Finding Venue To Both Dispose, Preserve Memories

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I wrote a few months back about downsizing, getting rid of stuff so that my daughters or wife do not have to go through the arduous task of doing so after I’m gone. (Not that I plan on that occurring anytime soon, but who does?) Both my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I had to dispose of our parents’ possessions, with our brothers’ help, after their deaths. In my case, I had to do it twice: the first time after moving them into assisted living, and once again with what remained after they passed. Even after we three sons gathered what photos, artwork and other memorabilia we wanted for our children and us, there were a couple boxes left of photo albums. They remain in a storage unit along with Christmas decorations and other odds and ends.

I have been a newspaper photographer since 1977 for six different newspapers. During the years of shooting film up to 1990 or so, I kept carefully organized files of my negatives — not everything I shot, but my favorites. I have also retained a dozen or so boxes of prints. Adding to this collection of stuff are several file drawers of research materials for a book published in 2006 (A Hanging in Nacogdoches: University of Texas Press), materials gathered for a book about Civil War-era newspapers in which I lost interest, a few dozen microfilm reels of old newspapers, and miscellaneous files of Texana. The files fill nearly two filing cabinets, while the shelf in my bedroom closet is stuffed with binders and boxes containing the negatives, slides and photos.

For decades, I have lugged this collection around as I moved for job-related reasons from town to town. No more. I contacted the director of the East Texas Research Center, located in Steen Library at Stephen F. Austin State University, where I spent hundreds of hours doing research. I asked if they would be interested in me donating all this stuff, fully expecting a polite “thanks but no thanks.” Instead I got an email almost immediately saying the ETRC would happily take anything I wished to donate, including the family photos.

This is excellent news. The material will still be preserved, and it does have some historical value, I suppose. The negatives and prints represent a slice of East Texas life, and the research material may help someone else who is interested in old newspapers and such. And my survivors won’t have to anguish over what to do with all these boxes and binders.

Before relinquishing the material, I decided to use an online service to have 500 images digitized, with the plan of adding them to my website and making prints of some images I haven’t looked at since I was in my 20s. I spent most of a weekend poring through negatives, slides and prints to pick out 400, leaving 100 spots for my BMC to do the same from the boxes of family photos that she has squirreled away.

I found negatives shot in Big Bend in 1978, on an extended road trip my brother Scott and I made. I was out there just two months ago, and it is fascinating to see how the Rio Grande has changed in those three-plus decades. My photos of Santa Elena Canyon back then show a wider, deeper river than what I witnessed in March.

An image of Walter Mondale campaigning for Charlie Wilson went into the pile. Good Time Charlie was a longtime U.S. representative in Deep East Texas made famous when Tom Hanks portrayed him in “Charlie Wilson’s War” several years ago. I always enjoyed talking to Charlie. He was invariably good for a quote.

To balance the political spectrum, I found a negative of Gerald Ford I shot on the University of Texas campus campaigning for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Being vertically challenged was usually an advantage for a photographer, since it allowed me to slip through crowds to the front. I both shook Ford’s hand and shot his photo in the same encounter.

There are plenty of negatives of not-so-famous but still fascinating people, like Sam Loggins who made ribbon-cane syrup on his farm outside San Augustine until he was in his 90s. And Alice B. Henry, an artist who made finely detailed paintings out of seeds and bark shavings. One of her small works hangs in our kitchen. Then there’s the infamous photo of the rock leaning against a pine tree that I published in The Rambler in 1982. Someone had painted “San Augustine: 10 Miles Ahead, 100 Years Behind” on it. The day after I published it on the front page (who could resist?) the highway department pushed the rock down.

It is a relief to know my favorite images will be digitally preserved, and the physical material will be safely kept as well — just not by me. The next step is to cull the collection of books by half or so. But that will have to wait for another day.

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