Helena
 

I have to say that I think your wife would have enjoyed this thread. She seemed to get more relaxed as time went on.
I am sorry for your loss, but I hope that posting on here, helps you greive and feel near to her again. She looks to have been a very fun, sexy lady. Thank you for sharing her with us.

I just stumbled upon this thread and I am very sorry to learn that your wife has passed. When I view these photos I can see a woman who has a fun and beautiful soul and I thank you for sharing her with all of us at OCC. I hope that you are doing okay despite such an immense loss and know that all of us here appreciate both of you and this contribution. I hope everyone can agree that in a way, we are your friends, and we are here for you as you share and as you grieve.

Thank you so much for your post. Your wife was stunning and undoubtedly fortunate to have you!

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Thank you all for your kind words. I'm sure she would have been proud of all of this (after she got through chewing my butt for it). I started scanning some stuff yesterday. I began with prints themselves and also some color negatives. The quality really varies depending on a lot of stuff. I never had prints made of the negatives. I took one roll at the same time I shot some of the color nudes. The lighting coupled with the characteristics of the color print film resulted in very distorted color. Some of the prints were done on a textured paper and they do not scan very well. (Kind of picks up the texture as a type of grain) I've done what corrections I could and most of them look OK. So todays pictures. The first one was a week after we met. That was in July of 1973. Shot in her backyard. The second is a semi nude. It is pretty blurred because I had to grab the shot quickly. This was a pure candid shot and she REALLY did not want me to take it. From the condition of the bed clothes and her position I'm sure you all are guessing what we had been up to just prior to the photo being taken. All I will say is whatever you are thinking you are probably right. I had forgotten about the last nude. As a prize once Helena won a Kodak instant camera. The were only made for a few years due to lawsuits by the Polaroid company. The quality of the pictures was not great, and they were subject to fading. I wanted to keep the image and without anything like a scanner ended up taking a picture of the picture. So we have a faded copy, of a faded original image of a poorly exposed photo. There is only so much correction that can be done with something like this. I included it for completeness. Both of these two pictures were taken in 1974. One more thing to think about. Also on the unprinted roll of film are pictures of two paintings I did of Helena. (Very very early in my art training they are appallingly bad. I will never put these on the web). However they would have been taken from black and white photos. And they are nudes. So somewhere in my house may well be at least two more nudes of Helena. There is a chance that these were thrown away 30 plus years ago but I will be looking for them.

This is an absolutely fantastic shot - looks like a famous actress, but I can't quite figure out who:

https://forum.oneclickchicks.com/thu...3/11042899.jpg

Thanks for posting. Your wife has a delectable body! I love those pointed breasts! Lovely to see a wife really enjoying being photographed and willingly taking on the role of a femme fatale!. I really enjoyed this thread!

Touched
 

I too, just stumbled on this thread and I am enthralled not only your wife as a model and you as a photographer, but by your love story as well. You both were so very lucky to have found each other because a love that pure and wholesome is rare indeed.
Congratulations to you for enjoying a love like that for all those years. I am sure she approves of you posting these photos and your story because of the way it touches many of us.

Seal, I haven't agreed with a lot of decisions you have made as a moderator here (Like my opinion matters here at all. Lol), but I gotta tell you that I believe that allowing the OP to continue to post his story and photos here, nude or non-nude, is your best decision ever. Thank you for that. :)

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

By now I suppose that some of you are wondering if we ever had fights or disagreements. If you remember I told you that I proposed marriage after knowing her only 3 weeks. A few days later I had to return to Naples Italy where I was serving with the US Navy. Until I returned for our wedding 8 months later the only contact we had was by letter. (Remember no internet, cell phones, face time, nothing like that) So after we were married and alone together we were still, in many ways strangers. We set a basic ground rule the first day and that was to never go to bed mad. Any fight, argument needed to be settled before we went to sleep. That made for some long nights sometimes but all in all worked really well for us. We both respected each other also and that made a big difference. We compromised and gave in when we realized that the happiness of our partner was more important to us than getting our own way. Anyway it worked for us. So for todays pictures. After we were married Helena came over to Europe, with her mom, to visit some relatives in Munich Germany. I met her there and brought her back down to Naples to stay with me for a month. The first photo is her exploring the city of Pompeii, in 1974. The second shot was taken in late 1974 (I was out of the navy by then) or early 1975 during one of the "nude" photo shoots. She would usually start out clothed and the as she relaxed into the posing would begin to shed the clothing. She loved posing with that hat. The third shot was taken in 1976 or 1977. We visited a "trial garden" to see all the spring flowers. Yes she did wear glasses. She hated wearing glasses and finally changed to contact lenses. I never could convince her that, to me, she was beautiful with glasses as much as without. It may be a while before I post again. There is a bunch of "post funeral" legal stuff to take care of. Till then I hope you enjoy these.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

When we met, Helena was working. I told her that if my salary would be enough for her then she could quit when we got married. She said she would but asked for a set of tools so she could properly take care of the house. She got those for Christmas and from then on made most all of the repairs needed. Plus she took care of almost all of the outside work also. All I did was provide the money. It was a great working relationship. We decided early on that we wanted to travel. To take trips and do/see things. Neither of us needed a huge fancy house. So we were able to take a vacation almost every year. Went a lot of places, and saw a lot of stuff. So what pictures do I have for you today. The first one is a wedding picture. She was very proud of the dress. She only paid 25 dollars for it. She actually paid more for the veil than the dress. I know that every bride is beautiful, but in my opinion she is in the top 5 percent. (OK so I am biased) The second picture is her working outside our first house raking leaves. That picture probably is around 1977 or so. That is one job that we would do together. Our marriage was based in part on having fun in whatever we did. So it probably took us twice as long to rake as our neighbors because we played around a lot. The last picture was taken at the 1984 worlds fair in New Orleans. She is in front of the space shuttle Enterprise. We had a lot of fun on that trip.

Jdviole2, she was a beautiful bride and a sensible woman. Simply beautiful, dressed or undressed.

PS, I just lost my mom, so I have an idea what you are dealing with post funeral and it sucks. I can't imagine losing my wife and partner of 40+ years. 😢

Btw, if you aren't a professional portrait photographer, then you missed your calling!

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Thank you for the compliments on my photography. I'm not a professional. Just a practicing amateur. I do shoot with decent camera gear. (I'm not fond of cell phone photos). The model really makes the difference. The real trick with portraits, at least for me, is to shoot a lot of pictures. That way you get to select the best and put the others away out of sight. Makes you seem better than you are. I have four pictures for you today. The figurine is some of Helena's work. She painted ceramic figures for her primary hobby. (She also quilted and, as I think I mentioned, was a very good photographer herself). The ceramic figure is about 9 inches tall with about a 3/4 inch tall face. Pretty precise work. The outside shot of her climbing the steps was taken in 1976. We were going somewhere and she had gotten dressed up. She much preferred to wear jeans and a simple t shirt. The shot of her on the spiral staircase was taken at Disneyland in California in 1978. The last is another of the wedding dress shots. We took a lot of different ones and used one of them in the newspaper for the wedding announcement. I've been remembering a lot in the last month and thought of two stories about Helena you might enjoy. Both involve some sort of public nudity. One of her choice and one definitely not of her choice. No photos to go with them though, so bring your imaginations along. She has told these stories to our friends before so I know she wouldn't mind my sharing them with you. Those will come tomorrow and/or the day after.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

I promised a story involving Helena and public nudity so here goes. This occurred before she did any posing for me so she was still very worried about being seen nude. Now there are lots of reasons to get married. For Helena and I one of the main reasons was to have someone to play with, to have fun with. My dad was a jokster, always kidding around. Lots of practical jokes in our family. Helena's family didn't do much of that kind of thing if any. Anyway that is how she ended up nude in public. For the first few months after I returned from the Navy we lived with her mom and dad. It was an older neighborhood, houses close together. So, newlyweds, small house and the parents. Not a lot of opportunity for playing any "adult" games. Then they took a two week vacation. It was heaven. One afternoon we were planning to go out for dinner. Helena had just gotten out of the shower and was joking around with me about something. I told her to quit. She said, "or what". I told her if she didn't quit I was going to set her out on the front porch, naked. Then she said something really stupid. She said, "you wouldn't dare". Well, before the word dare had even faded away I opened the front door, picked her up and set her outside, yanked off her towel and closed and locked the door. So its the middle of the afternoon, in a crowded neighborhood. She doesn't dare scream, yell or even really pound on the door. So she politely knocks, and knocks, and knocks. I gave her about 30 seconds of "exposure" and then let her back in. She didn't say anything. I don't know if she didn't know what to say, or was afraid of what she might say. We never did find out if she had been seen by anyone. I do know she proved her love for me that day by not immediately asking for a divorce. For my part I proved mine by never doing anything like that again. I also know that she never said "you wouldn't dare", to me again. The things you do while you are "learning" to be a couple. When she would tell this story to friends later she usually had her arm around me and the story always ended with a kiss. So I guess that was a successfully learned lesson. The first photo today was taken in 1974. We were visiting the ruined city of Pompeii. We are in the "house of the faun". I'm guessing that there are thousands of pictures around the world just like this one. Well this one is mine. The second photo was taken during one of the "nude" shoots. She usually started out wearing different clothes. This was in 1974. The last photo is from 1973. It is the first picture I ever took of her. Sorry about the backlighting. I just grabbed a quick shot. This is how she looked the day I first met her. This is the girl I fell for, all the way. I have another "public nude" story, maybe for tomorrow.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

