Rick Just
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A Little Photo Mystery

11/18/2020

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Many readers will remember the story about “Jimmy the Stiff” that I posted a year ago. That story resulted in a successful Go Fund Me campaign to get James Hogan a cemetery marker.
 
Idaho Statesman reporter Katherine Jones covered that effort. She recently sent me this photo, sent to her by Roxann Howell Dehlin of Nampa. Ms. Dehlin saw a photo of Hogan that ran with the article, looking a bit out of place in his scruffy clothes, posing with elected officials. It reminded her of this picture her family has.
 
The souvenir photo, apparently made for Sen. Anthony Russell, is well done and goes to great lengths to identify him. Left nameless is the gentleman at the upper left of the picture, peeking slyly around the wall in what we might today call a photo bomb.
 
Practically everyone in the picture wears a hat—even the photo bomber—with the exception of two gentlemen relegated to the back row, perhaps for their error in haberdashery.
 
Mysteries—even the most insignificant ones—are fun. We know next to nothing about who this man was, though it is probably safe to say he was not an Idaho state senator in 1905. What’s your wild guess?

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    Author, Speaker

    Rick Just has been writing about Idaho history since 1989 when he wrote and recorded scripts for the Idaho Centennial Commission’s daily radio program, Idaho Snapshots. One of his Idaho books explores the history of Idaho's state parks: Images of America, Idaho State Parks. Rick also writes a regular column for Boise Weekly.

    Rick does public presentations on Idaho's state park history and the history of the Morrisite war for the Idaho Humanities Council's Speakers Bureau.idahohumanities.org/programs/inquiring-idaho/
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    Check out Rick's history of Idaho State Parks.

    The audio link below is to Rick's Story Story Night set called "Someplace Not Firth"

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