My father, Harry Overton Lockman, Jr., died when I was two years old.  I don't remember him.  I don't even know much about him other than what little my mother and my aunts and uncles have told me.

He was born May 10, 1910 and he died on May 5, 1951.  He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1933.  I know he died of a broken neck received in a fall.  Apparently there was some mystery surrounding his death.  I've been told he was murdered by a man he played cards with on the night of his death.  I've also been told that there was not enough physical evidence to prosecute the man.  My mother was only 20 years old when she became a widow.  The tragedy of his death affected her the rest of her life.

I have a few of his things - his hats and insignia from VPI, a toy train he received as a Christmas present when he was a small boy.  What I prize the most are the pictures he took of me.  He put them in a photo album and below each picture he wrote what he thought I was thinking at the time he took the picture.   This photo album is more precious than anything else I own.

By profession, he was an accountant for a coal company.  He was, also, an amateur photographer and collected model trains.   I have thousands of negatives of the pictures he took.  The following pictures are some of my favorites.

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