The second public nudity story really wasn't full nudity. By the time this story takes place she had already posed nude for me. That might have had something to do with what happened. We were going to lots of rock concerts those days. For some of those "adult games" I mentioned yesterday Helena had bought a red sheer top. I mean you could read a newspaper through that material. She got the idea to wear that top to a concert but was worried that it might be a little too sheer. (Fun is fun but a police record is no joke). She and her mom sewed a liner inside the top. It was a layer of white material that was almost as transparent as the red top itself. The combination was thin enough to let her nipples "poke" out and sheer enough that if the light was right and she was positioned right you could clearly see her breasts like she was wearing nothing at all. If she moved, or the light shifted you weren't sure anymore what you saw. The concert was great. (From so long ago I don't remember who we went to hear). For both of us though, the best part of the show was the people sitting directly in front of us. I am not sure how much of the concert the men (and women, I'm proud to say) sitting in the 5 or 6 rows in front of us got to see. They spent a lot of the time turning around trying to figure out if they were seeing her boobs or not. We watched the show and didn't let them know we were aware of what they were doing. After we got home we laughed and laughed about the reaction she got. I had to admit to her that she was right to have the liner sewed in. It made it twice as sexy. She never admitted it but I think it excited her a little to be stared at like that. A few animal photos today and a portrait. Helena was a cat person when we met. The first picture is a shot of her with our first cat Scamper. It was taken sometime around 1989. While she was a cat person, I was a dog man. Living with me she grew to love dogs as well. The second picture is her with our friends dog taken in about 1995 while we were hiking in the Rocky Mountains. Her love of animals wasn't limited to cats and dogs either. The third picture is Helena discussing some important matters with someone she met, again in the Rocky Mountains. Probably taken sometime between 1991 and 1997. The last picture is an "artsy" type of portrait. She asked for this one herself after seeing one something like it in a magazine. That shot is from 1975. Thats it for today. I hope your imagination gave you a good idea of what she looked like in the red top. I can still see it when I close my eyes. And as I remember, it was spectacular.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Just a quick note. I never tire of talking about Helena but I don't want things to become boring to you all. So if you have anything you would like to know about her let me know. Reply here or leave me a personal message. I'll talk about anything (within reason).

Re: My wifes life in front of the camera
 

I am sorry for your wife's passing, she was a beauty and your photography skills were great. I for one am not bored in the least. Thank you for sharing and feel free to share as many pics and stories as you want.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

So a couple of posts ago I said that one reason we got married was to have someone to have fun with. Now I know that life is work and keeping a good marriage is really work. But no one said you shouldn't have fun at work. Helena was in failing health for the last 4 years of her life. But she never felt sorry for herself and never stopped being a fun person to be around. She joked and laughed right up to her last week. Her mom, who died only a couple of years after we married, told me that she never heard Helena laugh as much as when she was with me. That might be my greatest accomplishment in life, that I made the most important person in my life laugh every day. The cemetary where we will lay allows traditional vertical headstones. (Not every place allows that anymore, a lot of them only allow ground level flat stones) The stone I selected will have our names and dates of course. In addition I added something she and I had talked about before. There will be an inscription that says "OH HOW WE LAUGHED". That is not original. I have read of other people using that. However, it could have been written especially for us. I will still have fun and laugh, that is who I am, but it will never be quite the same anymore. OK so here are the pictures for today. The first one was taken in a local museum around 1977 or 78. Sort of ties in with yesterdays animal post. The second was taken in 1974 again in Pompeii. The large block she is standing on was so the citizens could cross the road without stepping in the water (and other more disgusting things) that normally existed in the streets. The last shot is another "clothed" shot from her early photo sessions from 1974/5.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Since we did not spend our money on a fancy house or cars, boats, or other expensive toys we took a lot of trips. While I was still in the navy we got to visit Munich, Naples (where I was stationed) and Rome. After I got home we visited Los Angles and San Diego many times. We also spent a lot of time hiking in the Mountains in Colorado. During one trip to LA we drove and visited sites in Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. We went to two World's Fairs, one in New Orleans and one in Vancouver Canada. We had planned to return to Europe so I could take her to all the countries I had visited but sadly we never got that done. What we tried to do was see all we could while we were young. Her parents had intended to wait until retirement for their big trips, and then her mom passed away in her mid 50's. We decided that when our time came we wanted to be able to say "remember when we did this and saw that" rather than "I wish we had done this or saw that". For the most part we accomplished our goal. Though there were places we never got to and things we didn't get to see, we did a lot in the time we had. The last several years Helena was not well enough to endure a long trip or to do the things she wanted to do, so we revisited the places we loved by looking at the slides we had taken. Right up to the last we were planning future trips. I think we both knew we would never take those trips but neither of us let the other know that. So for todays pictures. The first one was taken in Colorado in around 1979 or 80. I had bought the drinking skin somewhere in Europe. Helena learned quickly to take a drink without shooting the liquid all over her face and body. The second photo shows Helena digging for diamonds, in Crater Of Diamonds state park in Arkansas. Didn't find any stones but she had a ball looking for them. Not all of our trips were "wilderness" types of things. The last picture shows Helena in a garden in Los Angles. I think it was on the grounds of the Hunnington Hartford museum. I'm basing this on the fact that the photo was in a group taken at that museum. More later.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

No story today but maybe a little expansion on each of the pictures. Though most of the pictures I took of Helena were posed shots I enjoyed "surprise" candid pictures also. She didn't like them much. Like the first picture today. She used to say that it was a lot of work being beautiful. Here the work is in progress. She might be smiling but if I remember correctly right after the shutter clicked her middle finger came up. That picture was taken around 1979. The next picture is from the mid 80's. She was taking some kind of medication that caused her face to bloat some. I have very few pictures of her from this time. This was taken in my parents back yard. The next shot is from 1982. It was taken in the badlands of Nebraska. The brown case she is wearing around her neck contains her SLR camera and lens. She is holding (can't see it in the picture) a piece of a fossil mammal jawbone with some teeth. They cover the ground in some areas. (You can't remove them from the area but can pick them up to examine them). The next picture is from 1981 or 82. It was taken somewhere in California. She didn't pose like that much. With her arm on her hip. Don't know why I think it looks very nice. The next picture is taken at Sea World in California also taken in 81 or 82. She is feeding the sea lions. (They had vending machines that dispensed paper cups of chopped fish) One time she was feeding the sea lions and was holding the fish up to make the sea lions rise up. To her surprise a one legged sea gull swooped down and grabbed the fish right out of her hands. Scared the daylights out of her at first. The last picture is from 1980 taking a break somewhere on a trail in Colorado. We very seldom took long trails. Neither of us were in the physical shape to try to hike to the top of the mountains. Still we would average five to seven miles a day on our round trip hikes. All of them were day hikes we never spent the night out. She kind of drew the line there. Mountains were for the sunshine, motels were for the moonlight. That's it for today. Back soon.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Helena had a wide interest in all sorts of subjects. On any particular vacation we might visit a doll museum, explore prehistoric native american sites, visit an "ice cave" and then climb the extinct volcano that created it, and end up touring the Liberace museum in Las Vegas. She was up for almost anything I might suggest. Sometimes what we wanted to see was only a short drive off the highway. Like the first picture. Helena is standing at the edge of the Barringer or Canyon Diabalo meteor crater in northern Arizona. 50,000 years ago a 50 meter wide iron/nickle meteorite struck the earth with the force of a 10 megaton bomb leaving a 1200 meter wide 170 meter deep crater. When I visited this as a boy you could descend to the bottom of the crater. We were hoping to do that this time but they stopped allowing it (probably due to insurance issues). This was taken in the late 80's. The second photo shows the work that Helena put into her photography. She would go almost anywhere she needed to and assume whatever position required to get the shot she wanted. She really was a good photographer, much better than I am. This was taken probably around 1990. The third and fourth photos are sort of related. We were in Utah visiting some national parks in the region again taken in the late 80's. The third picture was taken in Arches National Park. The park contains many natural sandstone arches formed as wind and water wore away the surrounding rock layers. Though some of the arches are adjacent to roadways some require a bit of hiking. In this picture we are on our way to Tower Arch. Part of the trail is along the top of a fin or spine of sandstone. You need to climb this ladder and walk along the narrow ridge of rock for several meters till you can climb down the other side. Helen is at the top of the ladder ready to do the walk. She was a real trooper. The fourth picture is actually outside Arches National Park. We are on our way to Corona Arch. This arch is so large that a small private airplane can fly through the arch. (I found out about the arch by seeing that airplane through the arch moment in a movie I was watching on TV). It is only about 1 kilometer from the parking lot but you need to climb a ladder then up this rock face using the wire rope handrail. Well worth the climb though. The last picture was taken in the late 80's. A rare outdoor shot where she is not wearing sunglasses. Thus explaining the squint. Probably taken at her brothers house.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Lets talk about holding grudges. Though I always thought of her as perfect, I must reluctantly admit that Helena did have a few faults. One was that she could hold a grudge. I only saw this a couple of times but believe me it wasn't pretty. She could forgive you for almost anything, lord knows she forgave me a lot, but she did have limits. I can give you one example of how long she could hold the grudge. There was a television star that she really liked when she was little. I'm not going to tell you who it was, but he was the star of one of the most popular shows of the time. This would have been in the 1959 or 1960 so she would have been 8 or 9. Helena was thrilled to learn that he was going to be the grand marshal of a major local parade in her hometown. The family got there very early so Helena could get in the front row of people lining the parade route. She waited and finally his car came into view. He was waving at the crowd and they were all waving back. Periodically the car would stop for a few moments the move again. The car stopped right in front of where Helena was standing. She ran up to the car to see him. He NEVER looked down. He totally ignored her. She was crushed. This is one of the childhood stories she made sure to tell me. So flash forward 14 years. I heard on the radio that this "major" star had died. When I got home I made sure this was the first thing I told Helena about my day. She only had one word to say about it, "good". I told her that was pretty harsh and she informed me that she couldn't feel sorry for someone who would treat a little girl that badly. I don't know what the criteria were to get on her list but thankfully I never did anything that bad. So for todays pictures. The first one is Helena getting a room ready for painting about 1990. They say you should never do a major project like paint a house with your spouse. We did it three times and never had a bad experience. Helena was a major Marilyn Monroe fan. So on our first trip to California in 77 or 78 she had to visit Manns Chinese theater to put her hands in Marilyn's prints. (They were a great match) The third photo is taken in 1981 at Colorado National Monument. She is holding her SLR camera. In the next photo she is helping out the environment by holding up a rock ledge in the badlands in South Dakota. Probably around 1994. In the last picture she has gotten something on her hands, something sticky as I remember. Please note the look on her face. I can't tell you how many times I saw that same look. (In fact I have a picture of her taken when she was about 2 years old where she has exactly the same expression) About two weeks before she passed away I said something to her and she flashed that exact same look at me. Its a little hard for me to look at it right now. Enjoy.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

