Eesley Family Group Portrait, c. late 1940s – 1960s

A formal Eesley family group portrait, taken sometime between the late 1940s and 1970, at Charles and Lillie Dale Eesley’s home in Bexley, Ohio — the leafy Columbus suburb that was the family’s center for forty years. The upper bound is set by two deaths: Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley (“Grandma Eesley”) died in 1970, and Stella Sunn Chong died February 15, 1971 at age 45. Both are present, so the photograph is no later than 1970. The Bexley location is per Aunt Maggie’s identification in a 2019 family email thread: “The first photo was taken at Charles and Lilly’s home. Stella and Ted there too.” Eleven people, all identified by Chuck from family memory, with additional context from Aunt Jeanne, Aunt Maggie, cousin Roberta, FamilySearch records, and Ted Chong’s 2013 obituary.

Left to right:

• Thelma — engaged to Dale Eesley when he died young; she stayed close to the family until her own death in the 1970s.
• Don’s Peggy — wife of Don Eesley; one of the two Peggys in this generation.
• Don Eesley — brother of Will Eesley.
• Will’s Peggy — Margaret McMaster Eesley — Will’s wife; Chuck’s paternal grandmother. Behind her, Mary Eesley Bean — Will’s sister, author of the 1985 family history.
• Grandma Eesley — Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley in the middle. Behind her, Bill Bean — Mary Bean’s husband.
• Stella and Dr. Ted Chong — Stella came to the household from Hawaii during the war, brought over by Charles Leonard Eesley to keep her clear of the West Coast Japanese-American internment camps; she stayed, married Ted, raised SueLynn and a son, sent macadamia nuts back from Hawaii for years. Uncle Will stands in front of them.
• And in the corner, half-hidden — Chuck’s mother, Terrie Lee.

That Terrie is present here pre-1970 — as a Wildermuth child, years before her marriage to Charles — is its own quiet thread: the two lines were already crossing paths in this photograph, twenty-some years before they joined in the next generation.

That Stella and Ted are in it — by the late 1940s or ’60s, with their own household and lives — is the proof that the wartime shelter Aunt Jeanne described had become permanent kinship.