This is a photograph of my great-grandparents, William and Alice Stover Mishler (standing), and my great-grand uncle and aunt, Benjamin and Cecilia Stover Janes (seated). Alice and Cecilia were the daughters of Wesley Stover and Marie Elisabeth Langevin of Kent County, Michigan. Both couples married within months of each other in Grand Rapids - my great-grandparents in November 1913; Benjamin and Cecelia in March 1914. The sisters shared a special relationship.

My family has many pictures of William and Alice Mishler and their three children - at the beach, the river, posing on front porches and along side cars. William was co-owner of Mishler and Parsons, a downtown Grand Rapids barber shop. He was always known as a barber in our family, but he also worked as an assembler and stenciler from about 1917 to 1922, in the prolific Grand Rapids furniture industry.

His unexpected death in 1930 is the first thing my family talks about when William is discussed. Many years ago my grandmother, his daughter, told me he cut his finger while shoveling coal to heat the house and died from an infection. I recently met some of William's nieces and nephews who thought the cut was received from his work as a barber. William died in February 1930 just three months after the Black Tuesday crash that started the Great Depression.