A Second World War-era wedding photo found in a wallpaper sample book by a local business has been reunited with family members of those in the photo thanks to a social media post.
On March 16, Barrydowne Paint posted the photo on their Facebook page, saying the business was “hoping to harness the power of the internet to get a photograph back to its family.”
The business explained that years ago, a customer borrowed a wallpaper book from the store, and returned it with the photo left inside.
“We have saved it in the hopes of returning it to its rightful home,” said Barrydowne Paint, in the post.
“We think the uniform of the gentleman is a WW1 uniform. Please share this photo in the hopes that we can find someone who recognizes the people in the picture!”
Just a day after the Facebook post went up, Sudburian Sharon Bowes commented on the photo, saying the image was of her late parents, Marie and George Wachnuk. Her daughter, Melinda Bowes, recently picked up the photo at the business on behalf of the family.
Trista Leclair, a manager/team leader with Barrydowne Paint, said the photo was found by Laurel Scott, one of the owners of the business, more than a decade ago.
With the business changing the carpets in its main office recently, Scott was sorting through her stuff, and came across the wallpaper book again, and that’s when she asked Leclair to post the photo on Facebook.
“We just by a fluke posted it, just crossing our fingers, right?” Leclair said. “But never actually thinking that it would make it back to the family. That it actually did was super, super pleasing for everybody. So awesome.”
Melinda Bowes said it was the “wildest thing in the world” seeing the photo of her Baba and Didi (meaning grandmother and grandfather in Ukrainian) on Facebook.
“It's such a random thing to sort of be scrolling through Facebook and see these two people who were so amazing and have such a massive impact in our lives, but who, you know, in their lifetime would never, ever have any idea what Facebook was, or even imagine that something like that would have been possible, right?” she said.
The family has other copies of the photo, so it wasn’t a long-lost image. They’re not sure who exactly was responsible for the photo ending up at Barrydowne Paint, as several family members have frequented the business over the years.
But Bowes said that given both of her grandparents are of Ukrainian heritage, it’s strange that the photo would end up on the internet now, of all times, when Ukraine is under siege by Russian forces.
“The Ukrainian culture has been very, very heavily entwined in our lives,” she said.
The photo was not taken during the First World War, as Barrydowne Paint had guessed, but during the Second World War, on the occasion of the couple’s 1943 marriage.
George Wachnuk passed away in 2001 and Marie Wachnuk relatively recently, in 2019.
George had been an army mechanic during the war, and remained a mechanic for his whole career. He retired as the service manager for a Chrysler Dodge dealership.
Marie worked in men's retail most of her life. Her cooking was legendary, with family and friends loving her borscht and poppyseed cakes, among other treats.
“Baba was everybody’s Baba, you know,” Bowes said, recalling how her grandmother used to feed all of her friends to bursting with her tasty food when she was a kid.
She said she just wants people to know what incredible people her grandparents were.
Bowes said she’s grateful that her own kids, aged 14 and 19, were able to get to know their great-grandmother before she passed away in 2019.
“Their loss is felt tremendously,” she said.
