Interview with Mary Waters Spalding, August 8, 2013
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Transcript
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- | My name is Craig Breaden. | 0:00 |
I'm the audio visual archivist at Duke University, | 0:01 | |
and I'm with Kierston Johnson, | 0:04 | |
the curator of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke. | 0:05 | |
The date is August 8th, 2013, and we are in Lexington, | 0:08 | |
North Carolina, talking with Mary Waters Spalding | 0:11 | |
about her life and family and particularly | 0:14 | |
about her father, H. Lee Waters. | 0:16 | |
For the recording, please state your full name, | 0:20 | |
your date of birth and place of birth. | 0:22 | |
- | Okay, my name is Mary Elizabeth Waters Spalding, | 0:25 |
and my place of birth was Lexington, North Carolina | 0:29 | |
in 1942. | 0:32 | |
May 14th, 1942. | 0:34 | |
- | Can you describe what Lexington was like | 0:38 |
when you were growing up in the 1940s? | 0:40 | |
- | Well, I remember it as a small town, | 0:43 |
but a thriving small town, | 0:47 | |
and probably the reason it was thriving was | 0:49 | |
because of all the furniture factories in town. | 0:52 | |
And that employed a lot of people and kept the town going. | 0:56 | |
And of course, they're no longer here, | 1:01 | |
but at that time it was thriving with those. | 1:03 | |
And it was a very friendly town. | 1:05 | |
My brother and I felt like we actually pretty much | 1:10 | |
knew everybody in town and a lot of that has to do | 1:14 | |
with the fact that we saw so many photographs | 1:17 | |
from our father, and we went with him, | 1:20 | |
on location to take photographs. | 1:25 | |
And we got to meet a lot of people. | 1:27 | |
And it was just a very friendly town | 1:30 | |
that people were very kind, very thoughtful, | 1:35 | |
and they were always very cordial with our father, H. Lee. | 1:40 | |
One thing is, I don't think any of us | 1:50 | |
ever felt unsafe in this town. | 1:53 | |
It was a very safe town to be in. | 1:55 | |
Never felt threatened by anything. | 1:59 | |
It was very, just a very happy childhood | 2:01 | |
living in Lexington. | 2:04 | |
- | Tell us about the rest of your family. | 2:08 |
- | Well my brother, my older brother is eight years older | 2:11 |
than I am, his name is Tom Waters, | 2:14 | |
and we had an older sister, | 2:16 | |
who would have been 13 years older than I. | 2:21 | |
My brother is eight years older than I. | 2:23 | |
And she was their first born, | 2:27 | |
and she had an illness. | 2:30 | |
She was epileptic at a very young age. | 2:33 | |
Probably started having seizures at-- | 2:38 | |
- | About six months. | 2:42 |
- | About six months old, and they progressively got worse. | 2:43 |
And at that time in the 30s, | 2:46 | |
they didn't have the medication to help with that. | 2:51 | |
Probably just the phenobarb was all she was given. | 2:55 | |
And her seizures became more severe as she grew. | 3:00 | |
She got to be a larger person, | 3:04 | |
and very difficult to handle this. | 3:07 | |
My parents had difficulty with that. | 3:10 | |
So, and then she, | 3:14 | |
the seizures got so severe | 3:16 | |
that they just could not manage it, | 3:18 | |
so they took her to a state institution in Raleigh. | 3:20 | |
State hospital, and that's where she stayed until she died. | 3:28 | |
Now we were allowed to visit her like only once a month | 3:34 | |
because they did not want her, | 3:39 | |
they wanted that to be her home. | 3:42 | |
They didn't want her to want to go home, back home with us. | 3:44 | |
So if our visits would be more frequent, | 3:48 | |
she would get more used to our being there, | 3:50 | |
and miss us more I guess. | 3:53 | |
And then she contracted tuberculosis, | 3:55 | |
while she was there, and died at the age of 24. | 3:58 | |
I can't remember how old she was when she went there. | 4:03 | |
I would say she was a teenager, like 14, 15. | 4:07 | |
So, she was there that long. | 4:11 | |
So I mean, I think it was '53 that she died there? | 4:14 | |
I don't remember, but she was 24 when she died. | 4:21 | |
And our mother, who played a large part in our family, | 4:28 | |
she was our, H. Lee's, our father's partner in many ways. | 4:30 | |
They worked together, she worked at the studio. | 4:38 | |
She helped him with the photographs. | 4:41 | |
She helped him with the sittings, | 4:45 | |
Would help pose the brides and their dresses, | 4:47 | |
and their veils and fix their hair, | 4:51 | |
and help them get their makeup just right. | 4:53 | |
And then she would also | 4:55 | |
retouch the films by hand. | 4:59 | |
She would also color tint photographs | 5:04 | |
to make them look like color with oil. | 5:08 | |
And then later in years, she learned how to do | 5:11 | |
the heavy oil application to the large portraits | 5:13 | |
that looked like, more like paintings | 5:16 | |
than they did photographs. | 5:18 | |
So, they were quite a team. | 5:22 | |
- | What was your mother's name? | 5:24 |
- | Mabel Elizabeth Gerald, was her maiden name. | 5:26 |
And of course Waters, but that was, | 5:31 | |
I have my Elizabeth from my mom, | 5:34 | |
Mary Elizabeth is from Mabel Elizabeth. | 5:37 | |
- | How did they come to meet? | 5:40 |
- | Oh, that's an interesting story, rather comical. | 5:42 |
She was actually trained to be a nurse. | 5:48 | |
And she was doing some training there in Lexington Hospital, | 5:51 | |
and our father's mother, Gertrude Waters, | 5:55 | |
was in the hospital for pneumonia? | 6:00 | |
And they were in the same room. | 6:03 | |
And I guess it was a warm, summer day | 6:07 | |
and they had a fan in the room. | 6:09 | |
The fan needed to be plugged in. | 6:10 | |
Well, both of them got under the bed at one time, | 6:13 | |
to plug this fan in, and that's where they met. | 6:16 | |
(laughing) | 6:18 | |
And the rest is history. | 6:20 | |
(laughing) | 6:21 | |
I think that's a cute story. | 6:23 | |
- | Were they both from Lexington? | 6:26 |
- | No, | 6:28 |
oh gee, where was she from? | 6:30 | |
He was from South Carolina, wasn't he? | 6:32 | |
'Cause he was from like Greer, Gaffney, that area. | 6:34 | |
And he moved to Erlanger with his mom and dad, | 6:38 | |
in the thriving Erlanger mill days. | 6:44 | |
And she was, she grew up in the orphanage in Thomasville. | 6:48 | |
Because her parents died like a year apart, | 6:55 | |
while she was still small. | 6:57 | |
She had older brothers and sisters who didn't have, | 6:59 | |
I think there were only like three | 7:02 | |
that actually went to the orphanage, so that's-- | 7:03 | |
- | Mill's home. | 7:06 |
- | Excuse me? | 7:07 |
- | Mill's home. | 7:08 |
- | Mill's home, okay, but that's in Thomasville. | 7:09 |