I don't know how many times Helena and I were asked how we met. Especially after people found out that we only knew each other 3 weeks before we got engaged. So here is the story. I need to warn you though that this will sound like the plot of a cheesy romance novel or maybe a Hallmark movie but I swear its the truth. In one of my first posts I told you that we met at a picnic sponsored by the company where Helena and my dad worked. I was home on leave from the navy and dad had bought a ticket for me to go to the picnic. Helena was supposed to ride with one of the other young women at work. Friday night she called my dad to tell him that she wouldn't be at the picnic. The father of the girl she was going to ride with had suffered a fatal heart attack. Dad talked her into coming with us. My mom made a point of assuring me that this wasn't any kind of setup. Saturday morning we pulled up in front of her parents house and she came running down the stairs to the car. I fell in love that very minute. We are talking slow motion, soft focus, romantic movie music time. The picnic was held at a local amusement park. Since we were the only two single people near the same age, she asked me if I wanted to go on some rides with her. We rode a lot of rides. A few too many actually. For the first and only time in my life I got motion sickness. (Of course later when people asked me what I thought about her when we first met I could tell them honestly that she made me sick) We held hands as we walked like we had been going together for years. The next week there was a concert with the Edgar Winter Group and the James Gang. I went to her workplace and asked her if she wanted to go with me. We had a great time, and shared our first kiss on her parents front porch somewhere around midnight. (Several years after we got married she told me that the day I asked her to the concert she called the guy she had been going with for more than a year and broke it off with him) Every day for the next week I spent lunch with her in a tiny park (under the interstate) near where she worked. The more time I spent with her the more it seemed like I had known her forever. The following week I was due to return to Naples Italy and the navy. I didn't want to take a chance that she might drift away from me so I proposed. She said yes immediately. None of our parents raised any objections. We were both in our early 20's so it wasn't a "teenage" romance kind of thing. My mom was sort of in a state of shock. Since we hadn't known each other that long she wasn't sure it would last. In fact just after our 25th anniversary a friend of hers asked how we were doing and mom answered "well they are still together". Great show of confidence huh? She truly loved Helena though and so did my dad. Hell everybody loved Helena. Sappy story isn't it. A mixed bag of pictures today. Number one is another Pompeii shot. She is standing next to a public drinking fountain. That was in 1974. The next picture is from the early 80's. She is coming down a staircase from the top of a lighthouse in San Diego. The third shot is in her parents home right after I got out of the navy in Sept of 1974. She was trying out a new hairstyle. Must not have liked it since I never saw it again. The fourth picture shows her relaxing in front of tower arch in Arches National Park. This was in the late 80's. The fifth shot is her at the beach in LA. Again in the late 80's. The sixth picture shows her taking a break in San Diego during the trip in 1990 (the skinny dip trip). The last was taken in 1984 while in New Orleans for the worlds fair.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

When we brought Helena home from the picnic she got out of the car and leaned in the front passenger window to thank my dad and say goodbye to mom and I. When she leaned into the window she put her hand on my arm, as if for support. She told me later that that she did it deliberately so that I wouldn't forget her. She was that way. If she wanted to do or see or have something she didn't let anything get in her way. Not that she was pushy. She just gently manuvered things so that she usually got what she wanted. It is a tribute to her that no one ever got mad at her during her manuverings. Among the many concerts we attended, one of her favorites was Johnny Winter. In case you don't know him he was an albino blues guitarist/singer. Loud, driving, sweaty blues. Usually the concerts we went to were in auditoriums, stadiums, or theaters. This one was held in a party room of a local bowling alley that used to host music shows. They had three party rooms that were connected. Each room had a maximum number of people allowed, to conform to fire regulations. They sold enough tickets to fill all three rooms. Needless to say everyone crowded into the one room where the band was playing. We had seats on barstools in the back of the really small room. Every music group/performer has a typical audience. We certainly didn't fit Johnny Winters core audience. We were fascinated as the people started to come to see that they were almost all "bikers" and their girl friends. Now I never noticed it before but based on this crowd the typical "biker chick" is a really tall woman. With the boots that most of them were wearing they were almost all over 6 foot tall. Most several inches over. Helena was 5 foot 4 inches. She looked like somebodys baby sister in comparison. The show starts and between us and the stage is this entire crowd of giant people. Some were standing on chairs. All were in a party mood. All standing hip to hip pressed tightly together. Helena wanted to see the band and wanted to get closer. I didn't see anyway that was going to happen so I told her we should just stay where we were and enjoy the music. Before I knew what she was up to she hopped off the barstool and began to push her way through all those tall men and taller women. I figured she was a dead woman. Then I saw one of the biker women put her arm around Helena's shoulders and guide her through the crowd to the front by the stage. I didn't see her again until the end of the show. Thats what I meant about her doing whatever it took to get what she wanted. And also what I meant about no one getting mad at her while she did it. We laughed about her "biker gang" experience often. It was one of her favorite memories. So on the the pictures. The first one is Helena at the trial garden you have seen in an earlier post. This was taken on a different visit in 1979. The second picture shows Helena having her first cup of coffee in a motel room on one of our vacations in the early 80's. On trips she didn't function at all well without coffee in the morning. The next picture is Helena at Colorado National Monument. The next picture was a surprise to me. It is another swimsuit shot from the "skinny dip trip". I didn't even remember this one existed. The next shot is another dressed shot from one of the nude shoots. The last picture was taken on Venice Beach in LA. She really wanted to roller skate there after seeing it in so many movies and TV shows. Neither of us had been on skates in years. I fell on my butt the second I tried to stand up. She really laughed about that. I quickly got my "sea legs" though and did very well after that. Helena had a hard time with the skating since she was most used to skating in a rink and not used to a sidewalk with all the sand, rocks, and other junk to block the wheels. She finally ended up on her butt too. That stopped the laughing at me at any rate. This was probably in 1981.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Spoiler alert. Todays post covers some sad material about Helena so if you only want to know the sweet side skip right to the pictures. I warned you. Since life mixes good and bad experiences to shape us I need to tell you some of the bad things that happened to Helena during her life. She had many physical ailments in her life. She had severe bleeding into her brain twice once in 1964 (she was 13) and once in 1994. The latter time required neurosurgery to correct the problem. She also had a stroke and broke her hip. With all of those she had to go to rehab to learn to walk again, and in some cases how to speak and read again. Each time she managed to drag herself all the way back up. She never let these things get her down and never let them stop her from living her life the way she wanted to live it. Then in 2016 she fell and broke both arms at the shoulders. Her body had put up with so much for so long that she didn't recover from this. She had to spend 2 years in a nursing home trying to learn to walk again (the long bed rest she needed made her lose all the muscle strength in her legs). When it was apparent that she was not going to regain her walking ability I took her home. For a year she lived a pretty good life considering. I was her full time caregiver. She was wheelchair bound. It bothered her that she couldn't get outside to help with the yard work anymore. By October 2019 she knew that she was fading. It was sad to see her frustration not being able to do or say what she wanted. (She lost the ability to speak). Just before Christmas it was apparent that she was near the end. I know that everything comes with an expiration date but it just seems unfair that after all she went through it came so quickly for her. I was lucky enough to be with her holding her hand when she died. I had promised her mother when we got married that I would take care of her and be with her the rest of her life. I kept my promise. Sorry this post was a downer but if I am going to tell her story then you need to hear it all. The takeaway from this, of course, is that she was a fighter and never gave up. Her body gave out but not her spirit and humour. OK back to happier subjects. Todays pictures. The first shot is another Pompeii shot from 1974. She is in on of the public baths. In the day they were for men only, women had their own bathing areas. The next picture is Helena on a trail somewhere in red rock country. Taken in the early 80's. The next picture is Helena in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This was where the Oscar ceremonies were head in the 70's. We were in the crowd watching the stars enter the pavilion for the 50th awards in 1978. This was taken a few days after the ceremony. The next picture is Helena, also in 1978, in the Huntington Hartford museum looking at a painting called Pinkie. (She had painted a ceramic of Pinky and wanted to see the original). Behind her is Blue Boy by Gainsborough. The next picture is from 1975 and is one of a series of close up shots I made of her. The last picture was taken in 1980 and shows Helena ready to take a photo in the Rocky Mountains. She loved being out in the mountain air. That's it for today.

