[Mary Sward Charlton]

While going through some old family pictures, I found these gems, taken by my father, Francis L. Sward, in July of 1954 in Portsmouth, OH. Dad had taken a job for the Peter Kiewit Company, which was building a uranium plant for the Atomic Energy Commission, and we were living there at the time. Interestingly, the Gordon C. Greene was also in Portsmouth around the time Dad started the job, serving as a floating hotel, renamed the Sarah Lee. The boat served some of the workers for the Kiewit project. (I think the river boats were calling me even then).
My Dad was a great fan of riverboats, and would take any excuse to watch them. As a boy, he would visit his grandfather in NY and watch the Hudson River Dayliners from Garnerville. He rode the DQSC boats 9 times. He and I would come down to the landing when the boats came to Cincinnati, and we were regulars at Tall Stacks when he was alive. I also have a scrapbook of newspaper clippings of articles he saved on the boats, and pictures and slides too numerous to count! But these pictures--what a find!