Charles Leonard Eesley with five of his sons and grandson Tommy, c. 1937–1939

Six men in formal dark suits against a hedge, with one young grandson in shorts and a light sweater at the patriarch’s right hand. From left to right the figures are:

1. Leonard David Eesley (b. 1904) — the eldest son, in his early thirties at the time of this frame.
2. Lyle Eesley (1916–1942) — younger, fair-haired, around twenty-one or twenty-two. He would die at Cabanatuan POW Camp on Luzon in July 1942.
3. Donald Stuart “Don” Eesley (1908–1975) — middle.
4. Will Eesley (1910–1986) — Chuck’s grandfather, the architect.
5. Dale Dudley Eesley (1906–1939) — Charles Leonard and Lillie Dale’s son. He would die at thirty-two in July 1939, which marks the latest possible date for this photograph and which sets the family-label July 1940 date as one year off.

At the far right, the elder man in the lighter suit is Charles Leonard Eesley the patriarch (1879–1972), age fifty-eight to sixty. The young boy standing in front of him is Tommy Eesley — Leonard David’s son, Charles Leonard’s eldest grandson, the “nephew Tommy” of Aunt Maggie’s deck slide of Will at Black Lake around 1933.

The date question

The family date label that came with this print gives July 1940. The GEDCOM gives Dale Dudley Eesley d. 14 July 1939 (FSFTID MCZ8-WYX). Chuck has, on closer examination of the print, identified the fifth figure as Dale — which means the family-label date is one year off and the photograph is from circa 1937 to summer 1939, the last window in which Dale was alive.

A penciled-on-the-back date label drifting by a year is among the most common artifacts of family memory; either the writer of the label mis-dated the print at the time, or a later transcription confused the year. The figure-IDs from family memory carry far more evidential weight than the year-label.

Why this frame matters

This is the only photograph of Lyle Eesley currently placed in this archive: a young man in his early twenties, second from left, three to five years before he shipped to the Philippines and never came home. The frame catches him at home in Bexley, in formal dress with his father and brothers, in the last window before the war redirected the rest of his life.

It is also one of two surviving photographs of Dale Eesley as a young adult in this archive’s keeping — and the one definitive frame of him standing alive in the family before his death at thirty-two.

It is also one of two surviving photographs of Tommy as a small boy in this archive (the other being the c. 1933 Black Lake frame with his uncle Will).

Family identification of the figures by Chuck Eesley, 2026-06-04.