- | Okay. | 7:11 |
- | And that's where she graduated from high school there, | 7:12 |
and then she went into nurse's training. | 7:14 | |
And where they came from was... | 7:18 | |
Wilmington area? | 7:22 | |
- | Wilmington area. | |
- | Wilmington area, that's where her family was from. | 7:23 |
And that's really pretty much | 7:27 | |
all I know about the background. | 7:28 | |
I'm working on that, but. | 7:31 | |
- | Between them meeting and | 7:33 |
H. Lee Waters getting interested | 7:40 | |
in photography and setting up his studio in Lexington, | 7:41 | |
how did that come together? | 7:45 | |
- | Well actually, our dad was an assistant | 7:47 |
or like an apprentice to another photographer, | 7:51 | |
who was in the same building at 118 1/2? | 7:53 | |
- | 118 1/2. | 7:58 |
- | 118 1/2 Main Street. | 7:59 |
- | The whole top floor. | 8:01 |
- | The whole top floor of that building | 8:02 |
on the corner of Second Avenue and Main Street. | 8:03 | |
And I can't remember the gentleman's first name? | 8:08 | |
- | Hitchcock. | 8:10 |
- | Hitchcock was the last name. | 8:11 |
- | Yeah. | 8:12 |
- | Mr. Hitchcock was a photographer, | 8:13 |
and he kind of took our dad under his wing | 8:15 | |
and offered him an assistantship or an apprenticeship | 8:18 | |
and he loved it so much, | 8:22 | |
that he wanted to be a photographer on his own. | 8:25 | |
So when Mr. Hitchcock retired, which was shortly after that. | 8:30 | |
- | About a year. | 8:35 |
- | About a year after that, my father's mother | 8:36 |
helped him buy the studio. | 8:41 | |
So that the two of them financially went together | 8:44 | |
and bought the studio and they-- | 8:47 | |
- | The financial documents of that transaction is down here | 8:48 |
in the archives, about right here. | 8:50 | |
- | So, all the equipment and, | 8:55 |
now of course that top floor they rented. | 8:56 | |
They didn't own the building, | 8:58 | |
but he rented | 8:59 | |
the dealership of the photography business for her. | 9:02 | |
He bought the entire business from him. | 9:05 | |
- | Right, so all the equipment? | 9:08 |
- | Oh, everything. | 9:10 |
All the cameras and everything. | 9:11 | |
Dark room, chemicals. | 9:13 | |
So, it was already pretty much set up | 9:15 | |
and then he grew from there. | 9:17 | |
- | Did you ever work with your father in his studio? | 9:23 |
- | Yes, I did. | 9:26 |
I can't say I spent numerous hours there as a small child, | 9:29 | |
but I remember going up and just enjoying being | 9:34 | |
in the atmosphere of the photographs | 9:36 | |
and all the hustle bustle of taking the sittings, | 9:38 | |
down to developing the negatives, to printing. | 9:43 | |
Drying the photographs, proofing. | 9:48 | |
And when I got to be in like, junior high school, | 9:50 | |
I would actually, over the holidays, | 9:54 | |
like Christmas and Easter. | 9:57 | |
Anytime I had free time, I would go up and help them, | 9:58 | |
and they would give me an allowance accordingly. | 10:01 | |
But I would, | 10:05 | |
I was kind of a combination of receptionist, cashier. | 10:06 | |
I would proof the photographs in our front window | 10:12 | |
out in front of the building in the old proof frames | 10:15 | |
that you use to use with the negatives and the proof paper. | 10:18 | |
You put it under the sun and that's how you got your proofs. | 10:21 | |
So that was one of my jobs. | 10:25 | |
Then I would dry the glossy prints on the big drum dryer. | 10:29 | |
Take those off and put 'em under glass with weights | 10:35 | |
to make them flat, because they come out | 10:39 | |
and they're a little bit curled. | 10:42 | |
- | Right. | 10:43 |
I would also do dry mounting. | 10:44 | |
Putting the dry mounting paper on the back | 10:47 | |
of the photograph, place it on a larger format mat, | 10:49 | |
and using that dry mounting machine, we'd do that. | 10:55 | |
And that took a little practice to get that straight, | 10:59 | |
but I learned, yeah I learned how to do that. | 11:02 | |
And that's probably about all I did, | 11:06 | |
but I, yeah and I would work. | 11:08 | |
I would come home from college | 11:11 | |
and work that during the holidays up there | 11:12 | |
to help them with. | 11:14 | |
Because it was a mad rush at Christmas time. | 11:16 | |
I mean it was a lot of business, so they needed some help. | 11:18 | |
- | Was there walk-in business or for the most part, | 11:23 |
did people make appointments with your father? | 11:26 | |
- | There was some walk-in business, there was some. | 11:29 |
Well, he had a showcase down the steps, okay? | 11:32 | |
This was all second floor, | 11:36 | |
and down these long straight steps, | 11:38 | |
the main entrance to the studio there was a showcase | 11:41 | |
on either side of the stairwell with an awning over it | 11:44 | |
and he would maybe every couple of weeks | 11:47 | |
change the photographs. | 11:50 | |
So people just walking on the streets would see these | 11:51 | |
and say, 'Oh, maybe I want my photograph taken, | 11:54 | |
that looks really cool. | 11:57 | |
This looks good.' | 11:58 | |
So they'd go up and they would talk to him | 11:59 | |
and when you walk into the showroom, | 12:02 | |
he had photographs everywhere. | 12:04 | |
Framed and unframed, so that's where he got, | 12:06 | |
I'd say a lot of his business he got from walk-ins. | 12:10 | |
But then, word-of-mouth, | 12:13 | |
this person would tell their mother or father | 12:16 | |
or their children or their cousins. | 12:19 | |
And the word got around that, you know, | 12:22 | |
this is where to go for good photographs. | 12:24 | |
So, some of that was word-of-mouth. | 12:26 | |
Others were, we'd call them on the phone | 12:28 | |
to ask them for appointments. | 12:31 | |
- | When you were working for him, | 12:35 |
did he talk about his time making films in other communities | 12:36 | |
in the 30s and early 40s? | 12:41 | |
- | You know, he really did not. | 12:43 |
I don't understand that and I read that question | 12:45 | |
and thinking, he was so concentrated on what he was doing | 12:47 | |
at the studio at that time, that was kind of the past. | 12:53 | |
Until, | 12:57 | |
the 70s, | 12:59 | |
which I was not around then, | 13:01 | |
but then he'd started talking to us about | 13:03 | |
taking the films back to the communities, | 13:05 | |
showing them at the civic clubs | 13:07 | |
and then the civic clubs would buy them | 13:09 | |
for the community from him. | 13:11 | |
So, he wanted to see that they got to where they should be, | 13:13 | |
that these people would see them again. | 13:16 | |
That they weren't just sitting in our garage forever. | 13:18 | |
Well, that was probably his first step of sharing | 13:22 | |