Oops
 

Just noticed that the las picture in todays post was a dupe. Sorry about that.

Mod Note: Thanks. I got you covered.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

After yesterdays sad story I thought I'd try a couple of more upbeat stories for today. We used to take our hiking vacations in the fall. We went to Colorado all the time for the hiking and the Aspen trees are so brilliantly colored in the fall that we tried to time our visits when they were at their best. The down side of that is that you could run into snowstorms in the mountains also. On one trip we decided to try to hike to the top of Flattop mountain. It was going to be a long hike but not as bad as some of the mountain top hikes could be. The sky was clear when we started the hike. The path winds through the forest to the base of the mountains. From there it climbs fairly sharply along the side of a narrow valley before it begins to climb up above the trees. The path along the valley is perched right on the edge of a drop off of about 220 meters. The path is not very wide either. Before we had climbed very far it got cloudy and then started to snow. Just lightly at first. It was really beautiful walking through the forest in the snow. We had climbed almost all the way past the valley when we noticed that the snow was getting very heavy. We could not longer see any further than about a meter in front of us if that. Helena was worried about finding our way back down. I assured her we could just follow our footprints in the snow. I turned around to show her and saw that our footprints were disappearing almost as fast as we were creating them. I told her we had better start down. Needless to say the hike back through the valley was interesting since we couldn't see where the dropoff occured. It was slow going. We were both pretty nervous but by the time we got home the hike had become Helena's favorite story of the trip. On our first trip to California, as I have told you, Helena had pretty much planned out the entire trip. All the things she wanted to see. After she layed out the trip for me I told her that she had forgotten to put Disneyland on the list. She looked at me like I was insane. She reluctantly added a day at Disneyland to her list (just for me). So we get to Disneyland and go in. If you have never been to the California Disneyland you enter by passing under some train tracks and through a tunnel and emerge into Main Street. A representation of an early american small town. As you exit the tunnel all the sounds of the outside world seem to disappear and it really is almost like time travel. We had a great day. Lots of fun things to do and see. I thought she was having a good time but she hadn't said anything one way or the other. We stayed through the fireworks and then headed back to Hollywood to our hotel. We had seen a lot but hadn't seen it all. On the way back she turned to me and in a really soft hesitant voice asked if there was anyway we could go back another day. I started to laugh and she got a little mad. She wanted to know what was so damn funny. I told her that I had already planned for us to go there three times. I just knew she would love it. That became a life long joke for us. Anytime she indicated that she didn't think she would like something all I had to do was say the word Disneyland and she would smack me, or if we were in public, I would get "the look". I'm sure you all know, or have given someone "the look". So for today we will start out in Disneyland. This is Helena in front of the town hall next to the "lost parents" sign taken in the mid 70's. THe second shot shows her in a formal garden somewhere, I really don't remember where this was taken. It is around 1980. Third picture is taken on a trail in Colorado. She is in front of an Aspen tree. Unfortunately we were a bit late that year and the brilliant colors had faded. This was 82 or 83. The next picture shows Helena in an outfit that she didn't wear much. I don't know why I think she looks exquisite in blue. This was in the late 70's. Those fall vacations sometimes meant that the temperature was cooler than she liked. No complaints from her though. As you can see she was ready for the cold. Again this was in the early 80's. The last picture is one of the set wearing the hat she had on in the nude mirror shots. This would have been in 74 or 75. (you might notice a lot of dust specs on the picture. I spent about an hour last night working on this picture and still didn't get all the spots removed. It was a really dirty slide. And not that kind of "dirty")

My wifes live in front of the camera
 

Going to skip story time for today. I've been really busy with things here at home. So we will get right to the photos. You have seen a lot of pictures of Helena with her cameras and taking pictures. I have said that I think she was a great photographer. I thought for today I would include a few pictures she had taken. The first picture is one of the gardens at the Hunnington Hartford museum in LA. The skill, to me, in taking a great picture is the composition. Especially today when the focus and exposure are done for you. In this picture she took it from slightly to the side so she could get the hedge included pointing toward the gazebo at the rear. The next picture is a shot she took of some of the Aspen trees I told you about. This shot better shows the brilliant yellow of the leaves. The third shot is of sunset over a lake in Colorado. Sunset pictures are tough to take. Her camera did NOT do the exposure for you. You were expected to focus, set the shutter speed and select the correct exposure manually. Its a great picture. The fourth picture is Helena in one of the cemetaries in New Orleans. Supposedly this is the cemetary where, in an unmarked crypt, is the body of Marie Lebeau a Voodoo priestess. (Keep in mind she is supposedly buried and many places in New Orleans) This was taken in 1986 when we went down for the Worlds Fair. The next picture is Helena again in the gardens of the Hunnington Hartford taken in 1978. The last picture for today was taken in 1980 at the trial gardens we used to visit.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

I'm afraid that Helena's upbringing did not prepare her well for marriage, especially marriage to me. Her mom was European and had a casual attitude toward nudity. Her dad was a different story. (Helena told me once he, as a photographer, had taken topless pictures of her mom but destroyed them almost immediately because he was afraid someone might see them). I on the other hand, since I was a teenager, have always been relaxed about being nude and being seen nude by others. Never seemed to bother me. I've told you about her feelings about nudity when we first got married. Anyway. Helena had never seen the ocean so on our first trip to San Diego she was determined to go to the beach. We went to Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. They are sheer cliffs dropping straight into the ocean. Spectacular. Close by there is a metal staircase that you can walk down to the beach. We went down and began to walk along the edge of the water. We used to go on vacation in the spring so it was a little too cold to go swimming but the sun was very warm. We were having a great time. We'd been walking about 15 minutes when we came across a guy laying on the beach getting some sun. He said hi. We said hi. We stopped and talked to him for a few minutes and then went on with our walk. About 10 minutes later Helena stopped and turned to me. In almost a shout she said "that guy was NAKED!!". It had just registered with her that he was sunbathing nude. It bothered her that she didn't notice right away. I told her that it probably was that he was so relaxed and natural about his nudity that he relaxed her enough that she didn't notice. It made quite an impression on her. (In fact I think she was disappointed that he was gone when we came back) I don't know if that led to her "skinny dip" on a later trip to San Diego or not. If so I owe him my thanks. On to todays pictures. The first one is a "surprise" nude. I do not remember taking this. It was taken in a motel in Arizona in 1985. A bit blurry because I was in a hurry to get the shot before she covered up. Her favorite way to refer to me when I was doing something "naughty" was PIG. If I was REALLY being bad then she called me "wh*r*". This was the first time I got called wh*r*. She was not happy with me. The next shot is also from 1985 and was taken in our motel room. We stayed at a place called "Little America". Red velvet flocked wallpaper. Pretty ornate. She was happily tired when I took this. The third picture was from 1990. It was taken just outside of Balboa Park in San Diego. Helena loved to wear short dresses, skirts and shorts. When she came to Naples to stay with me we were on a bus and this very tiny Italian "grandma" started giving me hell about letting my wife dress like that. She patted Helena's knee and chattered at her, saying basically she had to be careful dressing like that around all those Italian boys. Helena got a big kick out of that. The next picture shows Helena coming out of a cliff dwelling in a place called Walnut Canyon national monument in Arizona, again in 1985. This is a prehistoric native american dwelling. I don't believe you are allowed to go in the ruins anymore. On the walls you could see the handprints and even fingerprints of the women that applied the mud to the walls. The next shot is of a tired Helena at the Grand Canyon in 1985. We had been walking along the rim and down into the canyon a ways for most of the day and she was pooped. The last picture is also from 1985. We went to the Farmers Market in LA and here she is enjoying her number one favorite thing to do on vacation, eating. I notice that the auto editing put some stars in two places in this post. I completely understand. I'm sure we all know what I was trying to say, that Helena would sometimes refer to me as "a woman who sells her sexual favors". A wh*r*. That's it for today.

