BOVEY, Minn. - The beauty of family is often found in the simplest of moments, whether gathered on a deck or around the dining room table.
A few months ago, we met Eric Enstrom's family, three of his fourteen grandchildren. We met as they planned a family reunion at the cabins built on land Enstrom bought, just for that reason. His granddaughter, Kris Mayerle, joked, "what he dreamed is all of us being together and man, he sure got it!"
Hanging inside each of their cabins is a picture their grandpa took. You might recognize it. It might hang in your kitchen, too.
Mayerle says when people discover her family's connection to the picture they always tell her where it hangs in their house.
Eric Enstrom took the picture, entitled "Grace" back in 1918, when a traveling salesman, Charles Wildeen, stopped by his photography studio.
Enstrom's grandson, Kent Nyberg, says Wildeen had a regular route, and his grandpa's studio was on it.
The grandchildren say something about Wildeen's face resonated with Enstrom and he asked the salesman to come in and pose for a picture at a table laid out with a simple meal his wife had prepared.
Mayerle says Wildeen sat and struck the perfect pose.
Her grandfather told her it was absolutely natural.
The image Eric Enstrom captured that day has endured for generations, but it didn't make a splash at first. Enstrom entered it in a photography contest that year, but he came home empty handed. He found, however, when he displayed it in the window of his studio, it started to sell.
Sales really took off when Enstrom's daughter, who was an artist, added color with paint.
It appeared to resonate deeply with people, so much so they often believed, and still do believe, the man in the picture is their grandfather.
"We've gotten communications, 'Oh, our grandfather was traveling from Chicago to the West and would've gone through at that time, and that's him.'" Kent says the conversation usually goes, "and we have to say, 'No, I'm sorry, no we know who the gentleman is.'"
And it doesn't appear this man ever had any children or grandchildren of his own. It also doesn't appear he had the type of reputation the picture might imply.
"My mom used to get phone calls saying he was an evil man and shouldn't have been in those pictures," Mayerle says.
And as long as we're bursting bubbles, that book on the table, is not a Bible, it's a Swedish American Dictionary.
The family says none of that matters because it's not about the model in the picture or the items on the table, it's about what the picture represents.
"It's sort of a Norman Rockwell kind of picture," Kent Nyberg says, "I remember that kind of thing when people were thankful for the simple things."
The emotion and nostalgia it evokes is so strong it became the Minnesota State Photograph in 2002. It even inspired a play, and its very own song.
When asked about his memories of his grandpa, Eric Enstrom says, simply, that he was a great man. And that he loved him.
"It wasn't about the picture so much...I just loved my grandpa."
Faith. Gratitude. Family. That is what the picture means to the family of the man who took it.
