A few weeks ago we shared the news about the passing of ONPA Life Member Don S. Mathews in this space. The post drew a comment from ONPA secretary Chris Parker asking about what might be done to preserve the history and experiences of our Life Members.
The first such effort at this was actually done in a video by Andy Morrison at The Blade when co-worker Herral Long retired. There are many others with stories worth telling and preserving and adding to the content of the ONPA Web site.
For the past few weeks I have been working on a new area of content for the Web site about the history of ONPA. These living histories could be the centerpiece for this content. Years ago George Smallsreed gave me a piece he had written about the first 20 years of ONPA. In years since others have passed on old newsletters and other items with much of our organization’s history tucked inside. My goal was to be able to roll out a large portion of this content by the end of the summer before I pass on these archives to others as I step down.
It will be up to other members to provide the living history content for the site, so the challenge is out there to both still and television members – capture and tell these people’s stories. You don’t need to wait for someone to retire to get their story. If we did that I might never see a piece on Ron Kuntz.
There are also educators out there with their own stories to tell. There has to be someone at Ohio University who can sit down with Chuck Scott or Marci Nighswander for an oral history. Is there a Bowling Green graduate out there will to sit down with Jim Gordon?
Perhaps you find a shy one (although I know of none) who doesn’t want the focus to be on them. Get them with another of their co-workers to tell the iconic story of the day that……….., which is told at every gathering of the staff. A certain film drop comes to mind in Akron.
I think its important that the finished products be posted to our own Web site and not be YouTube postings so we will have control of them going into the future. It would be good to have some quality standards set for these projects so I’d be interested in getting some feedback from those who produce such pieces already so we can come up with a standard for all to follow.
We go about our jobs daily and capture our images and video and don’t give much thought that what we do today is tomorrow’s history. We now have a venue to share that history going forward with the Web. So give that former colleague or professor a call and share their story. You might even learn something about them you never knew before.
I’m pretty sure there have been a few masters projects done on Chuck Scott by OU-VisCom grad students. I bet there are some more that have been done in the past on other Ohio photojournalists.
I could be wrong, but those would probably be archived away by (and accessible through) VisCom.
I agree that video or audio slideshows are a great way to do this. Good friend of mine, Kevin Martin, just did his OU masters project on Bill Luster of The (Louisville) Courier-Journal… Luster’s career spans a great deal of Kentucky history and the project is compelling and drives that home. No reason not to do similar projects here on Ohio storytellers.
Encouraging you guys in this endeavor… let me know if there’s any way I can help (from 500 miles away…)
Good to see we’re being read up in the frozen tundra – is it still frozen? – also glad to see you landed on your feet after Appleton.
Bill Luster is a great subject for a project like this. We had him for a judge a few years ago and he and J. Bruce Baumann certainly made it an entertaining weekend.
Three years late to this conversation, but if you are still interested I just released an iPad app about my Grandfather Chuck Scott and his 55-year career in the industry. This was created as my masters project and this piece is the second created at OU about Chuck.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chuck-scott/id521891536?ls=1&mt=8