those photographs with families and generations to come. | 13:26 | |
- | I had a quick question before we move on. | 13:33 |
- | Sure. | 13:35 |
- | Since you were working for your father, | 13:36 |
can you talk a little bit about | 13:38 | |
how he interacted with his clients? | 13:40 | |
What you remember about how he worked with his clients? | 13:44 | |
I think that it might shed some light | 13:48 | |
on how he interacted with the people-- | 13:50 | |
- | Well, he was just a very friendly person. | 13:51 |
He liked people. | 13:54 | |
He liked talking to people. | 13:56 | |
So it was very easy for him because of his personality, | 13:58 | |
to approach someone and for them to approach him. | 14:02 | |
And in the studio he would talk to them about, | 14:05 | |
'Well, now what kind of picture do you want taken? | 14:08 | |
Do you want your child's picture? | 14:10 | |
Would you like a very casual attire?' | 14:12 | |
You know, 'You want serious ones?' | 14:17 | |
You know, depending on the subject like wedding pictures. | 14:19 | |
The brides liked to look very sophisticated, | 14:22 | |
happy but not laughing, you know. | 14:25 | |
But, he had the kind of personality | 14:28 | |
that he loved taking children's pictures. | 14:30 | |
Loved that, because he was kind of a big kid himself. | 14:34 | |
He liked to be a little goofy with the kids | 14:38 | |
and get them laughing and he could do that. | 14:40 | |
Some of the expressions that he got | 14:42 | |
from children were phenomenal. | 14:43 | |
If you see those prints. | 14:45 | |
But as far as adults, | 14:48 | |
they felt very comfortable just talking to him. | 14:50 | |
If a lot of times when he was, | 14:52 | |
when mother and he were taking the photographs, | 14:54 | |
they would just talk to them. | 14:56 | |
And then he would be snapping away. | 14:58 | |
They weren't even, they weren't really posing at times | 15:00 | |
because you get a more natural look, | 15:04 | |
if they're talking to you. | 15:06 | |
But-- | 15:09 | |
- | He was a charmer, he appeared professional. | 15:09 |
- | Yeah, he was a charmer I think so. | 15:11 |
You could say that. | 15:13 | |
But he had no problem interacting, | 15:16 | |
and people felt very comfortable with him. | 15:18 | |
- | So did he, at what point did you first learn | 15:22 |
about his movies of local people? | 15:25 | |
- | Golly. | 15:31 |
It was probably after I graduated from college that I even, | 15:34 | |
that even was a subject of conversation. | 15:39 | |
Because he never really showed this to us | 15:44 | |
as we were growing up. | 15:47 | |
That was kind of his business at that time | 15:51 | |
but then when I was born in 1942, | 15:53 | |
he promised my mother that he would stay home. | 15:57 | |
He would no longer be on the road, | 15:59 | |
so I guess you could blame me for that. | 16:00 | |
(laughing) | 16:02 | |
For him not taking them any longer, | 16:03 | |
but that was on the road now. | 16:06 | |
That was traveling, and he would be gone most of the week. | 16:07 | |
Come home, and edit, | 16:11 | |
get the films processed | 16:15 | |
and then when he would receive them, | 16:16 | |
he would edit them and then take them back to the towns | 16:18 | |
so he was on the road a lot, between 1936 and '42. | 16:21 | |
But you see, I don't remember that because I wasn't there. | 16:28 | |
I wasn't born. | 16:31 | |
All I know is after he stayed home, he was with me. | 16:32 | |
And, like I said, I really never knew about these | 16:39 | |
until probably the 60s. | 16:41 | |
Then he didn't, really didn't talk | 16:46 | |
about them that much then. | 16:47 | |
It's just that he was, he had them, | 16:48 | |
I knew they were in the garage, | 16:50 | |
but I didn't really know what they were? | 16:51 | |
Or how important they were at that point? | 16:54 | |
And you know as you're growing up, what your parents do, | 16:56 | |
doesn't quite seem as important as it really is, you know. | 17:00 | |
It's like, it's not that special. | 17:05 | |
It's just he's being a father and he's supporting us. | 17:06 | |
So at that point, neither my brother or I had any idea, | 17:10 | |
the impact this was gonna make on the history of Lexington | 17:14 | |
and all these cities that, the towns that he filmed. | 17:18 | |
- | Later on, did he ever talk about | 17:25 |
when he was going back to the small towns in the 1970s | 17:30 | |
and screening the films again. | 17:33 | |
Did he ever talk with you about | 17:35 | |
how he came up with this idea to start traveling around? | 17:37 | |
- | You mean to show them, afterwards, after the whole-- | 17:42 |
- | No, the initial idea to even make them? | 17:45 |
- | Ah, no, no not to me. | 17:47 |
He possibly did to my brother, but. | 17:49 | |
This was before my time, | 17:53 | |
and maybe he thought there was no reason to share | 17:56 | |
that with me until I got to be older, | 17:58 | |
and that's what happened. | 18:00 | |
I was out of college at the time | 18:02 | |
and it was explained to me then what he had done | 18:04 | |
and like I said, it didn't affect me at all | 18:11 | |
as far as him being away because I didn't know that. | 18:12 | |
I didn't. | 18:15 | |
All I knew is he was around when I was a baby | 18:16 | |
and he kept his promise. | 18:19 | |
As a matter of fact, he was on the road | 18:20 | |
when my mother when into labor with me. | 18:23 | |
And he was trying to get back before I was born | 18:27 | |
and he got back. | 18:31 | |
He returned two minutes near the delivery room, | 18:31 | |
before I was born, he returned at 2'o clock. | 18:36 | |
I was born at 2:02, | 18:38 | |
so he did make it back. | 18:40 | |
So, but he did continue making films, | 18:42 | |
but mostly of Lexington and family at that point. | 18:46 | |
He just didn't do any traveling | 18:50 | |
to other towns to make films. | 18:53 | |
- | And I wanna ask you about that, in a minute, | 18:56 |
but also, once you did start talking to him about these, | 18:57 | |
did you get different stories from him | 19:02 | |
versus your mother regarding the films? | 19:04 | |
- | No, I don't remember my mother talking about them at all. | 19:07 |
- | Oh, really? | 19:10 |
- | Do you? | 19:11 |
I don't think she ever chimed in on that. | 19:12 | |
And, as a matter of fact, | 19:16 | |
I know with that generation sometimes you | 19:18 | |
have to really pull to get information from them. | 19:20 | |
Because that's just what he did, it's the way it was, | 19:23 | |
he wasn't intending to make a huge impact on the world. | 19:28 | |
He was supporting his family, | 19:33 | |
he was trying to get through the end of the Depression | 19:35 | |
and make it work for the family. | 19:40 | |
