Author: Ken Steinhoff

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The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

When my brother, Mark, was in high school or slightly older, he got a job at KFVS-TV. I’m still looking for some photos of him firing up the generator in the basement. When I find them, I’ll go into more detail about his career at the Cape TV station. In addition to his mechanical and technical assignments, he must have also been given the job of cleaning out old stuff that had been hanging around.

Cleaning out the closets

I can identify with that kind of tasking. I was given the assignment to dig into my closet to weed out all of the clothes that had managed to shrink while they were hanging in the dark. I don’t understand how a shirt or pair of pants that fit perfectly five years ago manged to get smaller on the hangar. The threads must contract or something.

Don McNeely

Anyway, I found an envelope on the bottom of a shelf that was addressed to Don McNeely from TV Guide.

Don McNeely was  a local TV institution. He started at the station in 1943 when he was 16. The station heavily promoted his 40th anniversary by handing out rain gauges and 5,000 umbrellas imprinted with the slogan, “Don Said It Would.”

He retired in 1993 after exactly 50 years of service at the KFVS.

When he started, the station didn’t even own a camera. When they DID start shooting film, it had to be sent to Memphis for processing. By the time it got on air, it was two or three days old.

There’s a good retrospective on him in The Missourian microfilm. He shows up on the roof of the station in these photos I shot of a Southeast Missouri State College Homecoming Parade in 1966.

Dobie Gillis & Maynerd G. Krebs

Inside the envelope was a 16×20 Kodak dye transfer promo TV Guide cover showing the stars of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Wayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis) and Bob Denver (Maynard G. Grebs). A stamp on the back was dated Sept. 2, 1961.

TV Guide Covers

I didn’t realize this was a Big Deal (and I’m sure Mark didn’t either or he wouldn’t have given it to me).

Here’s a description of the history behind the promo photos: “Every week TV GUIDE would do a new issue with a NEW cover. They would prepare these covers in advance, and do these large color EASTMAN DYE TRANSFERS and ship them out to their Regional Offices to hang on the wall. There were LESS than 20 regional offices. They would also give the local affiliate stations a copy, if the cover promoted one of their shows. (so maybe another 20 were issued for them). Sometimes, the execs would give out a promo copy, sometimes the star and production big wigs of the show would get a copy (so maybe another 20 were handed out).

The point I am trying to make is – these are very LIMITED production, and limited release. NOT available to the general public. RARELY seen on the market, if ever. All official estimates, is that these early ones were produced in quantities of LESS than 100 each! Color dye transfers are very high quality, true to life, bright, brilliant colors. An expensive process. These are QUITE large. Overall, matted dimensions are approx. 16″ by 20″. The actual picture itself is a bit bigger than the 11″ by 13″ that displays. If you collect this person, you would be hard pressed to find a more attractive or SCARCER item! Would be a fantastic piece to display with an original AUTOGRAPH! In the lower left, is printed TV GUIDE COVER PORTRAIT. This is not an add on, but is actually as issued. GREAT display piece.”

Photos around the same date go for $100 to $250. I was going to throw the print in the car to take back to Mark when I go home, but I may have to think twice about that. Maybe he DOES deserve it. He appreciates fine art. After all, he bought my Ohio University Art 101 sketchbook for $20.

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Boys Playing Army

The Missourian ran this wild art shot of a couple of boys dressed up in helmets and galoshes playing army soldier. I haven’t run across the newspaper clip to be able to tell you their names.

On this Memorial Day, I hope this was as close to the real thing as they ever got.

Here is a link to a more serious look at Memorial Day.

Send politicians, not young men

What had been more or less of an abstraction to me became real when I watched a man and his wife receive a box of medals in place of their son. I honor his service, but I wonder what his death accomplished. The world would be a safer places if we sent polticians, not young men, to fight our wars.

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Thoughts on Memorial Day

Three Wars, Three Men

January 15, 1969, I shot this photo in Athens, Ohio. I ran it  7-3/4 inches wide by 12-1/4 inches deep with the following caption, reflecting the self-absorption of a 22-year old:

three wars, three men: With most of our attention focused on Vietnam, it is easy to forget that other men of other years had their wars, too. Fate has placed three veterans in the same room at Sheltering Arms Hospital. They are Bill Howell, World War I, Jim Gates, World War II, and Clyde Edmundson, the Spanish-American War.

No Spanish-American War vets left

The last Spanish-American War veteran died in 1992 or 1993, depending on which account you read. The Last Veterans website has fascinating information for history buffs.

Frank Buckles of Bethany, MO, was born Feb. 1, 1901. When he was 16, he told an Army he he was 18. The recruiter told him to go home to his mommy. Frank decided a big lie might work better than a small one, so he told the next recruiter he was 21. As of this writing, he is America’s last surviving veteran of World War I. You can learn more about him at his website.

