Abandoned photo collection raises questions

A family photo album recovered from an abandoned Plant City mobile home has prompted a search for the owners.

Mary Ellen Gottlieb salvaged the album and a family portrait uncovered by a work crew removing debris from the dilapidated, long-vacant mobile home.

"The roof was caved in, it was in pretty bad shape," she said of the weather-beaten structure. "These people had lost everything. I didn't want them to lose their family photos."

The Brandon woman, who works for a company that helps with foreclosed properties, was there taking photos of the damaged roof when she found the old photos.

Gottlieb first took her find to Fred's Market Restaurant, where she hoped the longtime owners, or local customers of the popular Plant City eatery, might recognize individuals in the dozens of black-and-white snapshots. Striking out there, she brought the collection to the Plant City Tribune & Courier, hoping to find the owners.

"Some of the photos are really old: They're from (the) '40s and '50s," Gottlieb said.

The snapshots are glued into a brown Japanese-made photo album with a cover that bears a coat of arms with a lion design. Many of the people in the photos are elderly.

"One woman looked to be about 80. That's got to be a treasure to somebody," Gottlieb said. "I would hate to lose my family photos; that would be just heartbreaking."

Some of the photographs were taken outside Florida, including several outdoor shots of heavy snow, plus a woman posing in front of a towering Arizona-style cactus. The only color snapshots in the album were taken in 1962 and 1965.

Names on the back of one undated photo identify two women as Rinda Hill and Mollie Black. Hill appears in a group shot with individuals identified as Pink Hill, Edd and Essie Hill, Winnie and Jim Grible, Mollie and Harry Black and Willis Hill.

One photo with photo lab markings indicating it was processed in August 1954 shows four people posing in a garden, identified as "me, Dad, Mom & Sallie." Another shows "Mother, Sallie, Lola, Boots, Sadie."

Candy Owens, a five-year Plant City Photo Archives & History Center employee with a reputation for successfully identifying individuals in old photographs, examined the collection.

"Unfortunately, I don't recognize anyone," she said.

"It's a shame people don't put information on the back of the photos," she said. "We get suitcases of pictures all the time."

The museum, at the 106 S. Evers St. museum, has 60,000 historical images digitally scanned and cataloged.

"I'm born and raised here, so a lot of times I know" the people in the photos she's asked to examine, Owens said.

Recently presented with a decades-old photo of the local high school football team, she was able to immediately recognize several players.

Owens, 49, said she grew up in Plant City in an era when "you went to town every day, people had parties, you went to things, and I just tried to get to know everybody."

Gottlieb hopes the owners can be reunited with the photos. If so, she has another hope.

"I'd love to meet them in person," she said. "That would just tickle me."