Even though he had to be on the road, | 19:42 | |
he was just a very creative person and... | 19:44 | |
I don't know if he knew of other itinerant movie makers? | 19:48 | |
He possibly did through reading magazines and newspapers | 19:53 | |
but, this was, his ideas of going to the towns | 19:56 | |
and the way he edited films, that was pretty creative. | 20:02 | |
He was just a creative individual. | 20:06 | |
And, the fact that how he advertised it, | 20:09 | |
once he had taken the films, he would place a big poster | 20:13 | |
or placard on top of his car with braces. | 20:17 | |
And he would ride around town with this poster saying, | 20:21 | |
'See yourself on the big screen!' | 20:25 | |
You know with certain dates, | 20:27 | |
and he would also have a microphone hooked up | 20:29 | |
with a speaker on the car and he would be talking | 20:33 | |
as he was driving around town advertising this feature | 20:36 | |
and the fact that they could come, | 20:40 | |
when they come to the theaters to see that movie, | 20:41 | |
they would also see themselves on the big screen. | 20:43 | |
And that attracted a lot of attention. | 20:46 | |
- | And you've said earlier before we did the interview, | 20:51 |
I'd like to touch on this again. | 20:57 | |
When he came back he brought that kind of big personality | 20:57 | |
back with him and applied it, but at home. | 21:00 | |
Can you tell us about some of the ways | 21:03 | |
he followed events in Lexington | 21:05 | |
and how you might've been involved in some of those things? | 21:07 | |
- | Okay. | 21:09 |
I don't think anything went on in Lexington | 21:11 | |
that was of any size at all that he didn't want a part of it | 21:14 | |
and he didn't want to record it. | 21:18 | |
And to... | 21:20 | |
save that for the archives. | 21:25 | |
In his mind, his photographs were his archives. | 21:27 | |
He wanted to record and, | 21:31 | |
the images of the town and the events. | 21:36 | |
Especially, like when the servicemen would be bused off | 21:39 | |
to their, wherever they were going to be stationed | 21:46 | |
and trained for the war. | 21:48 | |
He would come to the depot and take a picture, | 21:50 | |
a group picture of that group of men going that day. | 21:53 | |
- | Sometimes, it's on the steps of the courthouse. | 21:57 |
- | Yeah, and the exhibit that the Davidson County Museum | 21:59 |
had of... | 22:06 | |
I don't know what they called it. The Veteran's Gallery? | 22:09 | |
Lots of veterans brought in photographs | 22:14 | |
and many of them were taken by our dad | 22:17 | |
and there are many photographs that he'd taken | 22:19 | |
of the servicemen before they left Lexington and possibly... | 22:21 | |
An observation I made by looking at these photographs, | 22:26 | |
this could have been, for some of them, | 22:29 | |
the last picture that was taken of them. | 22:31 | |
- | There was a large billboard, | 22:37 |
where the Lexington State Bank is now, | 22:39 | |
And had the names of every one of the draftees. | 22:43 | |
Hundreds of names up there. | 22:45 | |
Within, three or four big panels, giant billboard. | 22:48 | |
But it was the military honor roll. | 22:51 | |
They were any military of any kind for any length of time, | 22:54 | |
their name was on that list. | 22:57 | |
And Kathryn, I think at one time, | 22:59 | |
I think she had more than we did. | 23:01 | |
- | Very possible. | 23:04 |
But anything that was going on like the photographs, | 23:06 | |
I don't think he had any movies of High Rock Dam, | 23:09 | |
did he make all still photographs of that of High Rock Dam. | 23:15 | |
He documented that from the time the ground was broken up | 23:19 | |
through the completion of it. | 23:22 | |
- | The little museum he has has the very camera. | 23:24 |
- | Mhm. | 23:26 |
Oh, furniture factory parties. | 23:29 | |
Any kind of event that he could record that | 23:35 | |
and save it for that particular company | 23:39 | |
or that set of people. | 23:42 | |
I remember one instance that | 23:44 | |
and I use to go with him on many, | 23:46 | |
to many of these parties and just carry a bag | 23:48 | |
or just kinda go along for the fun of it | 23:52 | |
and just be with our dad. | 23:54 | |
'Cuz it was a lot of fun, he was just a fun person and, | 23:56 | |
(chuckles) | 24:00 | |
One time we went to, we were on the stage | 24:01 | |
of Lexington Senior High, which was at that time | 24:04 | |
on which avenue? | 24:08 | |
The big? | 24:09 | |
- | That was State Street. | 24:10 |
- | State Street, okay. | 24:11 |
And we were on stage and there was a Christmas program. | 24:14 | |
Santa Claus was in a huge box and my job, | 24:18 | |
for that little assistantship was to hold these two flashes. | 24:23 | |
Photography, photograph flashes | 24:29 | |
that you use for taking photographs. | 24:32 | |
But this wasn't taking a photograph, this was, | 24:34 | |
the purpose of these flashes was to blind momentarily, | 24:37 | |
the audience. | 24:40 | |
So they could not really see Santa Claus | 24:41 | |
popping out of the box. | 24:44 | |
And that's, when I got the signal from him, | 24:45 | |
to push the flash button, that's what I did. | 24:48 | |
So, that was just a fun thing to do, you know. | 24:51 | |
(laughing) | 24:54 | |
So you know, different things like that that just, | 24:55 | |
you know, sometimes some of these memories are so deep | 24:56 | |
that as I'm talking with you, | 25:00 | |
they're hidden until they start coming to the surface, | 25:04 | |
just like in a computer. | 25:07 | |
It's not right at the top until | 25:08 | |
you start digging a little deeper. | 25:11 | |
- | That's the emotional roller coasters, | 25:12 |
- | Yeah, | 25:14 |
- | Going through while you're saying somethin'. | 25:17 |
Plenty of things we never knew. | 25:19 | |
He was kind of a genius in his own right, he was, I tell ya, | 25:23 | |
if you dug deeper. | 25:27 | |
- | Many people have noted that your father filmed | 25:31 |
in black communities in the towns he visited | 25:35 | |
when he was making his movies of local people. | 25:38 | |
Almost as regularly as he filmed in the white communities. | 25:42 | |
Did he ever share with you this aspect of his work | 25:46 | |
or what that might have meant maybe in a larger sense? | 25:48 | |
- | You know, I can't say that he shared it with me. | 25:54 |
I became aware of this as my brother and I | 25:56 | |
were unearthing many of the photographs that he had taken. | 26:00 | |
This has been in the last 10 years, | 26:08 | |
we've gone through so many photographs | 26:10 | |
and he never really talked about, | 26:13 | |
'Oh, I went into a black community today.' | 26:16 | |
He never mentioned that. | 26:19 | |