This is a beautiful story. Have you ever considered writing a picture book dedicated to her? What you’ve written so far is book-worthy.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

First off I want to mention the post from r3mdh about a picture book dedicated to Helena. I love writing the stories I tell here. It's wonderful remembering all the things about Helena as I compose them, but the memories are still pretty painful for me also. I'm don't think I could stand the work involved in writing a book. Not to mention the fact that I am totally unqualified to write anything more complex than a shopping list. So thanks for the thought but I don't see that ever happening. Besides her story will be here for people to read anywhere in the world, anytime they want. Couldn't get that type of coverage with a book. On to the topic for today. Popcorn and Butter. (sounds like the title and plot of a not very good porn film). One of Helena's favorite snack foods was popcorn. Popcorn dripping with butter. In the mid 90's Helena's dentist told her that she needed to get braces. She had wanted braces since she was a little girl. She had a diastema (space) between her two upper front teeth that she hated. Her parents didn't want to pay for braces so she didn't get them. Now her teeth had shifted and it was medically necessary to get them fixed. One of the forbidden foods when you have braces (all together now) is popcorn. She was very good for a year but something in her snapped one day at the movies. She ate popcorn. For the next three days she brushed, and flossed her teeth spending more time at that than at any other activity. I had to perform checks after every brushing to see if she had any trace of the forbidden snack in her mouth. I never could find anything and neither could she. Wednesday she had her appointment with the orthodontist. She went into the treatment room with the dental assistant leaving me in the waiting room with all the moms and dads who were waiting for their kids. Less than 30 seconds later I hear the assistant ask her if she had enjoyed her popcorn. Somehow we missed a hull. I got to laughing so hard I finally had to explain to the waiting parents what the joke was. When we left one of the moms stopped Helena and told her that popcorn was her favorite snack too. Helena was so embarassed. Like I said she loved her popcorn with tons of butter. One of our local theaters had just started allowing you to put your own butter on the popcorn. The Saturday after she got her braces off Helena informed me we were going to the movies. She got her popcorn and poured on the butter. (OK we both knew that the "butter" had never been aquainted with a cow and probably was a close relative of motor oil, but we made do) The movie was over at five. By seven Helena had started to develop a stomach ache. By eight thirty the last stage of the digestion process had started. She had the runs for three days. From then on anytime she wanted to overdo adding some kind of condiment to her food, all I had to do was ask her if she wanted any more butter on her popcorn. That would usually end the discussion. On to the pictures for today. The first picture today was taken by Helena's dad in 1971 two years before we met. The second picture was also taken by her dad in 1973 after I had returned to Naples. When I left she didn't have any new pictures to give me so had her dad take this one and she mailed it to me. I had told the guys there that I got engaged and they wanted to see a picture of the girl. When this one came they were there when I opened the envelope. None of them believed that this beautiful girl had agreed to marry me. By the way the outfit she is wearing is the one she had on at the picnic when we met. That is the girl that I saw coming down the stairs. That is the girl I fell so hard for. Both of those pictures came from very small prints so the quality is not as good as I would like. As I have said before you never had to tell Helena how to move or pose. She was a natural. She was the same way with her dad. In fact the only posed picture I have is her high school graduation picture (I may show you some other day) and it doesn't look much like her. Of course the photographer was directing her how to pose in that one. The third shot shows Helena riding the bronze lion at the entrance to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha Nebraska in about 1987. Next we have Helena taking a break somewhere in California probably in 1978 or 9. Next a shot from the early 80's again in California, I think at Knotts Berry farm, but not sure. The last shot is a sexy shot for you, also from a print. I do not even recall taking any color prints during her "nude" posing sessions but she is clearly wearing the same transparent nightie she wore for those pictures. This is taken in a different room than the nudes but still. Somewhere I should have the negative for this. And since I can't imagine I only took one picture on print film there must be others. All I have to do is find them. Maybe someday.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Today I'm going to talk briefly about sex. I strongly believe that what goes on between two people sexually is nobody's business but theirs. However, this brief story about sex should give you more insight into the way Helena thought and acted. She always worked hard planning things to get the best outcome for everybody in every situation. Helena had something happen to her when she was a very little girl. I'm not going to go into much detail except to say it involved a male relative and lots of inappropriate nude touching on many different occasions. As she got older it was difficult for her to experience intimate contact of any kind. She found it impossible to give or accept love with anyone but her parents. Though she dated and had a steady boyfriend when we met she told me it never went beyond kissing and clothed touching. It made her too uncomfortable. She said she had to force herself to do even that much because she thought it was what "normal" people did. She did not get any pleasure from it. She told me this story on our second date. I told her I understood and asked if it bothered her that when we met I had held her hand. She had an amazed look on her face when she said that with me it felt good. It felt normal. When we got home I asked her if I could kiss her goodnight. She didn't answer but took my face in her hands, and kissed me. During the next couple of weeks we would hold hands, kiss, and touch each other gently but no more than that. I didn't push. I figured that if were to go further it had to when she felt comfortable. I could wait. She was worth it. After I returned to Italy Helena began to worry a lot about our wedding night. She wanted it to be perfect. She wanted it to be special for both of us. She didn't want the trauma of her past to get in the way. She was afraid she would freeze up and ruin the night, making it memorable all right but for all the wrong reasons. I came back home a week before the wedding to help with things. She still was worried so decided to talk it over with her mom. Then she came up with a uniquely Helena plan. The wedding was on Saturday. I was staying with my parents until the big day. On Wednesday afternoon the doorbell rang. It was Helena. She came in and in a soft, slightly shaky voice said that she was thinking that we should take a practice run at the wedding night. Prior to that day I had not seen her naked, and she had never been naked in front of any man. We were both nervous. I am not going to provide details (like I said, nobody's business but ours) but I will say that she didn't hesitate or freeze up. We acted just like two kids playing a really fun adult game. On our wedding night we were both relaxed around the other and comfortable being naked in each others arms. The night was perfect. It was special. Later we always referred to that particular Wednesday as our "undress rehersal" for marriage. The first picture for today is another one from our painting project. Helena is stripping wallpaper. The people that lived in the house before us had trouble getting the wallpaper to stick so they used Elmers Glue. We had to use razor blades to remove the paper from the walls. This was in 1990. The second picture shows Helena on the corner of Hollywood and Vine waiting to be discovered in the mid 70's. I discovered her and made her come back to the hotel. The next picture is Helena taking a rest break during a session raking leaves at our first house in 1977. Back to California and the Japanese Bridge on the grounds of the Hunnington Hartford in 1978. Another swimsuit picture from the skinny dip trip. This is from a color print. The last shot is from a very small color print probably taken in 1979 or 80.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

My father was in his upper 80's when he died. In many ways though he never grew any older than fourteen or fifteen years old. Mom used to complain that he never took things seriously but that wasn't really true. When he needed to act like an adult he did so, and quite successfully. Its just that most of the time he prefered living as a teenager. His practical jokes ran to the juvenile and he loved to have fun 24/7. I inherited that from him. Helena caught it from me. We always tried to have fun whatever we were doing. When either of us was feeling down the other could always raise their spirits. Helena had a more deeply emotional response to things than I did and seemed to take the bumps of life harder because of that fact. Sometimes she needed a little more to bring her happiness back. I quickly learned that she responded well to shock tactics. The totally unexpected, if funny or shocking, could jolt her out of any mood she was in. Thankfully I was just adolescent enough to try anything to cheer her up. We were out in the front yard one day raking the leaves. It was a cold day and there weren't too many people outside but there were a few. Helena was upset about something and at one point was near tears. I called out to her. When she looked up it was to see my bare ass shining in the sunlight. She gasped so loud that she started to choke. Whatever was bothering her was forgotten as she spent the next ten minutes yelling at me for what I had done. "What if the neighbors saw you? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" (FYI in case you are wondering the answers to her two questions were "so what" and "not in the least"). A few months later we were at the mall. Something was bothering her. Before she could get too upset I let her see me reaching to undo my belt and that is all it took. Her mind quickly switched to another track. She said that she never knew what I might do, but really I was only trying to do one thing. To make her happy again. If her worries were justified and we needed to do something about it we did. But we always did it without a panic and if there was any way to, we did it with humor. All of todays pictures showcase her in her more playful moods. The first picture is Helena responding to my grafitti while we were painting the living room in our first house in 1975. Note the name says Helen. Her legal name is Helena but she also went by Helen. (I had some other names for her too but that is for later). The second picture shows her behind bars in Silver Dollar City (a theme park in Missouri) in 1976. You can see that space between her front teeth I mentioned a couple of posts ago. The third shot shows her in a fun house type mirror in California sometime in the early 80's. Number four shows her getting even with me for my putting the moves on two wooden saloon girls. Its just my opinion here but if anyone could bring life to that wooden guy it would be her. I think this was taken at Knotts Berry farm again in the 80's. The fifth picture is the classic "OH NO I just sat on a cactus face". This was in the cactus garden at Balboa Park in 1990 probably the same day she skinny dipped the pool. You can see that gap in her teeth again. In the last shot she is attempting to prove that she is just as much a fashion model as any manequin. I think she proved her point. This was in California in the mid 80's.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

