2017 Spring Newsletter

A treasure found in our basement In early November I was approached by LuAnne Debrick, our museum’s treasurer, sta ng that while she was cleaning in the basement there was found a box of film nega ves. She handed me a small packet of envelops that had 4x5 sized nega ves in them. I took them home to see if they were of any interest. A few of them were scanned into the computer and to my astonishment I recognized them as the work of Mr. Fred Coon. The reason they were recognized was around 1982 I was construc ng my own dark room and needed a be er enlarger. My mother “Ann Haney” was a friend of Dewey Coon, Fred’s widow, and told me that Dewey wanted to clear out Fred’s old darkroom. As I was checking out the darkroom I opened a file drawer, inside were lot of nega ves. I didn’t give the nega ves much thought as they were mostly of auto accidents and some were pre y gory. I ended up buying the darkroom equipment and sev eral large format press cameras. Over the years I have o en thought about those photos and what a treasure it would be to have them available to the museum to document the early 1950s.

What does a person do with the images as they were too large to copy with my scanner? Last summer I ac quired some 3000 color slides that needed to be digi- zed. I made an a achment that held my digital camera onto the front of a carousel projector. With this rig I could copy color slides at the rate of 10 slides a minute. There was no reason I couldn’t do the same with the sheet film nega ves. I cobbled together a contrap on that had a light source, a nega ve holder and camera support. It took be er part of a week to digi ze 1000 images.

There are pictures of events around the county and here is par al list. Photos of the following families Al Farrar, Bill Peuser Boyd Landis David McIntyre Dingis Family Fuzzy Ive The Hoy Family Janice Tallio Patricia McAnarney Peuser Family Phil Simons Daughters Raymond Deanna & Linda Walters Panhandle Christmas & re rement par es Panhandle equipment & trucks Coles Fashion show, 125 dance recitals photos, Human interest, Paola High School construc on. Cri ers: Hazel Spindle’s dogs, Nick Nicholas Chinchillas, Uncle Ike with his pet coon, Shipman’s Dogs & Cats liv ing together in the same box and a ra le snake handler. Weddings 1950 to 1953 Bever Wedding Bradford & Hawkins Wedding Mayeo Wedding Mildred & Carl Haley Wedding The county quarry and rock crusher Paving 6th. Street in Osawatomie

Fred Coon at the me all these pic tures were taken was a Kansas High way patrolman in the Miami County area. He took pictures all around the country, a lot of weddings, civic events, and family portraits. The road accident pic tures were part of his official du es to document the crash scene if the accident

FredCoon

case came up to court. There must be more of his work somewhere; we have images only from 1950 to 1953 The museum can’t find a record of who donated the photos. It was es mated that there are over 2000 images in our collec on. The sheet film neg a ves are sized at 4x5 & 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ inches and very well preserved.

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