Wizblog

Mom on CNN.com

My son called me yesterday afternoon from Raleigh to inform me that, quite by chance, he had just seen a photograph of his grandmother on the home page of CNN.com.

Now, my mom gets around pretty well for a lady who just celebrated her 89th birthday a couple weeks ago, and her kids can't just drop in on her and expect to catch her hanging around the apartment, what with the busy schedule she keeps. But on a day which very well might have featured luminaries like Yasser Arafat, Al Gonzales or the U.S. Marines on the home page of the International Edition of CNN.com, it's fair to say the last person you're expecting to see when you log on to CNN is your mom. But there she was, big as life. Okay, getting real here, even on a slow news day this would have been a shocker.

Here's a screenshot of Mom's "15 minutes of fame", and a better quality version of the photograph (she's the one on the right, out of uniform).

The occasion was Veterans Day, and the Plain Dealer had published the same picture as part of their coverage of a new exhibit of WWII memorabilia in Cleveland. It featured the contributions of women in the military in WWII, where Mom served as an Army nurse in New Guinea and Australia. A collection of her photographs was on display as part of the exhibit, and this photograph was snapped at last week's opening.

When I talked to Mom today, she was underwhelmed at her erstwhile internet celebrity. Until I called her yesterday, she had no idea that her picture had been seen by millions of people all over the world for a couple of hours on a Thursday afternoon. She has a computer and Internet access, but had little interest in checking out her own image. Because today, like 60 years ago in the Pacific Theater, Ruth Wismar had better things to do, and people other than herself on her mind.

Posted by dan at November 12, 2004 06:37 PM