Cedar Lake / Indiana / United States
The doors opened at Wahlberg Photography for the first time in 1926. My grandfather, Gus Wahlberg, came to Cedar Lake, Indiana after working at a studio in Chicago and serving in combat during WWI. Our business started as a camera shop, selling and servicing cameras, and selling film and postcards. When not behind the counter, Gus was on the lake behind the shop. This was his way of life as a young man from 1926 to 1935. 1935.Enter Florence Weiert. As she tells it, she came to the camera shop for the first time during a trip with her father to Cedar Lake from their home in Hammond, Indiana. She was hired to clerk at the age of 21. She and Gus were married two years later in 1937. During this period she discovered that Gus was a trained photographer with a studio background, so the camera shop was turned into a full service studio. Gus and Florence had four children ; Ted ( 1942 ), Fred ( 1944 ), Edgar ( 1947 ), and my mother Lynea ( 1951 ). Gus Wahlberg became well known in the Chicago area as one of the premiere photographers, and built a reputation that lives on today. Gus passed in early 1967 at the age of 74, as a result of exposure to mustard gas during WWI.
