Dorothy Davis — Formal Portrait, 1944

A second studio head-and-shoulders portrait of Dorothy Marie Davis, nineteen, taken the year after the 1943 graduation portrait. She appears slightly older — dark hair brushed back, a softer half-smile, a printed dress instead of the dark collar of the year before. The typed caption Robert Earl set beneath the print in the 1990 Heritage reads simply: “Dorothy Davis in 1944.”

What it documents

A working-year portrait. By 1944 Dorothy was bookkeeping full-time at Citizen’s Bank, Marietta. Robert Earl was in the Pacific theater. The two had not yet met; their marriage was still nearly two years out (20 April 1946). The portrait is the waiting image — a young Marietta woman during the war, the year before the war ended and the year before the soldier who would become her husband would come home through California and find his way back through Marietta.

Source: The Wildermuth/Fleming Heritage by Robert Earl Wildermuth, 1990 — Davis section.