Modeling for Norman Rockwell

It’s probably one of Norman Rockwell’s most famous paintings, although it's not in the nostalgic vein for which he is so well-known.

The Problem We All Live With (1964) depicts six-year-old Ruby Bridges heading to school in New Orleans in 1960, making her the first African-American child to enroll in an all-white Southern elementary school. Bridges made news again earlier this year when she visited the White House, where President Obama had the painting on display while it was on loan from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.

But what of the little girl who modeled for Rockwell while he worked on the painting? The New Yorker reported recently that Lynda Gunn, who grew up in Stockbridge, was eight years old in 1963 when her grandfather asked her to pose for Rockwell, a friend of his.

Interestingly, Gunn, whom the magazine described as “a taciturn, thoughtful woman who works as a night auditor at the Super 8 Motel in Lee, Massachusetts,” was the only black child in her elementary school in Stockbridge.

But there the similarity between Bridges and Gunn ends.

Gunn’s family had been living in Stockbridge for generations, her grandfather was well-known locally, and she seems to have had a normal childhood largely untainted by racism. The article says Gunn "did not feel affected by the nation’s larger racial tensions until she was older.”