Cape Girardeau History and Photos
News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
I decided to completely revise my Last Generation presentation for the Immigration Conference at the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum at the last minute, and PowerPoint isn’t playing nicely, so this may be a long night / morning.
Here’s a photo gallery of some of the folks I’ve photographed and interviewed who spoke German as their primary language when they were children.
When I spoke to Dr. Lily Santoro’s Local Techniques in History Class, I offered to help students find information for the topics they had been assigned on local landmarks. The first step was to compile a list of posts about their subjects.
There’s always one student in the class who starts work right away. Jennifer Baker emailed me early on: “My topic is the Wehking Alumni Building on Broadway. From what I have been able to find, the building was previously occupied by the First Baptist Church. Construction on it began in 1926. So, my project will start with the First Baptist Church and end with the Wehking Alumni Center.”
I had to confess to her that the building had been on my to-do list for a long time, but the only photos I had were ones taken of the 1956 SEMO Homecoming parade by James D. McKeown III and passed on by his son, Steve McKeown.
I did suggest that she check out a story I had read that Louis Houck was so enamored by reproductions of classic sculptures he saw at the St. Louis World’s Fair that he bought them at the end of the fair and donated them to the college. I heard that they were being displayed in her building after being moved out of Academic Hall. I suggested she look for Joel P. Rhodes‘ book, A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck, to see if I remembered it correctly.
Bingo. “Wow! I just found a copy of this book as an ebook on line. Within minutes, I was able to read this section of Dr. Rhodes’ book on Louis Houck. Thanks again for the help! You are pretty cool!” she gushed.
Thanks to Jennifer, I finally got around to shoot the statues and former church for a future post. (If Jennifer is a REAL digger, she will uncover a story about a bank loan and why the building looks like it does. That’s the only hint I’m going to give because I’m saving it for my future post.)
The deadline for the project must be coming quickly because I got a flurry of requests on Wednesday.
Crystal Haugsness wanted an aerial shot of Fairmount Cemetery and a photo of the cemetery with Bingo World in the background.
Lucas Greenwalt was fascinated by Myrtle Schilling Kuehnert, part of my Last Generation project. ” I was wondering, if by chance, you would give me permission to cite one of your works for a poster presentation. It was from a video interview you did where an elderly lady discusses her first date with her husband and they casually grabbed a beer at the age of 13. My project is on the Evangelical United Church of Christ here in cape. As you may know the church has very deep German roots and I feel as though this would be a wonderful reference when giving the history of the building.”
Scott Bates drew the St. James AME Church. “I want to know if you would allow me permission to use a photo from your website. The photo that I would like to use is the photo with Mr. Kaplan speaking and Rev. Ward smiling in the back. This was from the NAACP president’s visit to St. James AME Church in 1967.”
Luke wanted six photos: four from the 1964 fair; one inside the Arena Building in 1966, and a color shot that Mother took in 2011. I liked his taste. He picked out some of my favorites.
I wonder if any other students will come skidding in tomorrow? They may be in trouble. I have to wrap up a bunch of loose ends before getting on the road to Ohio at the end of the week, so I may not be around to look up photos.
I hope Dr. Santoro gives me extra credit for my work. I could use some help pulling up my grade point average.
I mentioned my Last Generation project on March 26. I’ve been working like crazy to get a video presentation done so I can talk with a SEMO historical preservation about shooting regional history (or something like that. I usually don’t know what I’m going to talk about until I get in front of a group).
I finally got it whipped into passable shape this afternoon. Some of the transitions between clips are a little rougher than what I like, but I think the stories Dorothy, Edgar and Myrtle are more important than the technical stuff.
Shooting video is a whole different ballgame than shooting stills, even if you have been shooting picture stories for years. For one thing, the audio is as important, if not MORE important than the images. The best segment of the three was with Edgar Dryer (shown above when he was 8 or 10). He was 78 last fall when I photographed him. I couldn’t have asked for better natural lighting. He was also the first person I used a wireless mike on. That made a world of difference.
The biggest challenge was getting all the audio levels to match when you are shooting different subjects in different places. Watching tutorials and reading the manuals to figure out how to do it was mega-nap-inducing. I got the levels within acceptable levels, but I’m sure someone who knows what he or she is doing could have saved me hours of work.
I hope you enjoy the video. I have at least another dozen Perry County folks to work on before the Perry County Lutheran Historical Society’s Third Biennial Immigration History Conference in Altenburg October 23-25.
By the way, if you want to enlarge the video, hover your mouse over the bottom right-hand side of the vido screen. You’ll see a square box that says Full Screen. That will make the video fill your monitor screen. Press ESC to get it back to normal size.