Jeanette (aka, Janette) KATHLEEN McDowell was born in Northern Ireland on March 2nd, 1918, to Alfred McDowell and Winifred Stott. She had four brothers. Her father was a master plumber working at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. He is said to have helped build the Titanic.

Kathleen was an attractive and popular young woman. She earned a scholarship to attend university and study mathematics, but family circumstances prevented her from furthering her education.

In May 1942, McDowell married Arthur DONALD Field from North Finchley, London. He was a member of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and prior to the marriage was stationed in Belfast. Field served aboard HMS Bredon, a Naval Trawler engaged in Anti-Submarine Warfare. On February 8th, 1943, HMS Bredon was torpedoed and sunk off the Canary Islands. Field was among those who died. He was 24.

In June 1949, Kathleen remarried. Her second husband was Charles FREDERICK (Fred) Black. The couple met while Black was on leave from Allied Supreme Command. Black had been born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, on December 6th, 1907, although his family moved to Prince Edward Island when Fred was only two-years-old. He became a mathematician. After the war, Lt. Col. Black got a job with the federal government in Ottawa as a departmental secretary with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He held the position until 1969 whereupon he joined the Canadian diplomatic corps and accepted a posting to London for four years.

On retirement, Fred and Kathleen moved to Prince Edward Island. Fred died in 2004 at age 96 in Charlottetown. Kathleen died in 2016 at age 98, also in P.E.I.

Hubert Rogers was born in Alberton, Prince Edward Island, on December 21, 1898. Best known as ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION‘s primary cover artist from 1939 to 1953, Rogers’ illustrations also graced the covers and interiors of ADVENTURE, ARGOSY, SHORT STORIES, DETECTIVE STORY,  THE WHISPERER, THE WIZARD, ACE-HIGH, WEST, ROMANCE, LOVE STORY, and SPORT STORY. Outside of the pulp world, Rogers worked in the art department of THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE and later served as art editor of THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Rogers trained at the Acadia Art Academy in Nova Scotia. As an art student of exceptional promise, he was introduced to the prestigious Group of Seven with A. Y. Jackson becoming his lifelong friend and mentor. After enlisting in the Canadian Army to fight in the First World War, Rogers settled in the United States where he continued his art studies in Boston and New York.

Having opened his own art studio in Brooklyn Heights, Rogers had a daughter and ex-wife to support while continuing his studies. He supplemented his income with newspaper work and by freelancing for pulp magazines. Rogers’ association with the pulps would limit his ability to find work with some of the higher-paying slicks and publishing houses.

During the Great Depression, Rogers relocated to New Mexico where he lived and worked among a thriving community of artists and bohemians for five years. The growing volume of pulp assignments brought him back to New York in 1936 where he settled in Greenwich Village and met and married his second wife. Moving back to Canada in 1942, Rogers was employed by the Wartime Information Board in Ottawa where he produced numerous wartime propaganda posters.

After the Second World War, Rogers moved his wife and their young son to Vermont where his second daughter would be born in 1947. Rogers stayed busy with pulp assignments through the early 1950s. Later in life, Rogers painted landscapes and commissioned portraits of U.S. and Canadian politicians and other prominent citizens. He died in Ottawa in 1982 at age 83.

Source: https://pulpfest.com/2018/12/120-years-of-hubert-rogers/

Hubert Rogers was 3rd cousin to Fred Black. In 1963, The Blacks were living in Ottawa, Ontario, when Hubert came to visit. In gratitude for the hospitality he was shown during his stay, Rogers drew the sketch of Kathleen. The portrait has remained with the family for more than half a century.