He never said black, he just said, 'I went to this party' | 26:21 | |
or this event. | 26:24 | |
There just isn't a lot in my memory | 26:27 | |
about him talking about that. | 26:29 | |
It was just natural for him to do it | 26:30 | |
because they were people and it was an event | 26:33 | |
and he wanted to be a part of it. | 26:37 | |
And he was invited possibly because they felt a connection | 26:39 | |
to him with his personality and the fact he not there | 26:44 | |
to be intimidating or to be... | 26:49 | |
I don't know. | 26:55 | |
- | He wasn't exploiting the people. | 26:56 |
- | No, he wasn't exploiting them, | 26:57 |
it was just, they liked being on camera. | 26:59 | |
And probably, possibly maybe not a lot of black people | 27:02 | |
had cameras or at least video cameras, film cameras. | 27:06 | |
But you can see by looking at the photographs | 27:11 | |
that they're really happy to have him there. | 27:13 | |
You'd never guess that he was a white person | 27:18 | |
taking pictures of a black community. | 27:19 | |
- | Some of the greatest smiles | 27:22 |
I've ever seen come from the black community. | 27:23 | |
- | Yes, they're just happy. | 27:25 |
Happy to be on, in the pictures. | 27:26 | |
(pages flipping) | 27:38 | |
- | I wonder about his studio photography business, | 27:41 |
and black communities in Lexington, North Carolina. | 27:45 | |
Did you find that he was photographing black communities, | 27:49 | |
black families, just as much as early as the 1930s, 40s? | 27:55 | |
- | Oh yes, yes. | 28:00 |
We found that in our dig, | 28:02 | |
that many many black families and reunions | 28:07 | |
and birthday parties | 28:11 | |
and church reunions, like outside churches, | 28:13 | |
you could see the church in the background and just like, | 28:19 | |
it was like Homecoming Day for the church. | 28:23 | |
You could see the whole community of the church | 28:26 | |
in front of the church. | 28:29 | |
And he was invited to do that. | 28:31 | |
Not that he really searched that out, | 28:32 | |
but once people found out that he was | 28:34 | |
an excellent photographer, | 28:37 | |
they didn't, you know. | 28:39 | |
That's what they wanted was a group picture. | 28:40 | |
Or families would come in, | 28:43 | |
like grandparents and grandchildren and mothers and fathers | 28:45 | |
and have a group picture taken or just individuals. | 28:49 | |
Like, servicemen. | 28:51 | |
We found a lot of service men's photographs. | 28:53 | |
Black and white. | 28:56 | |
- | Right. | 28:57 |
- | So, it's that he had a really good business both. | 28:58 |
In both aspects. | 29:01 | |
- | As time moved on, you had mentioned earlier | 29:08 |
that he and your mother would go to workshops | 29:12 | |
to get new techniques and adopt new techniques, | 29:16 | |
can you talk about that a little bit? | 29:22 | |
- | Yes, I even went to one with them, or maybe more than one, | 29:24 |
I remember one that specifically, | 29:30 | |
I was probably 10, nine, 10 or 11. | 29:32 | |
We went to Chicago and it was a convention. | 29:36 | |
What I meant by workshops, it was probably workshops | 29:40 | |
within the convention. | 29:44 | |
And they would have on stage a professional photographer | 29:47 | |
posing and showing different ways, different techniques | 29:51 | |
of taking photographs, different ways of styling them. | 29:53 | |
Styling the fashion and the hair and how to light | 29:58 | |
and how to just basically take better photographs. | 30:02 | |
And I think each time they went to one of those workshops | 30:07 | |
and conventions they brought back a lot of knowledge. | 30:11 | |
Because they were serious, | 30:14 | |
they didn't go just for a good time. | 30:15 | |
They went to research, they went to be educated. | 30:17 | |
- | One time he was president of | 30:21 |
the North Carolina's Photographer's Association. | 30:22 | |
- | Oh, I had forgot about that, yeah. | 30:24 |
- | When was that? | 30:26 |
- | I'm not sure of the dates-- | 30:28 |
- | I would say it's probably in the 50s, yeah. | 30:29 |
But, he also gained a many friendships that way | 30:35 | |
of other photographers and you know as an artist. | 30:38 | |
Artists learn from other artists | 30:42 | |
and you can't reinvent the wheel, | 30:45 | |
you've got to share your ideas | 30:47 | |
and you can't be selfish about that, | 30:49 | |
because you can take what that person taught you | 30:52 | |
and do that as well as go a step further. | 30:55 | |
And whatever was out there to learn, | 30:59 | |
he wanted to learn more about photography | 31:02 | |
and how to get the best portraits | 31:06 | |
and the best photographs that he could take. | 31:07 | |
And again our mother, went to workshops to learn | 31:10 | |
how to do the color tinting and how to retouch. | 31:14 | |
So she was willing to study this to make it better. | 31:19 | |
It wasn't a fly-by-night operation. | 31:22 | |
It was a lifetime commitment to this, | 31:26 | |
I wouldn't say it was really a job for him? | 31:31 | |
It was entertaining for him. | 31:35 | |
He just loved it so much. | 31:37 | |
It was a passion, and yes, it was hard work. | 31:40 | |
Weddings, especially. | 31:43 | |
Weddings, I went to many weddings with him, | 31:46 | |
and that was really hard work. | 31:49 | |
That's very difficult. | 31:51 | |
But he just loved what he did. | 31:54 | |
And what he made, financially, was kind of, | 31:57 | |
the tip of the iceberg for him. | 32:03 | |
There's so much enjoyment and pleasure from it too. | 32:07 | |
- | Right. | 32:10 |
- | I'm not saying that he didn't have bad days, | 32:11 |
we all have those. | 32:13 | |
But, basically that was fun for him, to be a photographer, | 32:15 | |
and I think that if we can all say that, | 32:19 | |
that our job is fun, that's a blessing in itself. | 32:21 | |
- | Did he have any hobbies or passions outside | 32:27 |
of film and photography that you remember, | 32:31 | |
just thinking about H. Lee Waters, at the end | 32:34 | |
of the day or on the weekends, not doing his-- | 32:38 | |
- | Well, he did like to ride his motorcycle. | 32:41 |
He had many motorcycles in his time. | 32:45 | |
And we're not talking about the big Harleys, | 32:48 | |
we're talking about little Hondas, that didn't go real fast. | 32:50 | |
And you could ask anybody in the community | 32:56 | |
that remembers him at all, they remember this little icon | 32:58 | |
riding around in a 3-piece suit on his motorcycle. | 33:01 | |
He didn't wear jeans, he didn't wear casual shirts, | 33:07 | |
he would wear a 3-piece suit, riding on the motorcycle. | 33:10 | |
(laughs) | 33:14 | |
So he really enjoyed that. | 33:15 | |
- | Yeah, in the old days. | 33:16 |
- | Yeah, and he liked to go visit | 33:18 |