It’s hard to believe that our generation’s Vietnam vets are getting as gray as these fellows I shot in 1969.

Cape’s Freedom Corner

In mid-summer 1942, America was rejoicing in the defeat of the Imperial Japanese fleet in the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea. Cape Girardeans, a Missourian story reported, gathered at the corner of Capaha Park to dedicate four brick pillars holding two honor roll boards listing the names of 1,295 men and women serving in the armed forces.

Feb. 3, 1943, two large eagles from the salon of the steamer Bald Eagle were mounted atop the middle pillars. By 1944, the Honor Roll had grown to more than 3,700 names, with 60 gold stars alongside those who had died in the war.

The honor roll was taken down after the war ended. It was replaced in 1950 by the first memorial plaques to honor Cape Girardeau County servicemen killed or missing in action during World War II. Since then, plaques have been added honoring those from the county who died in World War I, Korea and Vietnam.

A replica of the Statue of Liberty was presented to the city by the Boy Scouts in 1950 and the corner became known as Freedom Corner. By 1997, the pillars had deteriorated to the point of collapse. The American Legion spearheaded an effort to get them rebuilt.

Homemade Memorial for Gulf War

I was riding my bike up Flagler Blvd. in West Palm Beach on a March day in 2007 when I saw a field of hand-lettered Corafoam tombstones in a city park. It was a homemade traveling memorial to the men and women who had died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I pushed my bike along every row, reading every name, sometimes with eyes brimming with tears at the waste of a generation. One name was missing.

Elizabeth Jacobson

Liz, as we called her, was my son Adam’s former girlfriend. She lived with us briefly before she joined the Air Force. When she came back from boot camp, she was one squared-away young woman who seemed to have her life figured out.

On Sept. 28, 2005, she was providing security on a convoy when the vehicle she was riding in was hit by a roadside bomb. Liz and Army Sgt. Steve Morin, Jr., of Arlington, TX, were killed; a third solider was injured, but survived.

She was 21 years old.

She has the dubious honor of being the first female airman killed in the line of duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“We’re only on earth for a little while”

I called Adam. He got permission from the organizers to add her “stone” to the memorial. On it, he wrote some lines that she had sent him: “We’re only on this earth for a little while, so live life to the fullest and carry a smile.”

Here is a website dedicated to Airman First Class Elizabeth Jacobson.

 

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Typing Class at Central High

When I toured  what we think of as Central High School last fall, I went into what had been the typing classroom. Mrs. Bedwell, the communications arts teacher, said the green typing desk, green cabinets and shelves were left over from our era.

I didn’t take a typing class. My Dad had a typewriter, and I started pecking at it when I was in about the first grade, definitely long before I was exposed to cursive writing.

Drudge work improved vocabulary

My handwriting was so bad that my dad, who had beautiful writing, made me do exercises to improve it. He’d have me do page after page of cursive exercises, then graduated to make me copy the dictionary. My writing didn’t improve, but my vocabulary sure did.

Pre-computer-age spellchecker

This, my child, is what a mid-20th-century spell checker looked like. It operated on a form of sneaker-net. If you weren’t sure how to spell a word, you got your tail off the chair and walked over to this big book. The bad thing is that you had to sort of know how to spell the word before you could look up the spelling of the word. It did not run on batteries and only one person could access it at a time (unless you were both looking for the same word).

1964 Typing Teachers

It wasn’t mentioned in The Missourian or the yearbook copy, but this 1964 Girardot photo of Central’s Business Department indicates there was some horrific accident that resulted in Lucille Adams’ body being grafted to Katheryn Wulfer’s head, and her fingers to become implanted in Cornelia Gockel’s shoulder. Jerry Wommel is pretending not to notice.

1964 Typing Club

The 1964 Girardot photo of the Typing Club doesn’t indicate the students were present when the accident involving the typing teachers occurred. The 1965 yearbook doesn’t list a Typing Club, so the accident may have had some residual traumatic effect on recruitment.

1964 Competent Typists

These students were recognized as Competent Typists. It doesn’t say what they had to do to earn the title.

1965 Business Department

By 1965, everyone had their body parts in the right places. Mr. Wommel still looks like he’d prefer to be somewhere else.

Green cabinets were original

Mrs. Bedwell she had heard that the new gray desks were being manufactured by prisoners, but she wasn’t sure if that was true or not. The green cabinets were there in the 60s.

Classroom doors are the same

Here’s the entrance to the old typing room.

View from typing room window

Except for the new gym, the view out the window looks pretty much the same. I don’t remember if the covered walkway was there when we were in school, though.

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