The way I create these posts is to try to write out the story the night before I'm going to upload it. I do that to save daylight hours for all the other things that life requires. I already have a list of things I would like you to know about Helena, and I and only need to put them into words. Last night though I found myself having trouble writing about the topic I had chosen. The problem was what I had done during those daylight hours. I had gone to a financial advisor to have Helena's name taken off of an investment account. No big deal. I've done this four or five times already and it hasn't bothered me up to now. What happened this time was that one of the forms I had to sign had my name and marital status next to each other on the same line. This was the first time I had seen the word "widower" associated with my name and it just hit me like a hammer. Last night every time I tried to start to compose a story for all of you I would see "widower" in my mind and I would start crying. I think the new topic I selected for today will get me beyond this. Several of our friends have asked me what I miss most about Helena being gone. A little insensitive maybe this close to her passing but, hey human nature I guess. So their first guess was sleeping without her in the bed next to me. Another guess was the house was so quiet now with no one else there. There were a lot of other guesses. Nobody got it right. What I miss most is not being able to hold her hand. Everytime we left the house, where ever we went, no matter who was around we held hands. If we had to let go for any reason, as soon as we could, we reached for each other again. That simple contact was very important to both of us. That never stopped in all the years we were together. When we would have to separate for some reason I felt funny, like a part of me was missing. I feel that every day now. Like part of me is missing. Because though I can see her every day in all the pictures I have of her. Though I can hear her voice on the recorded greeting on our voice mail system. No matter how long I stand with my arm out stretched I know that I will never again feel her hand in mine. And that causes me real pain. People always say that the pain will fade. Well I'm not sure I want it to. I don't want to forget what it felt like to love someone that much and to be so loved in return. When I die I want my last conscious thought to be of Helena, I want the last thing I see in my mind to be her face, and I want the last thing I feel to be her hand taking hold of mine. Hey thanks for putting up with this. Tomorrow I will have a story of Helena, a snake, and a toilet. Should be more upbeat. The first picture today is Helena in 1991 on her 40th birthday visiting Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. I've got a funny story about her 40th but will save that for another day. The second picture was taken at the Dorothy Chandler pavillion in LA in 1978. Third we have Helena just outside the main entrance to Disneyland in California in the late 70's. Number 4 is Helena at our friends house in Denver in the early 90's. We've been hiking in the mountains for several days as you can tell by the sunburn on her face. See where her sunglasses left the skin a lot lighter. The fifth picture is at the trial gardens in the mid 70's. The last picture is also from the trial gardens. That was probably my favorite top (other than the red one she had on at the concert) that she wore. I wanted her to leave it bit more loose to allow for more movement and possible nip slips but she outvoted me. Its OK I still think it does a good job of showing her upper body off to good advantage.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Helena hated snakes. All kinds of snakes. Any snakes. She would hyperventilate and come very close to passing out when she saw a snake. Our first house was not very well caulked around the foundation and let all kinds of bugs and (yes) snakes into the interior of the house. Also the neighborhood we lived in had lots of snakes. We also had large dogs living in the houses to the right, left and behind our house. So our yard was kind of a snake refuge. We had a mating ball of garter snakes once in the back yard. A group orgy of 200 or so garter snakes writhing around in a large mass. Helena refused to come out and see and didn't even want me to take a picture of it for her. I would get panicked calls at work from time to time and when I got home I would find Helena sitting outside on the back stoop waiting for me to enter the house and corner the beast. At one time or another we had them in the kitchen, the living room, the basement, and even once under the bed. One day Helena got up and started her morning routine. Like all of us, I expect, a part of that routine involved sitting briefly on the toilet. While she was sitting there she felt something tickling her ankle. When she looked down she saw a snake crawling over her foot on the way out into the hall. By the time I got home she had calmed down and the snake was gone. She couldn't tell me how she got rid of the snake. Everytime she started the story she would relive the panic and couldn't continue. This is one time where humor did nothing to help. (I told her that if you had to encounter something that scared the crap out of you sitting on the toilet was the best place to be) She didn't find me funny at all. Years later we went to California and I wanted to visit a reptile farm they had there. Supposedly they had the worlds largest crocodile. I don't know if that was true but it was a big one. The had all sorts of other reptiles including, of course, tons of snakes. All of them were in glass aquariums. Helena fought against her fears and finally was able to get close to examine all the snakes without panic setting in. She was looking at the King Cobra they had and was disappointed. She expected to see the movie version with the hood flaring out. Instead the snake was relaxed and just looked like a regular snake. By now she was pressing her nose against the glass to really get a good look. Now I swear I was just trying to help her get a good view. I knocked on the side of the aquarium. In less than a second the cobra raised up about a foot and a half, flared out its hood (real movie snake style) and lunged at Helena's nose. She levitated a good meter off the ground and instantly lost both the ability to breath and the power of speach. She recovered quickly though, mainly so she could give me holy hell for what I had done. I tried to explain that I just wanted her to fully experience the "wildlife fun". I could have saved my breath. The excuse meant nothing to her, I don't even think she heard me. She yelled at me for a good ten minutes, and I may be wrong but I don't think she even took a breath in that time. I was eventually forgiven but the incident was never forgotten. The first picture for today is Helena on our first trip to California in 1975 coming back up the stairs from the beach, where she had encountered her first nude sunbather. The next shot is from 1979 and another trip to California and another beach. Next is a slightly blurry clothed picture from one of her nude sessions in early 1974. Next we have a shot from the Worlds Fair, I think this was in New Orleans in 1986. The next picture is Helena running across a medow in Germany in 1974. This was about a month after we were married when she and her mom came over to visit some relatives and I went up to Munich to meet her and bring her back to Naples with me. The last shot is another of Helena and the hat. This is from 1975.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