the orphanage home in Lexington. | 33:22 | |
And he would, I would go with him many times to do that. | 33:26 | |
And he would take, and this is all things | 33:30 | |
I'm just starting to remember. | 33:34 | |
He would buy huge 16mm films of feature films | 33:37 | |
that the children would enjoy. | 33:43 | |
He would take his projector and have a movie night, | 33:44 | |
either outside or inside for the orphanage. | 33:47 | |
And he would, he just loved entertaining the orphans. | 33:51 | |
He would even take some of them some days. | 33:55 | |
I would go with him or he would go with them | 33:58 | |
and he would take them on rides in the little scooter | 33:59 | |
or Honda that he had. | 34:02 | |
In those days we didn't have to have helmets, | 34:06 | |
we could ride on the gas tank, we could ride behind him. | 34:07 | |
You know, it's just, it just wasn't the same. | 34:11 | |
But, probably not real safe, but that's the way it was. | 34:14 | |
He loved the church and one of his hobbies for the church | 34:20 | |
he thought was his mission was to distribute tracts. | 34:24 | |
Are you familiar with what tracts are? | 34:28 | |
- | Tracks with a T? | 34:31 |
- | Yes, with the T? | |
- | Yes, he would distribute those | 34:34 |
throughout the town actually. | 34:38 | |
The train station, the bus station, the post office. | 34:40 | |
Where else he would have done that? | 34:45 | |
- | He'd go on an excursion train sometimes, | 34:46 |
made sure everybody on that train got one. | 34:47 | |
- | Oh yeah, he would hand them out, you know. | 34:48 |
Or he would leave them, he was just a very spiritual person. | 34:51 | |
He and our mother both were very spiritual. | 34:56 | |
He loved the church and he loved to do things | 34:59 | |
for the church, so yes he did have hobbies. | 35:01 | |
He did have a lot of interests | 35:03 | |
other than photographs and photography. | 35:05 | |
All of that has to do with the complete person and, | 35:09 | |
and that has to do with how kind he was to people. | 35:17 | |
And how he felt that it was important | 35:21 | |
to treat people equally and to not discriminate. | 35:23 | |
- | I can remember him taking gift baskets | 35:26 |
at Christmas for these needy homes. | 35:28 | |
One young boy, he'd start a friendship with them, | 35:32 | |
actually go to church with him, and the little boy | 35:35 | |
didn't have any church clothes, | 35:36 | |
so our dad bought him a church suit. | 35:37 | |
And take him to church with him. | 35:40 | |
And just various little things like that, little tidbits, | 35:43 | |
little hiccups along the way, little comma here | 35:45 | |
and a semicolon there and something in parentheses | 35:48 | |
after what his main body of movement is. | 35:52 | |
These little incidences showed the depth of his character. | 35:54 | |
- | And he really made a living from doing things | 36:00 |
for other people, doing things for the community, | 36:03 | |
documenting the community, giving back to the community | 36:05 | |
by screening those films. | 36:08 | |
- | Yes he did. | 36:14 |
(chuckles) | 36:15 | |
- | Did you have movie night at your house? | 36:17 |
- | Oh yes. | 36:19 |
- | What was movie night like? | 36:20 |
(laughing) | 36:21 | |
- | Well movie night was when he took | 36:22 |
those same kinds of feature films, | 36:24 | |
I remember one specifically was called | 36:26 | |
'Shriek in the Night', it was a horror movie. | 36:28 | |
Now nothing like our horror movies today, | 36:31 | |
but at our age, it was a horror movie, it was scary, | 36:33 | |
but he would have movie night for the neighborhood. | 36:38 | |
We would advertise it with posters on telephone poles. | 36:41 | |
Come to 405 for movie night. | 36:46 | |
We would make homemade ice cream. | 36:49 | |
We had a swing set. | 36:51 | |
It was just a total entertainment night. | 36:55 | |
So we'd pop popcorn or we'd serve the ice cream | 36:57 | |
while they're watching this movie in the backyard now. | 37:00 | |
In the summertime, it was only summer. | 37:03 | |
And I can remember one time when he showed that | 37:08 | |
'Shriek in the Night', Tom did something really strange | 37:11 | |
but I can't remember exactly what it was | 37:16 | |
but he tried to scare everybody. | 37:18 | |
I mean we're sitting there like, | 37:20 | |
he's eight years older than we are. | 37:21 | |
And here are these little five, six, seven year olds | 37:24 | |
and we're you know scared of this movie | 37:28 | |
and he comes around and spooks everybody. | 37:30 | |
I remember, you don't remember that do you? | 37:32 | |
- | No I don't remember. | 37:34 |
- | Well I do! | |
Because we just jumped out of our skin! | 37:36 | |
And it was just fun, it was fun growing up in that household | 37:38 | |
because he always had something fun going on, | 37:42 | |
we would even have Circus Night. | 37:44 | |
So all night, now you don't remember this Tom, | 37:48 | |
because this was after he left. | 37:50 | |
But all my friends in the neighborhood | 37:53 | |
we'd come up with some special talent that we had, | 37:54 | |
or some special thing that we wanted to do a circus act | 37:58 | |
from trapeze to ballet to tap | 38:01 | |
to acrobats to being a clown or whatever. | 38:05 | |
So we'd have Circus Night. | 38:08 | |
He would provide the spotlight and it was after dark. | 38:10 | |
He'd provide the spotlight, he had an arc light spotlight | 38:13 | |
- | Right. | 38:18 |
- | And he would play music. | 38:18 |
He would also do drum rolls because he was musical. | 38:21 | |
Oh I forgot about this. | 38:25 | |
He was, he was a drummer and he played the vibraphone | 38:27 | |
and ah. | 38:32 | |
- | Marimba. | 38:34 |
- | Marimba, yes. | 38:35 |
So and trumpet, didn't he play the trumpet? | 38:36 | |
- | Yes, he played the trumpet. | 38:38 |
- | Okay, so he was very musical. | 38:39 |
- | He was in one of the earliest to bang the pans, he was. | 38:41 |
- | So he would accompany this circus, | 38:44 |
along with some '78 records and he would put the spotlight | 38:47 | |
on us and you know the drum roll when I got, you know, | 38:52 | |
I was on the trapeze, | 38:55 | |
but certainly wasn't anything dangerous, | 38:56 | |
but he made it sound dangerous. | 38:58 | |
(laughs) | 38:59 | |
And I think he enjoyed it as much or more than we did. | 39:01 | |
This is just the little kid in him, | 39:04 | |
and we were always doing something fun. | 39:07 | |
We had lots of animals, we had chickens and roosters | 39:11 | |
and ducks and cats and dogs and fish and I think we had | 39:14 | |
one goat, so he loved taking care of animals too, | 39:21 | |
he loved animals and he's passed that onto us | 39:25 | |
and I love animals so, it's just, you know, | 39:29 | |
