LIFE

Brownsburg family's first-grade-portrait sweater goes on and on and on

Will Higgins
IndyStar

In one of the more unusual family traditions, a 7-year-old Brownsburg boy named Brady Gose last week donned a mostly gray V-neck sweater with an argyle-type design out front and sat for his official first-grade portrait.

With that he became the fifth Gose to have had his first-grade portrait taken while wearing the sweater — and the third generation.

The first of the sweater wearers was Brady's great uncle, Barry Gose, a first-grader in 1954. The sweater was new then, bought by Barry Gose's mother, Helen, Brady's great-grandmother. The sweater's initial wearing was followed closely by wearings by Helen's two younger sons: Mark and, in 1958, Chuck, Brady's grandfather.

Soon after their photos were snapped, Helen Gose folded the sweater and tucked it away in a drawer where it rode out the 1960s and 1970s. She wanted the sweater preserved. She had started something and wanted it to continue.

The sweater was next worn in 1982 when it was time for Chuck Gose's son, known as Little Chuck, to sit for his first-grade portrait. Little Chuck's mother, Marilyn, retrieved the sweater from the cedar chest where she had kept it alongside other heirlooms after receiving it from Helen.

"When my mother-in-law presented it to me she said, 'Wouldn't it be nice if your son would wear it,'" Marilyn said. "And I love tradition, and I thought this is a great opportunity to have a legacy."

Little Chuck, who is now Brady's dad, paired the sweater with a navy blue shirt with a wide, disco-style collar, 1977's "Saturday Night Fever" still apparently visible in life's rear-view mirror. Family photos show the effect was similar to his father's interpretation a quarter-century earlier and nearly identical to his Uncle Mark's, though a departure from his Uncle Barry's. Uncle Barry, the sweater's first wearer, wore a bow tie, and next to his brothers he looked square. (It goes to show that fashion is cyclical because by today's millennial-driven standards Uncle Barry would be cool.)

Chuck Gose, sporting the family legacy in the 1970s.

By 1982, the sweater's staying power was remarkable enough to rate a story in the local newspaper that served the Goses' small community of Springboro, Ohio.

But with Brady's third-generation wearing last week at Reagan Elementary, the story was picked up by ABC News and"Inside Edition," not to mention, now, The Indianapolis Star. After all, here was Brady's garment — more than twice as old as Brady's teacher, Miss Richardson.

Brady wore a white dress shirt under the sweater. His smile looked like his father's first-grade smile in that both were missing some teeth. Brady said the sweater was "a little too big" but comfortable. He said he'd probably wear it again sometime, but his dad said that was unlikely because "we have to keep it for the next generation."

And the next, perhaps, and the next after that. Who knows where this will end? The sweater shows little sign of wear.

On one of the elbows there's evidence of a hole, but that hole appears to have been stitched up several wearings ago, possibly during the Eisenhower administration.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins.

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