The incident that I mentioned in the "sex" post that happened to Helena when she was a kid made it very hard for her to trust people. Everyone in the past who she told the story to had betrayed her trust in them. She had retreated into herself as far as revealing anything about her past went. Yet she told me on only our second date. When I asked her to marry me I was due to get out of the navy in a year and had absoulutly no idea of what I was going to do or how I was going to make money to support us. That never worried her. She placed all her trust in me. She knew, somehow, that I would figure it out. My first entry level job really didn't pay very much. I told her that if she thought it would be enough she could quit her job and stay home to take care of the house. She quit immediately. She told me later that she wasn't worried. That she knew I would soon be making a great deal more money than when I when I started out. She had unending faith in me. As a part of my job I occasionally had to leave in the middle of the night to meet some of the women I worked with to resolve problems. When that happened I might not be home for hours (once I didn't get home for two days). She never had any suspicions that I was fooling around on her. She trusted me. When we would be out somewhere she would call my attention to good looking, or scantily clad women just in case I might have missed seeing them. She knew I would never leave her. I repayed that trust every chance I got. For example. Helena loved to dance. I, on the other hand, would rather have my feet chopped off at the ankles rather than have to dance. Our friend, who lived across the street, had recently been divorced. A couple of times a month she and Helena would go out and hit all the clubs and bars that had dancing. Our friend was looking for a hookup. Helena was looking to dance. She would have a drink or two but never once came home drunk, and never was out very late. I have always been a late night kind of person so I would be up when she got home. We would talk about the guys she danced with. She even had some regular guys that she danced with a lot. She always wore her wedding ring and let them know up front that dancing was all they would get from her. No one ever tried anything. If she really liked them well enough they might get a kiss on the cheek when the dance was over. In fact the only conversation we ever had on the topic of other men and other women was when she told me that if I ever had an affair it had better not be with any woman she knew. I wanted to ask if that meant that it was OK for me to have an affair as long as she didn't know the woman. I didn't ask for two reasons. 1) I was too much in love with Helena to even be able to imagine being with another woman. And 2) I was afraid she meant that if she didn't know the woman then there would only be me to deal with. If she knew the woman, then there would be two bodies to dispose of. For us Love, Honor, and Cherish were not just words in the wedding vow. It was the way we lived life. More than one person has asked me if I was going to get married again. I answerd all of them that if you were used to perfection why would you go for anything less. For me, there will never be a person who will be as vital a part of my happiness as Helena. The first picture shows Helena in the town of Munt Germany (near Munich) in 1974. She had gone to get her hair done. As usual she is dressed in a really short skirt. Number two is Helena having a free beer at Busch Gardens in California in the mid 70's. You used to be able to tour the brewery and then get some beer in the attached beer garden. They also had a huge garden area with tons of exotic birds. I don't think they are open anymore. The third shot was one that Helena hated. She always thought her butt was too big and really hated it when she saw I had taken a picture with her ass as the point of interest. Taken somewhere in Arizona in the late 70's. One of my favorites. Number four is in Colorado in the early 80's. Notice that she is wearing a pack. When we hiked in the mountains we both wore packs. We took water, rain gear, rope, first aid stuff, matches, anything we might need in an emergency. In addition I had a buffalo skinner knife on my belt. In a pinch it would cut down small bushes or even trees. Picture number 5 is Helena in her Captain Morgan stance. This was taken in the Petrified Forest in Arizona in the late 70's. The last shot Helena is resting in a garden. Not sure where or when this was taken. It kind of looks like the tower at the Grand Canyon. If it is then it would also be in the late 70's.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Just a short story today. If you had Helena for a friend then you really didn't need anyone else. As an animal lover at one time we had five different neighbors that would regularily give us their house keys so we could take care of their dogs and cats while they vacationed. Helena did most of the work during the day and then would go over at night with me to finish up for the day. She loved caring for the animals. She also took in the mail for the people so they didn't have to stop having it delivered. But the best example I can give you of Helena as a friend involves the woman that moved in to the house behind ours. She worked for the same company I did but not in the same division. We were back fence neighbors, if you know what I mean. We talked whenever we were both out working but never visited back and forth. We were busy and the woman had her mother living with her. A few years after she moved in the mother's health started to fail. One day when we were both out working the woman mentioned to Helena that she was getting worried because her mother would insist that she was eating lunch but when the woman came home the food was still in the refridgerator. She didn't want to have to put her mom in a home but she was getting just bad enough that she was worried about her mom not getting the right nutrition. Helena asked her if she could come over and make sure her mom ate. The woman was very surprised. She told Helena that it would be every work day. Helena told her that wouldn't be a problem. She could come over to make lunch and then would sit with her mom while she ate. The two of them could then watch a couple of soap operas. Helena said that way her mom could have company for a couple of hours a day. Our neighbor started to ask Helena how much she would charge her for that. Helena stopped that conversation quickly. There would be no charge. The woman didn't know what to say. Helena told just to say yes. Helena did that for about 18 months until the woman retired and moved away. We talked it over between the two of us a couple of times. Helena told me you didn't charge friends for favors. Period. That was my girl. Pictures for today. The first is another "butt" shot. It shows Helena at the top of a ladder on the way to Corona Arch in Utah. The next shot is a different shot of Helena in a formal garden. Third shot is Helena holding up a rock so I can hike under it. Next shot is Helena resting. Seems like we have a lot of shots of her resting but when you are hiking that is about the only time you have for photos. The fifth shot is Helena petting a rather large stone dog. Don't know where or when this was taken. The last is one taken in my parents back yard.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

When we first got married the subject of children never came up. Frankly we were having too much fun with just the two of us. After a few years we did talk about kids but sort of left things that if either of us really felt the need we would let the other know. Finally Helena sat down with me one day and said she thought we should have a baby. For the next two years we exhaustively pursued conception. (sex is great but not time critical sex, it ends up being work) It never happened. Whether it was me or her we never knew. Nor did we want to find out. Friends asked later why we didn't go to a fertility clinic or pursue adoption. For both of us, in all of life, if things were meant to happen then they would. For us, kids never did happen. In 1994 after she had the second bleeding into her brain her neurosurgeon told me that it was a good thing she never got pregnant, since the experience would very likely have killed her. Helena would have been a great mother. Though she would argue that with me, if she could, I've seen her around kids and she was amazing. Not so much in the later years after her health began to fail but in the early years. Not that we did totally without the experience of kids. Two sets of friends of ours would "lend" us their kids from time to time. At one time or another we took pairs of kids to amusement parks, movies, weekend trips, etc. We were godparents to one of the kids first born son. We got invited to family birthdays, Christmas celebrations, etc. Since we didn't have any kids we were pretty free to vacation when we wanted. I guess we were selfish in that way. People have also commented that it is too bad we never had children so I could have had help with Helena's care. When I look at other people though it seems like a lot of the time the kids don't live close to their parents anymore anyway. Of course in some cases the kids don't even speak to their parents anymore. All in all we were both OK with how life treated us as far as children were concerned. At least with the 4 "kids" we had (by proxy) Helena will be remembered. For myself I really don't care. When I go if the next day no one remembers I was here I'm OK with that. But I feel it would have been a tragedy if my Helena was not remembered by someone. OK on to the pictures. The first one is that High School graduation picture I mentioned before. Not a good picture of her at all it was taken in 1971. The second is another one taken by her dad. I find it very sexy. From 1972. Number three is from the late 70's in Colorado. She was dedicated to taking pictures. He approached it the way she did everything she loved. She put her all into it. Number 4 is at the trial garden. The man is her father. The next picture is from the mid 80's. This is at Blue Lake in Colorado. Her favorite place to hike. Had she wanted cremation this was where I planned to scatter her ashes. (Against the law but screw 'em). The snow she is standing on contains some lichens that turn the snow a dark pink when you disturb the surface. The last one is another of 4 shots I took at the same time. This is NOT the same one I posted before.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

