Many thanks to those of you who have provided suggestions
towards identifying the “store” and “jeweler” where Barbara
Stanwyck obtained gold St. Christopher medallions for my father
and other bomber crew members in 1943. Following up on leads:
Barbara Stanwyck estate. Active lead. I have written a snail
mail letter to Gilbert L. Fries, San Clemente, CA 92672. The
letter may be returned for insufficient address as I was unable
to locate a “street address”. There are two GLFs in San Clemente
but the correct person is the one who has phone number (949)
888-8266. There should be no privacy issue for the in
this paragraph since it is available on Internet phone
directories. If any member is local to San Clemente and can find
a street address for Mr. Fries, it sure would be helpful in case
I need to resend the letter. Would have even been better if I
could have found an e-mail address.
Jeweler’s Mark. Lead on hold. I see many discussions on
"hallmarks" so I suppose that this is what a “jeweler’s mark” is
really called. Am I correct? If so, it seems that many of you are
struggling with hallmark registrations. So much for trying to
identify a hallmark used in 1943 until I locate the store where
the jeweler worked. My local jeweler, Floyd & Greene of Aiken,
have characterized the hallmark for me with a hand drawing using
10X because it appears that solder has moved into the hand
engraved stamp area. It appears that the hallmark may be "AAN"
with the middle “A” squeezed between and slightly higher than the
outer letters. I agree with member who said that it would be nice
to find hallmarks on the WEB. The local jeweler was impressed
with the quality of the hand engraving and was even speculating
on the types of tools used back in 1943 to accomplish the various
strokes. He noted that the word “YOU” was spelled “YUU” but
couldn’t tell if it was done on purpose or just plain misspelled
(oh-oh).
I have scanned the actual medallion if there’s any interest. Can
send most formats (JPEG, etc.) including Microsoft Word. The
hallmark drawing won’t take but a few minutes to scan if there’s
interest. Plan to scan it soon anyway for future research.