George Sodder saw a picture of a young girl in a magazine that he believed was Betty

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The part about this picture is one of the strangest aspects, to me, about this whole case. Several people have looked through the magazine issue that George Sodder specified in his letter but there is no photo like the one we are looking for. It's hard to believe he could possibly have gotten such an important fact wrong, such as the date or the name of the magazine. I have been checking some LOOK and TIME magazines for the period of May 1946 and cannot find it in them either so far. There are ballet pictures in some issues, but not around the specific date. I found a LOOK magazine for June 1948 with a photo of girls in a ballet class but this date is way too late.
 
Jennie, since the original letter doesn't mention ballet, or dancing, is there any chance your mother is misremembering that?
Are there any photos of children in New York in that edition of the magazine?
 
Fluttershy said:
Jennie, since the original letter doesn't mention ballet, or dancing, is there any chance your mother is misremembering that?
Are there any photos of children in New York in that edition of the magazine?
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Misremembering???? Her mother was a young child back then. How would she or could she know anything about that? There wasn't anything ever reported about any of the other children being in the magazine.
 
Sorry Teresa, I was referencing this
Jennie also said: My mom remembers the picture showing little girls lined up at a ballet class.
Click to expand...
from the original post.
As far as I can tell, this is the only piece of information we have referencing ballet or dancing at all. Mr Sodder's original letter doesn't mention dancing or ballet, just that this particular issue features children who are attending Walt Whitman school in New York. I was wondering if there are any photos of children at all in this specific issue of Look Magazine. If Jennie's mother is mis-remembering that the photo was of little girls dancing, then we're looking for the wrong thing altogether.
Sorry if I'm not being very clear. :(
 
Fluttershy said:
Sorry Teresa, I was referencing this

from the original post.
As far as I can tell, this is the only piece of information we have referencing ballet or dancing at all. Mr Sodder's original letter doesn't mention dancing or ballet, just that this particular issue features children who are attending Walt Whitman school in New York. I was wondering if there are any photos of children at all in this specific issue of Look Magazine. If Jennie's mother is mis-remembering that the photo was of little girls dancing, then we're looking for the wrong thing altogether.
Sorry if I'm not being very clear. :(
Click to expand...

That is a great point you made. If Jennie's mom misremembered what was in the photo, then that would explain all the confusion and problems with this particular issue of the magazine. Maybe she remembers there being a photo of a ballet class in the magazine, but the picture of the child in question was altogether another picture.
 
Still thinking about this one and puzzling about why we can't find the photo. I have looked through a number of issues and can find nothing exactly like the photo described.
I don't blame the teacher for not letting Mr. Sodder see the student. If the teacher really was certain about the little girl's parentage then she wasn't about to show her to a stranger who she may have believed was delusional about this being his daughter. I tend to believe it wasn't Betty unless the teacher was covering up for someone or truly believed the child's parents were her biological parents. It sounds like the teacher was being protective of the little girl but probably not for sinister reasons.
 
I have come to the bizarre conclusion that this picture does not exist. I went through the library of congress and the lady there was so helpful and soooo excited to help, and she checked every publication at the time. First off, the date is wrong it has to be. Because she checked all those magazines and there was no such date in any from the time. She searched Time, she searched 20+ others. Nothing, not a match not even a possibility. The lady had to stop because well there was no where else to look. I have come to the conclusion this magazine did not exist. I think graddaughter's memories are of her dad talking about the photo in vivid detail to her, and not a real memory of the actual photo and what it looked like. I don't know what happened, if Mr. Sodder was so hopeful he dreamed it and thought it was real maybe asked what happened to the magazine and no one had seen it the next day and he thought he lost or misplaced it, or if he just saw a photo and it looked nothing like his dear daughter but his hopes made him hallucinate, or if he lied just to keep people looking and talking. But I just cannot understand how there is zero trace of this photo. I have written to collectors of several of the publications, some who had dates close to the one but there was no publication printed on the date Mr. Sodder claimed the photo showed up in. We looked in others too, like Look, etc. Nothing. Nada. Checked into the school too, and found some old photos of kids at the school and still nothing. No one knows about the photo, no one has seen such a photo, nothing has come up in all this time. I just don't get it, but I truly am at the point that I don't believe it EVER EXISTED. And to cover up an entire issue from a magazine as big as Time or Look or any of the big ones, would have been IMPOSSIBLE, so the conspiracy theory doesn't fly with me. Could Mr. Sodder have lied about the existence of this photo, and lied and said he was going to that school in NY, and actually went somewhere else?
 
So did George have more than 1 picture? Because he says he SENT IT to Ms. Krueger. Given how upset she was that he showed up at the school, I doubt she sent it back.... How did granddaughter see it if he sent it? Did he buy several copies of the magazine? Remember we are talking before photocopying so....


christine2448 said:
Originally Posted by Shadow205
I need help researching and trying to find an old magazine. You will remember mentioned that George Sodder saw a picture of a young girl in a magazine that he beleived was Betty. He traveled to New York in an attempt to identify the girl but was not allowed to see her. Here is the letter that he wrote to the school;

Walt Whitman School
25 East 78th Street
New York, NY
Attn: Miss Louise Krueger, Director

Dear Miss Krueger:

The enclosed picture of several of your students appearing in the May 14, 1946, edition of LOOK magazine is self-explanatory.

