Stella and Ted Chong wedding day — nine on the Cassady Avenue porch, c. April 1945

A nine-person group photograph on the front porch and walkway of 230 N. Cassady Avenue, Bexley — the Charles Leonard and Lillie Dale Eesley family house — on Stella and Ted Chong’s wedding day, c. April 1945. The largest single group frame from the wedding day batch the archive holds.

What the photograph shows

The group stands in two informal rows in front of the white-columned front porch of the Bexley house. A small child in a dark hat is held up at left; the adults form a long line across the frame. Stella stands at right of center in a dark coat with large white buttons (the same coat she wears in the labeled five-person group); Ted Chong is at far right in his U.S. Navy double-breasted dark dress uniform.

Other figures visible from left to right: a woman in a dark coat (older, glasses); a younger woman holding up the dark-hatted child; a man in suit and tie; a woman in a pale dress; a woman in a dark patterned dress; a young woman in a dark sweater dress (likely Helen Eesley, recognizable from the labeled smaller group); a man in a dark fedora and three-piece suit (likely Will Eesley); Stella; Ted. A younger woman seated in front holds an infant.

Cast is partially identifiable from the labeled smaller-group photograph from the same day, but the full nine-person cast is not yet locked in.

Why this is the wedding day

The Bexley house location, Stella’s dark coat with the white buttons, and Ted’s Navy dress uniform all match the labeled five-person group photograph at the same address whose back carries the KISCO Certified Photo Service stamp APR 10 1945 and the handwritten caption “about 1942-5.” The two photographs are from the same wedding day.

It is plausibly the fullest documentary frame of Eesley family + Chong family + extended-family gathering this archive holds — the Bexley household that had carried Aunt Ota’s 1930 deathbed and would soon carry Lyle’s August 1942 Cabanatuan death was, in April 1945, the venue of Stella’s wedding day.

Source: Eesley family archive; surfaced June 2026 by Roberta Burnes Walker as part of the c. April 1945 wedding-day batch. Cast partial-IDs from the labeled companion frame.