About 40 days before Lewis Hine pointed his camera at Morris Levine, a number of newspapers erroneously reported that President Woodrow Wilson had been narrowly defeated for reelection by Charles Evans Hughes. Morris might have been one of the many newsboys who hawked that premature story on city streets, only to hawk the retraction a day later.

On this day, Sunday, December 17, probably early morning, Levine's prospective customers might have been less interested in politics and more interested in a review of the successes and failures of the University of Vermont football season. According to a New York Times article published three months earlier: "The University of Vermont is to make strenuous efforts to come to the front in football this year. Increased appropriations have been made by the athletic committee for the establishment of a training camp." They had missed winning the league championship when they lost their final two games.

Some customers might have gone that afternoon to the Strong Theater to see "The Traffic Cop." According to several movie websites, it was about Casey, a traffic cop who rescues a wealthy girl when her horse runs away with her in the park. Casey becomes entangled in the girl's attempts to thwart an embezzlement plot against her father's bank. He saves the day and winds up marrying the girl.

Hine was on a rescue mission of his own. Morris told him that he had been peddling newspapers since he was six years old, hardly a surprise to the photographer, who captured the images of hundreds of "newsies," some as young as five.

After finding Morris and his family in the 1920 census, I tracked down the nephew of one of his brothers, who lives in Colchester, just up the road from Burlington. That led me to two of Morris's daughters, one in North Carolina and one in California. Both were surprised and delighted by the Hine photograph.

Morris was the third of 12 children born to Louis and Fannie (or Fanny) Lapidow (or Lepedofsky) Levine, both of whom were born in Russia. Immigration records show that on February 1, 1904, Louis and Fannie arrived at Ellis Island in New York on a ship called the St. Louis. They had sailed from Cherbourg, France, with their first child, four-month-old Celia, who had been born in Paris. Undoubtedly, the Jewish family had fled their home country and holed up in France long enough to have their daughter and raise the money for the trip to New York. When they arrived, waiting for them were Harris and Ida Lepedofsky, who appear to have been Fannie's uncle and aunt, who had been in the US since 1887. Fannie was five months pregnant.

The Levines settled in Brooklyn, where Frank was born later that year. Morris was born on September 12, 1905. By the time his brother Hyman was born in September 1907, the family had moved to Burlington. Official records confirm that Fannie's brothers, Sam and Jacob, were already living in Burlington, having settled there in about 1902. There was already a sizeable Russian-Jewish population in the city, as well as two synagogues. Hyman played football in the 1920s for the University of Vermont, and would become a successful physician, serving at one point as the head doctor at the UVM hospital.

According to the 1910 census, Louis and Fannie owned their home at 212 Park St., and he had a tailor shop at 99 Church St. In the 1920 census, Louis still lived at 212 Park St, and was listed as working as a tailor for Fort Ethan Allen, an Army base in nearby Colchester. According to William Parkinson, of the Fort Ethan Allen Museum, Louis probably worked for the Max Wax Tailor Shop at the base. From 1922 to 1930, Louis was listed in the city directories as the proprietor of the American Dyeing & Cleaning Company at 177 Church St. In 1932, he was working as a tailor at H.C. Humphreys & Son clothing store at 85 Church St., a job he would keep until his retirement. He passed away in 1952, at the age of 75; Fannie passed away in 1959, at the age of 77.

Morris Levine attended Burlington High School, and is listed in the 1922 yearbook. He may have graduated, though one his daughters said he joined the Merchant Marine when he was 16. According to the city directories, he worked (apparently as a bellhop) at the Hotel Vermont in 1926 and 1927, and lived with his parents.

In 1928, he married Kathryn Lucier, of nearby Charlotte, Vermont, who was born to French-Canadian parents. Morris and Kathryn moved to New York City soon after, and later to Long Beach, New York, on Long Island, where Morris worked most of his life as a chef and restaurant owner, before retiring first to Florida, and then to Las Vegas. He passed away in 1996, at the age of 90. Kathryn passed away in 2003, at the age of 93. They had six children.