This is a story about Helena's close exposure to the seamy side of life. During those first three weeks when we were getting to know each other Helena asked a million questions about Naples. I told her everything I thought would interest her. All the things to see and do. It wasn't enough. I don't know who she had been talking to but she wanted to know everything about the parts of Naples where nice american girls didn't go. She wanted all the dirt on the bars, the con men, and the hookers. All the people a navy man would meet on a night out. Naples is not that much different from most "navy" towns. The area around the fleet landing is filled with bars, dealers, hookers and other oportunities for sailors to lose what little money they had. I told her about the "hey Joes", those are the guys that will sell you authentic 1000 dollar watches for twenty bucks. Watches that stop running in a couple of days. I told her about the bars and the "B" girls that work there getting guys to pay for champagne (and get served ginger ale). I told her about all the different people that come out at night. And I told her about the hookers. Now I was homeported there. We were permanently stationed on a ship in the harbor for 3 and a half years. So we got to know the people of the night and they got to know us. I told Helena all the dirty secrets I had, and I had quite a few of all types. Lets just say I was no alter boy. She told me that when we were married all that would stop. (That was not a question it was an empahatic statement). I assured her it would. She then told me that until we got married she wouldn't ask what I had done and would trust me to take precautions against disease or whatever. A truly amazing woman. And to answer your question, NO I did not continue my wild ways after we got engaged. I saved myself for marriage. So corny. So we get married. Two months later she comes over with her mom to visit the German relatives. Then she comes down to Naples to stay with me for three weeks. We saw all the sights (there and in Rome), ate lots of good Italian food, and had a lot of fun. She spoke no Italian but every day while I was at work she would go out and see parts of the town. (She became addicted to Gelato, Italian Ice Cream and had a special store she went to almost every day). After about two weeks we were talking about all we had done and seen. I asked her if we had missed anything. You guessed it. She wanted to see the night life around fleet landing. I had only been married a few months but already could recognize when I was going to lose an argument. So that night we hit the town. I took her to the bar I used to frequent. We had only been there a few minutes when there was a police raid. The bar girls grabbed Helena and I and took us into their dressing area in a back room. (I used to enjoy this privilege myself) The italian police never checked the back room. Helena was fascinated. The lights in the room were very bright and you could see just how old these "girls" were. The bar lights are so dim that they all look pretty young. However I know that one of them that I sat with occasionally, was in her mid fifties. Then she wanted to see the hookers. They don't frequent the main streets but fill the alleys. (Many of them are housewifes that hook at night, taking their customers into the family bed while the husband, parents, and kids sit in the next room with only a curtain between) Some of the girls recognized me and were suspicious of Helena, thinking she was someone trying to muscle in on their business. (She was dressed, as always, in a very short skirt) I introduced her and explained who she was. They welcomed her as one of their own. We spent about half an hour talking with one group (of course they all spoke English). While we were there Helena was asked by three marines how much she would charge for all three. (She really got a kick out of that). Then just before we went back to the hotel, she asked me if there were any good looking hookers in Naples. (most of the girls/women were OK but not what you would call beautiful). So I took her a couple of blocks further away from fleet landing and up a different alley. Here the hookers are spectacular looking. Elegantly dressed. When they saw we were together they didn't bother us and we just walked the alley and then headed back to the hotel. As we were taking the funicular railway back up the hill Helena asked me, very puzzled, why none of those girls talked to us. And finally asked me flat out if I had ever been with one of them. I told her no and it was a good thing for her. She asked why. I finally told her it was because the girls weren't, girls. I had taken her up the alley with the transvestite hookers. She really impressed me that night. She took the whole experience so calmly. She had a good time. She bravely walked the streets and alleys and never showed any signs of nervousness. She joined in conversation with the hookers like she was "one of the girls". For a girl from the midwest she showed a sophistication I would never have expected. A few weeks after Helena returned to the states, I was back at "my" bar. The bartender was telling me that the girls had talked about how much they liked my wife and that they hoped she would come back to visit again sometime. She never forgot that night and would talk about it frequently. Todays first picture is Helena in front of Mann's Chinese in Hollywood. She was there to measure her hands against those of the stars. The second is another "resting on the trail" shot from Colorado from the 70's or 80's. Third is Helena exiting a prehistoric cliff dwelling in Arizona in the late 70's. The fourth picture shows Helena coming up from the Bandera Volcano Ice Cave. Bandera is a privately owned volcano in New Mexico. Under the volcano is a cave filled with ice the year around. This was in 1979. The next picture shows Helena at our friends house in Denver playing with one of the family cats. Probably around the mid 80's. The last shot is from the mid 70's but I don't remember where it was taken.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Helena always told friends that I had corrupted her. It is true, I guess. When we met she had not been exposed to the range of things that I had. I suppose that is what led her to ask all the questions about Naples and its seedy side. Her language was that of a lady. She might give out with a hell or damn but nothing more exotic than that. Terms she might use about sex were no worse than you might have heard anywhere. Periodically, more in the earlier years less in the later years as her knowledge grew, I would use a word or phrase that she did not know. She would demand an explanation. In the explanation I also included data on when not to use the word/phrase. I used my mom as my litmus paper. I would tell Helena that this one she should not use in front of my mother. In a very short while she grew very adept at "reading the room". She could tell in just a few minutes what kind of language would be acceptable and what wouldn't. It was funny to watch. She wouldn't say much at first then would gradually begin to join the conversation. I loved watching that. In a certain group of people you would swear that she was born and raised in a convent. Not even a damn or hell would come out. In the right crowd, however, you might swear that she had been a prostitute. She could use all the right words and phrases, and in the correct context. She was right. I had corrupted her. I'm not bragging about that. Not my greatest accomplishment. It did make her better able to navigate the world though. And know what was going on. I remember a party and two of the women were talking about the husband of a third. Apparently he and his wife performed some kind of sex act and the story teller couldn't remember the right name. Helena came to the rescue and provided the correct term and then rejoined her conversaton about quilting. The two women were speechless. With her face people underestimated what she could do or could and would say. I miss hearing her voice. Hey, I still had lots of words to teach her. On to the pictures for today. The first picture is at the Little Bo Peep gift shop that used to be in Branson Missouri. I am showing this because Helena did the design of the lamb and the original drawing that the owner used as the LOGO for her business. This was a freebie since the owner was a friend of Helena's mother. The second shows Helena in front of the LA Museum of Art. We wanted to see the King Tut exhibit I had seen in London but we couldn't get tickets. This was in, I think, 1976. The third is Helena in another shot similar to some I have posted before. In the next picture she is in a garden area but I don't remember where. It was also in the late 70's. The next one is Helena dwarfed by a desert plant. This was in the late 70's in Joshua Tree Natural Park, in California. The last picture is Helena in California in the early 80's. I do not remember exactly where.

It's a little odd to say on a site of this nature, but this whole thread is one of the sweetest things I've ever read. I'm very sorry for your loss, jdviole2; you seem to have had a wonderful life together.

My wifes life in front of the camera
 

Helena and I didn't do much in the way of outdoor activities at home. No softball, golf, tennis, etc. But one year she thought it might be fun to ride bicycles around town. So we bought some decent bikes and away we went. We tried to ride some every few days in the good months. We mostly rode on the streets but that was kind of hard because the streets with little traffic were in a very hilly part of town. Riding up and down seemed like too much fun. Then our town built a few bike paths and we started riding them. We had a lot of fun. One of the paths was about a 10 mile trail. We made our goal to ride the length of the trail and then return a 20 mile round trip. We were ready, so off we went. The day was warm, sunny, with a stiff breeze to keep us cool. We made the first ten miles in great shape. Made really good time. Then we started back. Thats when the trouble began. Remember that stiff breeze I mentioned. We had made good time on the way out because it was at our back. The ride home was into the wind the entire way. It took us three times as long to ride back as it did to ride out. About half way back I told Helena that she should stay where she was and I would ride the rest of the way back and get the car to come pick her and the bike up. She refused. She said we started together and would finish together (or be finished together). We got back and I do not remember being that tired ever before or since. We kept to short rides after that. She was a great sport though. Had our places been reversed I might have sat it out and waited until she brought the car. Oh as a funny side story related to this. One of the reasons we were biking was we were trying to lose weight. Helena had read somewhere that you should take pictures of yourself nude or at least in underwear and save them. Then while dieting if you began to weaken you looked at the pictures and supposedly got your willpower back. We took the pictures (in underwear, neither of us wanted to see ourselves that overweight, naked) and put them in a dresser drawer. And promptly forgot they were there. Flash forward 10 years. We were looking for something, don't remember what, and were searching the entire house. I dumped out a dresser drawer and found the envelope with the pictures. When I saw what they were I started laughing and Helena came to see what the heck was so funny. She started laughing just as much as me. The joke was the pictures looked so GOOD. Over the intervening years we had gained a bit more weight and our old selves looked pretty thin by comparison. I still have the pictures but I don't plan to post Helena's underwear shot. It just wouldn't be fair. We had some friends we used to visit in a town not far from ours. They had two young boys and one year their dad built a Go-Kart for them. That year when we visited he asked us if we wanted to go out and try out the cart. Hell yes! There was an abandoned mall nearby and we went to use their vacant parking lot. The kart was a custom built job and had a wider than normal wheel base. It was built low enough to the ground that you could corner very fast and not worry about rolling over. It was an open kart, no roll cage. It was also fast. It could go about 75 mile per hour (over 120 KPH). I had my ride and it was a lot of fun. Full gas then hit the brakes go into the turn and open her up again. Just great. Then it was Helena's turn. We didn't have any helmets (the owner didn't believe in them) and no other safety gear. Helena climbed into the kart and was ready to go. Our friend explained to her again about the gas, braking for the turn, all she needed to know. He could have saved his breath. He said go. Helena punched it and kept her foot on the floor the entire ride. As she approached the end of the parking lot I kept expecting her to brake for the turn. She had other ideas. When she got near the end she whipped the wheel into the turn. She drifted the turn and at just the right time straightened out for the back stretch run. Full Speed 70 plus mile per down the lot drifted the turn at the other end and again straightened out at exactly the right time. As she passed by where we were standing you could not hear the engine anymore because her shrieking yells drowned out the sound. Her long hair standing straight out behind her. She had a fierce look of manic glee on her face. I think, that day, I finally understood the Norse myth of the Valkyries. With the sounds she was making and the look on her face all she needed was shimmering armour and she would have been the personification of the warrior woman riding down to escort the dead heros to Valhalla. I had never seen that side of her before, and really I never saw it again. On the way home she was quiet a lot of the time (we were pretty tired) but she never lost the huge grin on her face. I wanted to get her a kart but knew that where we lived she would never have been able to ride at the speed or with the freedom that she had that first time, and I think that would have cheapened the whole experience for her. As it was that was one of her fondest memories. As her health got worse and she wasn't able to do what she used to do she would get a bit depressed. But if I started talking about the Go-Kart, her eyes would lose focus and she would start to smile and I knew she was behind the wheel again. It never failed to lift her up. Todays pictures are all from prints. The first one is Helena in the mid 70's at the entrance to the amusement pier at Santa Monica. The first building on the left is the famous carousel. The exterior is seen in The Sting. The second shot is from a very faded print. It shows Helena on the front porch of our first house (The House of Snakes) at around the time she shot her nudes. You can just see some gaps in the calking at the base of the siding. The next picture is from the late 70's and shows Helena in one of the many hotel rooms we've stayed at on our trips. It is funny but looking at all these pictures again I notice how nicely dressed she tried to be when we went out. (I always figure that, for me, if all the naughty bits are covered that's good enough). The next picture is from Easter time of 1975. We were still living at her parents house at the time and she and her mom had made a Lamb shaped cake for Easter dinner. Helena has almost finished decorating it. The next shot is from later in 1975 after we moved into our first house. This is another "clothed" picture from the nude shoots. The last picture is from the mid 80's and was taken at our friends house in Denver. Helena is involved in one of her favorite activities, playing with cats. She loved them and they loved her.