I have coffee most mornings of the week with a small group of people at our local Panera Bread restaurant and over the last few years our discussions have included politics, religion, national, state, and local goings-on among other things.  I have had the opportunity to get to know one man in particular since many times we are the first ones of the group to meet up in the morning.  Manuel is an amazing individual, particularly since he is 96 years old and has an incredibly clear memory that I, and others, wish we had even now in our 60's,  70's and 80's. Also amazing is the fact that he drives himself to coffee each morning and just renewed his driver's license for four more years a couple of months ago. Manuel shared with us that the lady at DMV told him that when he comes back next time for renewal, she is bringing the champagne!

Manuel and I have had the chance to compare notes on many things including our service in the U.S. Navy.  He served aboard submarines and other ships during and after WWII and has been able to give me insight into what his experiences were as a young sailor and I shared my Navy experiences of the 1970's, 80's and early 90's aboard aircraft carriers.  

Along the way Manuel shared with me that he was born in Jerome, Arizona in 1919 and that he had gone back at some point to get his birth certificate and was successful in that it was still available.  I had the opportunity to visit Jerome, I believe in about 1974, and had taken several black & white photos of the old mining town in Arizona while visiting Prescott, Arizona.  According to the Jerome Tour Guide from that time, it was a thriving mining town in the late 1800's and early 1900's and at one time had a population of 15,000 people.  It was the fifth largest city in Arizona at one time but after the mines closed the population dwindled to just 243 people in 1960.

Thinking that Manuel might like to see my photos of his birthplace, I went back to my scanned photo archives and located the photos I had taken in 1974 and put them on my website so that he could take a look at them.  He related several stories of growing up in the mining town as a young boy and provided me with details I was unaware of and that are not part of the Tour Guide, which I have kept all these years. At any rate, I have a new appreciation for the old photos of Jerome that you now see in my "Back to Jerome" gallery. Now I think it would be nice to go back to Jerome and see where my friend grew up and to see how it has changed.