it's hard. | 39:36 | |
(light sobbing) | 39:37 | |
- | Sounds like you two had a wonderful childhood. | 39:39 |
(coughing blocks out dialogue) | 39:45 | |
- | The top window right there in front of the building, | 39:55 |
where he made the proofs. | 39:57 | |
And at night he would set up a projector | 40:00 | |
and then when the projected across the street | 40:02 | |
on a giant screen over the building | 40:04 | |
over next door over there. | 40:07 | |
Not next store but across the street. | 40:09 | |
Got permission from the building owner to put | 40:10 | |
this giant screen up there and then | 40:12 | |
showed it right across Main Street and he did that for | 40:15 | |
I dunno how long til the police made him quit it. | 40:17 | |
(laughing) | 40:20 | |
- | Before the traffic noticed. | 40:22 |
- | That's great. People standing in the streets down there, | 40:24 |
parked their cars, and come right to the outdoor theater. | 40:26 | |
- | Uh huh. | 40:29 |
- | There sure was to a lot of people there. | 40:30 |
Another one of the films was, "Ten Laps To Go," | 40:33 | |
I think we still may have one of those, sure that we might. | 40:37 | |
- | A what? | 40:39 |
Oh, we probably do, and then he use to show, | 40:40 | |
what were the funny movies? | 40:43 | |
Did he show Abbott and Costello? | 40:44 | |
I think he owned one of those. | 40:46 | |
- | Felix the Cat. | 40:48 |
- | And Felix the cat, the cartoon. | 40:49 |
Some of the original Mickey Mouse. | 40:51 | |
So, he would purchase those and show them movie night, | 40:53 | |
(laughter) | 40:57 | |
for our pleasure. | 40:58 | |
- | Was he a movie goer? | 41:00 |
- | Do you remember him | 41:02 |
- | No. | |
- | going to the theater? | 41:03 |
- | That was before your time. | 41:04 |
We went to theaters a lot. | 41:06 | |
- | Oh, did he? | 41:07 |
- | Oh yeah. | 41:08 |
He bought the most of 'em, well once, | 41:09 | |
in a particular time period for a contest | 41:11 | |
and won the pass to the theater for a year. | 41:14 | |
- | Oh wow. | 41:16 |
- | And we'd see just about every movie that | 41:17 |
that came on the screen. | 41:19 | |
- | I did not know that, I did not know that. | 41:20 |
I guess I was his entertainment after I was born. | 41:21 | |
- | I guess so. | 41:24 |
(laughter) | 41:25 | |
Can you tell us a little bit about your mother, | 41:27 | |
she was such an integral part of the photography business | 41:29 | |
and as you said earlier they were partners in many ways. | 41:34 | |
What was she like as a person? | 41:38 | |
Did she have hobbies outside of being a mother | 41:40 | |
and working with your father? | 41:44 | |
- | She did. | 41:48 |
But I didn't realize they were hobbies | 41:49 | |
until I was in high school or college. | 41:51 | |
Her hobby was me, growing up I guess. | 41:57 | |
'Cuz I was eight years behind him. | 42:01 | |
I do remember when she'd bring, | 42:05 | |
when she was learning how to do, | 42:08 | |
doing the color tinted photographs. | 42:10 | |
She would stay with me at home and do that at home. | 42:13 | |
I remember sitting there with her as a toddler, | 42:17 | |
or I was a six, seven, eight years old and she would, | 42:20 | |
She would give me another print and let me do it too. | 42:23 | |
So I would color the prints right along with her | 42:28 | |
and that's how I got interested in my art career. | 42:32 | |
And she also loved flower-arranging. | 42:38 | |
She loved growing African Violets. | 42:41 | |
She had one whole room with lots of light and natural light | 42:44 | |
in it that she grew African Violets, just award winners. | 42:48 | |
She even- | 42:54 | |
- | Cross pollinated. | 42:56 |
- | cross pollinated ones to come up with new ones. | 42:56 |
I mean that was a hobby during all this time. | 42:59 | |
Plants and, especially African Violets and flower-arranging. | 43:02 | |
And then she in the 70s she took a painting course | 43:07 | |
from a local artist and did paintings not from photographs, | 43:11 | |
but just paintings. | 43:15 | |
So, she was a true artist in every way. | 43:17 | |
A very low-key person. | 43:21 | |
She would not be, how we put it, she was gregarious, | 43:25 | |
she was friendly but not as outgoing as he was. | 43:27 | |
Yeah I think that generation, the mother and the wife, | 43:32 | |
weren't quite, didn't feel as free to be as outgoing | 43:36 | |
as they are now, because they weren't as worldly. | 43:39 | |
But she, she really enjoyed what she was doing | 43:44 | |
at the studio. | 43:47 | |
But as far as her personality, | 43:50 | |
she was just a real sweet lady. | 43:52 | |
- | She was. | 43:54 |
- | Never went into nursing after they got married. | 43:55 |
Because shortly after they were married, | 43:59 | |
did he go into the business before they were married? | 44:02 | |
- | He went into the business in 1926. | 44:04 |
- | Yeah, okay so maybe he went into business shortly | 44:07 |
before they were married so she assisted him. | 44:10 | |
- | Married Christmas day. | 44:13 |
- | Yes they were married on December 25th. | 44:14 |
But she was pretty much the backbone of that studio | 44:19 | |
as far as keeping him organized, | 44:22 | |
you know, she really was good at that. | 44:28 | |
- | Did she keep the books? | 44:31 |
- | No, she didn't keep the books, did she? | 44:32 |
- | Think they both did. | 44:34 |
- | Yeah, I don't remember that. | 44:36 |
I don't. | 44:39 | |
We were having such a good time, I didn't go into all that. | 44:41 | |
(laughs) | 44:43 | |
Why would I have to worry about the books? | 44:45 | |
- | He did some very striking work at High Rock Dam | 44:54 |
in the 1920s and obviously when he came back to Lexington. | 44:58 | |
Did he ever show any of his still photographs | 45:02 | |
around town at all? | 45:04 | |
- | Oh yeah, yeah a whole box of them. | 45:06 |
Sent them over to Kathryn there on the dam project | 45:08 | |
that they've on display on at the museum, | 45:11 | |
and they got misplaced or something, | 45:14 | |
I don't know what happened to 'em. | 45:16 | |
But uh, they was quite a few, he made over 100 pictures, | 45:18 | |
over a period of two and a half years. | 45:22 | |
Parts of 26, 27, 28, | 45:24 | |
and I can still remember the print number, | 45:28 | |
106, 107, 108 so he made well over 100... | 45:30 | |
And he'd go down there once a month | 45:35 | |
and then take a series of them. | 45:36 | |
Almost didn't get back from one of them down there. | 45:39 | |
Started snowing while he was down there. | 45:42 | |
He got stuck in the snow and had to start walking back | 45:43 | |
to Lexington and there were no road sides to be seen, | 45:46 | |
it was all white. | 45:49 | |
So he found the railroad tracks, | 45:50 | |
