I have an interesting story to share with you folks. When I took over the photo archives some 10 years ago, the attached picture was among those I inherited from Mike Sink and Ed Lewnard. There was no information on the picture, but it was obviously posed at a studio, and the three men appeared to be related. I believed them to be brothers but had no confirmation. There were, however, three Routen brothers on the engineer's seniority rosters, and I always wondered if it might be them back in their early days.
Several months ago I sent the picture to a Mrs. Florence "Flossie" Fox who lives in Bloomington, is well into her nineties and sharp as a tack, and whose father and two uncles were engineers on the Monon. Last week she called me and confirmed that they were indeed her family. On the left is her uncle Jim Routen, in the middle is her father Ira "Red" Routen, and on the right is her uncle Oliver "Ollie" Routen. The picture was taken about the time they came up to Bloomington from Kentucky to "work on the Monon" back in the early part of last century.
It's the little successes like this that make all this archive work worthwhile. Long live the Monon and the memories of the men and women who were part of the Monon family. / Ron