For your information, the little girl to which the arrow points quite definitely resembles one of our children who disappeared during the latter part of 1945, and I shall appreciate it greatly if you will, at your earliest convenience, favor me with the following information:

1. Her name
2. The date of her enrollment
3. Any further information you may feel at liberty to supply.

Needless to say, your cooperation in this matter will be more than appreciated.

Yours very truly,

George Sodder
According to Jennie(Granddaughter) it is not known if he received a reply to the letter or not. She thought that she located the correct magazine and purchased it but the picture that she was looking for was not in it. So, evidently there was a mistake on which issue the picture appeared in. Anyone that would like to help could search for anything to do with the school, classmates.com, reunion sites, any place where we might find pictures of students from that time period, any info on "Ms.Krueger".

Any ideas on where we might go with this information?

Jennie also said: My mom remembers the picture showing little girls lined up at a ballet class.
I found a site that lists old issues of Look Magazine and describes some of the topics featured in them:

http://www.pastpaper.com/List-Look40s.htm

The February 5, 1946 issue lists "Ballet Fashion Show". Not sure if that is what we are looking for. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Sodder would get the date of the magazine wrong. Perhaps the magazine has pages missing from it?



ALSO
Copied over from #2 thread...

I found this posted in thread one, but I can't get it to open...anyone?
Click to expand...
 
Well the current article or blogs on the case are saying Mr. Sodder saw the picture in the new papers. I would say some one will have to go to the local towns library were the Sodder's lived and see if they can find the picture in the archives in the local paper in the year he would have saw the picture.
 
There is definitely something hugely wrong with Mr Sodder's letter, grandmother's or the mom's memories, or something. I don't know what kind of publication the photo actually appeared in but his letter itself is where we got the name of the magazine and the issue date, so he obviously believed it was from the magazine. Could someone have found the picture or sent him the picture? Because years later someone anonymously mailed the family a picture that may have been Louis Sodder as a grown man. I can't recall, did Mr Sodder claim to have found the magazine photo himself or could someone have sent it to him? If he received it from another party then they may have incorrectly or purposely given him the wrong information.
Memories can definitely be wrong. There was an incident in my teen years which I remembered very very differently than according to how it actually happened, which I found out some time back when a relative gave me copies of old letters she and I wrote to each other back at that time. You would not believe how vastly different my memories were (20+ years later) from the written letter I sent when the incident actually occurred. So it does happen.
 
I am still researching the magazine angle and havent found much but what I did find was...

Per ancestry.com the Manhattan, NY City Directories lists

Louise Krueger as being employed at the Walt Whitman School on 25 East 78th Street from 1942-1953.

Let me explain what I mean. There are city directories for random years and so the earliest year I could find her working there was 1942 and the last year I could find her working there was 1953 so it could have been longer than this time period.

Will post when I have more.

ETA:

Louise Krueger and Harold Rugg married Aug 25, 1930 in Nevada. They had one child, a boy, Harold Rugg Jr. born in (or around) 1937 in New York. After marrying, they lived in Bearsville, New York which is two hours away from Manhattan. However, as someone already said, they were divorced by the time she started working at Walt Whitman. I do not have dates for her divorce yet.
 
Talking to a woman who attended the school... She said they were very big in incorporating the arts and Dance into the curriculum. Said Ms. Kruegar was very big on that stuff. Maybe that's why she was so defensive?

Also, the First grade teacher at Walt Whitman in 1946, her last name was Albanese. Using my Ancestry account to see if I can find anything else out.
 
To satisfy my own curiosity, I purchased a copy of the Look magazine mentioned here. After seeing it I really believe the the ballet photo does not exist. I think it was most likely just mis-remembered. There is a photo of a group of young kids at an art class (mentioned earlier in this thread.) There is a little girl pictured twice (main photo and an individual) who I suspect is the little girl in question. The photos and accompanying story don't mention names or schools, but the photographer is listed in the photo credits. He was a staff photographer at Look Magazine.I suspect the Sodder's contacted the magazine and were then referred to the W.Whitman School. I will try to scan and upload the photos sometime this weekend.
 
Thanks for offering to upload the photos, that would be great to see them. I too think the photo doesn't exist. I think maybe somehow 2 different photos got mixed up in some family members' minds maybe. Time changes our memories and blends things together in odd ways. George Sodder's letter didn't specifically say the photo was of a ballet class did it? I was thinking it didn't.
 
It was actually the Look magazine from Feb. 5th, 1946. It has the ballet fashion show in it. I have reposted the photo we have seen before. This has to be the one he was referring to. The little girl in the front with the curls could be her. I'm going to keep looking around.
 

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The girl in the photo looks somewhat similar to Betty Sodder, but I can see some likely differences. The ballet girl's eyebrows look quite bushier, and her nose appears to be a different shape (upturned, even when considering the angle of shot).
 
Hi everyone, I'm new here and have been catching up on all the posts for a few days now. There is certainly something not right about the whole situation. I don't think those gorgeous children died in the fire. In between reading I've been trying to find the ballet photo that George Sodder had seen in a magazine. Anyway, I've stumbled across a ballet photo from 40's-50's time that matches what has been said about the pic and one of the girls does bare a striking resemblance to Betty Sodder. Now for the big question... How do I upload images?
 
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