The Way It Was: Staff Edition

Christmas, 1957
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Each month, contributor George Bulanda pens a brief narrative of a moment in history in the metro Detroit area. This month, we introduce a new web exclusive in which Hour Detroit editors share their own blasts from the past. First up: Associate Editor Emma Klug submits a photo of her father’s first Christmas — just in time for the holiday season.

1957 Following his first Christmas, a 10-month-old Thomas Klug stares up at the tree in his family’s Warren home in January 1957. The tree shared the home’s main floor with an oil-fueled furnace that the now 61-year-old Klug once considered to be a “monster.” Other photos saved by the family show that some of his gifts that Christmas included a baseball glove, a small football, a top, a toy lawn mower, a sled, a drum — “My mother wonders whose bright idea that was,” he says — and a rocking horse, which his mom still has to this day.