let beard grow from July 2, 2015 to April 11, 2016. These photos were taken outside the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. |
Selfies using Fuji Film camera. Photos taken April 18th. At left, checking the settings. At right, looking at camera. You can see how quickly the beard is growing back. The beard was trimmed off on Monday, April 11th. |
December 2, 2016 |
The person who took the photo, a former co-worker from Dennelisse, decided to add Santa's hat and a balloons to the original photo. Photo taken in a Chinese restaurant on 39th Street in Manhattan. The beard has been growing, at this point, for about 8 months. Should I let it grow indefinitely or should I cut it off in 4 months? |
April 30, 2017 - I have not mastered the art of taking selfies. Below you can see me on April 22nd and 23rd. On April 12th, my beard celebrated a year of growing. At this point, I have not decided when or if I will cut off the beard! |
| April 22, 2017 - Age 65 |
| JFK Airport |
| AirTrain |
| Inside Seaborne plane, April 23rd, now 66 years. |
| The beard is not yellow! |
| September 30, 2017. No hair on head. Beard now growing for about 1 year 5 months, and 19 days. |
March 29, 2018 at the Easter Celebration, Center Courtyard, LeFrak City. The kids wanted to try out my camera so I let them have it. Here are the two photos they took of me. They took close-up photos of each other but I lack authorization to post them so they are not shown here or on Page VVVVV. |
The beard has been growing a little over 23 months. Since it is somewhat wild, I have been using rubber bands to tie it up. The photo above, shows one of the kids' finger. In time they will learn how to review what they see in the viewfinder before taking the photo. |
May 21, 2018 - Recently, I decided to do an ancestry DNA using Geno 2.0 (Helix) bought from The information varies from the DNA Ancestry listed above. Northwestern Europe - 21% (See explanation below.) Italy and Southern Europe - 18% Western Africa - 16% (See explanation below.) West Mediterranean - 13% ("Fused with ancestry from the Iberian Peninsula.") North America & Andes - 8% Northeastern Europe - 7% Southwest Asia/Persian Gulf - 6% Northern Africa - 5% South American and Amazon - 4% (See explanation below.) Total is 98%, unless I missed something. What group represents the missing 2%? First Preference Population: Bermudian This population is based on samples collected from mixed populations living in Bermuda. The percentages shown here reflect Bermuda's vast racial diversity, including Africans brought during the slave-trading era (West and central Africa, as well as Southern Africa) and European and Asian colonists and workers (Great Britain and Ireland, Western and Central Europe, and Southern Asia). In addition, some Native Americans were sent as slaves to Bermuda in the 17th Century, accounting for the small Native American ancestry. Bermuda had no indigenous inhabitants when Europeans arrived in the 16th century. Bermudian percentages are: Western Africa - 54%, Northwestern Europe - 17%, Central Africa - 11%, Southern Africa - 9%, North America and Andes - 5%, Southeastern Europe - 4% Second Preference Population: Colombian This reference population is associated with groups living in Colombia, in northern South America. This population is a mixture of several components, the largest of which are the Native American, associated with the indigenous groups that first settled in the region some 12,000 years ago; and the Southern European one associated with the centuries-long Spanish colonization of much of South America. The sub-Saharan African component suggests that Colombia holds a strong connection with groups introduced from Africa during the slave trade. Colombian percentages are: Southwestern Europe - 39%, South America & Amazon - 19%, Western Africa - 18%, North American & Andes - 9%, West Mediterranean - 7%, Northern Africa - 5%, Northwestern Europe - 3%. All Greek to me. Every area listed with percentages is explained individually. I will only quote three such explanations. South America & Amazon (4%): "Despite deep similarities between the native North American, Andean and Amazonian groups, some distinctions doe exist among these Amerindian peoples. Amazonian groups, for example, share more similarities with each other than with Andean groups to the west and Mesoamerican groups to the north. Anthropologists still debate whether the Andes of the Amazon were settled first. However, most agree that the Andean region saw faster cultural growth and development, and thus saw less isolation that groups living in the depths of the world's largest rainforest. The isolation of Amazonian groups for millennia, and separation from the Pacific coastal groups, let to genetic differentiation still seen in modern-day groups. Moreover, it was predominantly Amazonian groups that spread northward into the Caribbean and gave rise to the Taino and Carib groups first encountered by Columbus in 1492." Western Africa (16%): "The West African component of your DNA has roots that are likely 100,000 years old, spanning most of the western regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. African Americans, as well as other African Diaspora groups, share this lineage. The split between this cluster and the hunter-gatherers of the Central and Southern African forests and deserts dates back to the "Out of Africa" event more than 60,000 years ago. In more recent times, farming began in Nigeria and quickly expanded east, south and then southeast. Within the last 2,000 years, Bantu Farmers with origins in West Africa spread throughout Africa. A mixture of resident populations, this cluster spread with the historic Muslim expansion from the Middle East and the New World slave trade. Today, this ancestry is seen in people with West African roots, including Senegalese, Ghanaians, Liberian, Guinean, and Nigerians, as well as people with more Saharan ancestry, such as those from Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Throughout the western world, African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Afro-Brazilians also carry this genetic fingerprint in high numbers." This is the one that gets me: Northwestern Europe (21%): "This regions of Northern Europe is a biogeographical composite of populations that include British, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Northern French, Belgians, Dutch, Danish, and some Scandinavian and German groups. So, much more than established historical population, it is a prehistoric region characterized early on by a long period of glaciation, with episodic habitation by hunter-gatherer groups migrating from the south and east. With the advent of agriculture and the spread of plant domestication some 8,000 to 6,000 years ago, the people or Northwestern Europe grew from the mix of early settlers and new farmers. Over the last 4,000 years, the region became subdivided into the ethnic and political entities we now know. This biogeographical region is seen in many people of European ancestry, as well as most people living in the U.S., Canada, and Australia today. It is also seen in small percentages in groups from Latin America, as well as in countries that were part of the British Empire of the 18th and 19th centuries." And to that I say, "WTF!?" The results also has a "genius" category. I will not list all the possibilities given in the report. Information listed states, "National Geographic is very liberal in its definition of genius. Since we are looking predominately at historical figures, our definition of genius is that of "remarkable" or "historic" figure. But, you know we are all geniuses in our own ways." |
| Taken in Rego Center Mall, September 19, 2018 using cell phone (J7). Beard growing 2 years, 5 months, and 7 days. |
| September 15, 2018 - Taken at registration desk of the final Spellabration (Spelling Bee LeFrak City Library's style). Grades Pre-K to 6 |
April 2019 Before - With the beard that grew from April 12, 2016 to April 18, 2019. Was going to try for 5 years!! After - The 3 year old beard gone! |
| Lumix April 14, 2019 |
| Gallaxy J7 Refine April 18, 2019 |
| Gallaxy J7 Refine April 18, 2019 |
June 2019 |
| June 8th We Be Jammin' t-shirt bought in Antigua. Long story how photo got inverted. |
| June 27th, on my terrace |
| June 23rd, sitting on chair on front porch of The Fred |
Hope I didn't scare you!! Do I ever smile? |
| Blast From The Past event, LCTA/Get Right Fitness, 08/21/2019 Winner of a basket of products. Photo by Mr. Galloway. |
| Left and above: Helping out at the library. 09/14/19 Right - At the Bird-In-Hand Bakery. Reading the ingredients of cantaloupe chunks package. 09/21/19 |