Glenmoore man recognizes parents in '37 photo on fire escape

Louis Dinacci did a double-take - make that a multi-take. Was the heat getting to him? Was he hallucinating?

His wife, Loretta, had just shown him the photograph in Monday's Inquirer of a family sleeping on a New York City fire escape to take refuge from a July 1937 heat wave. "I think that's your parents," his wife said.

"They certainly are," he affirmed.

Unmistakably, the bodies sprawled on those metal steps were indeed those of his father, Edward; mother, Antonette; brother, Alfred; and sister, Roseanne.

For decades, Dinacci, 70, of Glenmoore, was aware that the photo had once appeared in a New York newspaper, but he had no idea of its whereabouts.

It turns out that a copy of the photo, credited to the Associated Press, was published in The Inquirer in July 1950 and remained in its library files. The picture was used Monday to illustrate an article about air-conditioning.

Dinacci said that his family had lived on a steamy top floor of a four-story walk-up building on Hester Street in Lower Manhattan. He was born two years after the picture was taken.

He cautions, however, that one can't believe everything one sees in a newspaper, which isn't news to many of us.

He suspects his family was posing. One dead giveaway: In the picture, his mother is wearing high heels, not exactly sleepwear.