Single response leads to total identification
Sometimes, our Mystery Photos that seem the most likely to draw a big response are the ones that, instead, stump our readers. This week’s photo might have been one of those if not for a single response from Joyce Bedner.
“That’s me, the second one from the right,” she called to say last week. “Although I looked a little better then than I do now,” she added with a chuckle.
Bedner could not identify the others in the photo but said they were all members of the same club in McMurray and all were about the same age. The club, the name of which she could not recall, was staging a production called “Capers,” she said, and the man in the middle was a director brought to Peters Township for the show.
Bedner’s name and the word “Capers” were enough to do a Google archive search that turned up the original photo and article in the April 15, 1970, edition of the Observer-Reporter. The headline on the front page of that edition read, “Crippled Apollo 13 heads for Friday landing.”
The production, “Calendar Capers,” was staged by the McMurray Century Club in the Peters Township High School auditorium on April 16-18. Main roles in the musical were played by Roland Tisdale, Nanette Meges, Vicky Kerr and Janet and Fuller Pierpont.
Charles Cain, from Jerome Cargill Productions of New York, directed the show. He would return in November 1972 to direct “A Cavalcade of Musical Memories,” staged at Trinity High School by the Daughters of Current Events Club.
“He taught us all the moves,” Bedner said.
Bedner and her husband, Patrick, are still living in McMurray. At the time the photo was taken, Bedner was teaching elementary school, but she spent most of her career teaching Spanish at Peters Township High School, from where she retired last year. The couple have three children who all went through Peters Township schools.
As was the custom at the time for the “Society page,” women were usually identified by their husbands’ names, which makes tracking them on the Internet difficult.
“I think they all moved to many different places,” Bedner said.
Look for another Mystery Photo in next Monday’s Observer-Reporter.