Turn-Style, Mom and Me

Store sale flyers. Every week, tons of these things show up – crammed in the mailbox, stuffed in the Sunday paper, sliding out onto the living room floor. Do people ever save these things? I certainly don’t.   

Well, except for this one, that is, and not for the reasons you’d think. Mod 70’s styles at crazy 70’s prices. A long gone classic discount chain, Turn-Style, and a great multicolored version of their last, and best, logo.

No, the reason I’ve hung onto these is because one of the young women featured is none other than my very own Mom, Linda. 

For a year a half in my early grade school years (1970-71) she modeled for ads for a number of companies including Turn-Style, their sister division Jewel Food Stores, and Lytton’s, a famed old-line Chicago clothing retailer. These ads are from May and June 1971. Her modeling career was brief – the hours were long, the pay wasn’t great and the better jobs, like this one, were few and far between. Later that year she entered nursing school, from which she graduated two years afterward. Model or not, I’ve always been so proud of her, and she’s always encouraged me at every step of the way in life.

  

Mom is on the far left in the photo. On the far right is Brenda Broce, a very popular Chicago model. Unfortunately I don’t recall the name of the woman in the sailor’s hat, but she was also a familiar face in those years. Best known of all was the young woman “talking” to my mom, second from left. She was Janet Langhart, an extremely popular model in town who by this time was also working as a news feature reporter for the local CBS TV affiliate, WBBM. In the mid 70’s she moved to Boston where she hosted the highly-rated “Good Day” morning show. Eventually she married William Cohen, a U.S. Senator from Maine and later Defense Secretary under President Clinton.

Here they are again, with Mom second from the left in a “stylish” wig this time. Thankfully, she spared me years of night terrors by not wearing it at home.

She had nothing to do with these three pages, but I thought you’d like to see ‘em anyway. I like the little guy flying the plane with the “Turn-Style propeller”. Better keep the nose up on that thing, guy! 

In polka dots this time, in the only photo that shows her real-life hairstyle at the time. One of these days I need to ask her how many hours it took to put those shoes on.

One Saturday afternoon, my Dad, brother and I were out running errands, keeping occupied while a photographer did test shots of Mom in our kitchen. (3,000 photos of her holding a box of “Pillsbury Extra Lights” pancake mix, as I remember.) When we returned, he said "Let's take some shots with the kids." That’s 7-year old me on the right, and my 3-year old brother, who’s been taller than me since 1983, on the left.

The funny thing is, we had been out shopping at some discount store – Zayre, Kmart, Community Discount, maybe even Turn-Style – of course I don’t remember which. As I told my friend Adrienne a while back, I had no idea that decades later this would be useful information.

In any event, Happy Mother’s Day!