and he knew the railroad track went to our house, | 45:51 | |
back in Lexington. | 45:53 | |
So, he wanted to go find our house right then. | 45:55 | |
- | That's funny. | 45:57 |
- | Well, after an hour or more of debating, | 45:57 |
which was further on down than our house was about, | 46:00 | |
but he followed the track, he came across a farmhouse | 46:03 | |
and knocked on the door and asked them | 46:07 | |
if he could use the phone, I don't think they had a phone, | 46:09 | |
but he had asked them, | 46:12 | |
well they asked him to stay the night, | 46:15 | |
he had to get out of there in the morning | 46:17 | |
and eventually got his car back. | 46:19 | |
I don't know all the follow up details but, | 46:23 | |
If they hadn't taken him in he might have been caught | 46:28 | |
in that blizzard and that'd been the end of him, | 46:30 | |
and basically our studio. | 46:32 | |
But to hear him tell it was rather, not life taking, | 46:36 | |
but life experience, he would say, 'he'd go through it once | 46:41 | |
but I wouldn't wanna go through it twice.' | 46:44 | |
- | He would have examples of his photographs | 46:49 |
in the windows of the shop front below? | 46:53 | |
- | Sometimes, sometimes. | 46:56 |
- | Okay. | 46:58 |
- | I don't know if he ever made full display | 46:59 |
of the High Rock Dam project, | 47:00 | |
but he was working for Alcoa. | 47:03 | |
He would take the films and made pictures of it, | 47:07 | |
put it in albums once in a while show them. | 47:10 | |
The past scenes of construction throughout town. | 47:12 | |
He mentioned the textile mills when we came to Madison, | 47:18 | |
there was a number of them, what we call a cotton mill, | 47:21 | |
textile, and we were obsessed with furniture factories | 47:23 | |
there were about six or eight of those. | 47:27 | |
There were also about six or eight textile mills. | 47:29 | |
- | That's right I forgot about those. | 47:31 |
Especially Erlanger. | 47:32 | |
- | Yeah, that's what brought him up here. | 47:33 |
Job production line was fierce so they put all three of them | 47:37 | |
to work up here in Erlanger. | 47:40 | |
My dad worked for 50 cents a day. | 47:42 | |
And my grandmother soaking labels and his dad worked | 47:45 | |
on the machines, the looms, and was a general technician | 47:50 | |
as he, well, but they were totally involved in the community | 47:54 | |
of Erlanger there. | 47:59 | |
And he brought me pictures of the Midway | 48:02 | |
up through Erlanger, when they'd have picnic day | 48:05 | |
or whatever. | 48:06 | |
- | Yeah as a teenager he was interested in photography. | 48:07 |
- | Yeah his first black room, his first dark room | 48:10 |
in the basement of the house they lived in | 48:15 | |
which was second house off the corner | 48:17 | |
of Highway 52 North, the old Weston Road. | 48:20 | |
And my grandfather, Thomas Bernard Waters, | 48:28 | |
he bargained for the house, but there were, | 48:31 | |
trying to get the Waters family up here, | 48:34 | |
They built a second house for one | 48:39 | |
of the top management people, maybe the superintendent. | 48:40 | |
He said, "No, that's the house I want," and they bickered, | 48:43 | |
they argued back and forth a little bit | 48:48 | |
and finally they got that house, | 48:49 | |
that was actually built by the management and he got it. | 48:51 | |
And that's where he set up his first dark room | 48:54 | |
in the basement of that house. | 48:55 | |
They had a little set player piano | 48:57 | |
and he'd play piano too by the way, as well as the drums | 48:59 | |
and the marimba, vibraphone and xylophone, | 49:01 | |
but uh, he could play the piano. | 49:06 | |
And I remember he use to play it | 49:08 | |
along with the hymns at church. | 49:10 | |
Here not too many years ago and | 49:13 | |
they'd start playing one tune and I don't know, | 49:18 | |
K F G, whatever it was, | 49:23 | |
- | He would transpose. | 49:25 |
- | Transpose. | |
- | Yeah, just natural. | 49:27 |
- | And the music man was absolutely amazed at this old man | 49:28 |
with the music with all these transposed | 49:31 | |
from one key to the next. | 49:34 | |
He would just go right on like nothing happened. | 49:36 | |
Made new music, did it well. | 49:38 | |
- | He could probably describe this as Renaissance man? | 49:41 |
Yeah? | 49:44 | |
- | Yeah. | 49:45 |
- | Pretty good description of him. | 49:46 |
- | I would say. | 49:48 |
- | Did he and your mom keep up going to the conferences | 49:54 |
and the workshops over time after you or after you left? | 49:59 | |
- | You know I really don't know that, | 50:05 |
I think I remember them occasionally going to one | 50:07 | |
and some of them were just like workshops, | 50:11 | |
they weren't the conventions. | 50:13 | |
Some of them were just the workshops. | 50:14 | |
Maybe there was a particular subject | 50:16 | |
that they wanted to know about, and they would go. | 50:18 | |
But once I left for college in 1960, | 50:21 | |
I don't know how many more they went to. | 50:27 | |
I would imagine they did 'cuz they just kept | 50:30 | |
wanting to do better what they were doing. | 50:33 | |
- | Well, they did conventions right in Lexington, | 50:35 |
- | Oh did they? | 50:37 |
(mumbling) | 50:38 | |
- | Okay, | 50:39 |
- | And then teach them in, and it was lighting or posing | 50:40 |
or whatever it was but they taught a course there. | 50:43 | |
- | They were always seeking to become better | 50:49 |
at what they were doing. | 50:51 | |
- | Was there a point where they decided | 50:54 |
to wind down the business? | 50:56 | |
- | I think it was, no. There was no point. | 50:58 |
It was a gradual transition. | 51:01 | |
Now my mother died when she was 66. | 51:03 | |
Actually, she died in Pennsylvania. | 51:07 | |
She had a heart attack at my home, | 51:10 | |
right after our son, last son was born in '74. | 51:13 | |
And she was in that hospital for about a month | 51:18 | |
after the heart attack she had a stroke, 10 days after that. | 51:22 | |
And then from there they were gonna move her into our house | 51:26 | |
until she could be flown home. | 51:29 | |
And she didn't last that long. | 51:32 | |
She died less than a month, | 51:36 | |
after she had her heart attack, on Mother's Day, | 51:38 | |
in our house. | 51:42 | |
But she had semi-retired at the time, | 51:44 | |
- | She had. | 51:46 |
- | Yeah she had, oh she loved gardening | 51:47 |
and it was the first gardening, real garden she had, | 51:49 | |
was that summer in their home, right across the street | 51:53 | |
from their home and she was using a tiller | 51:57 | |
and probably was just too much for her | 52:01 | |
'cuz she wasn't real physical person, she wasn't like today | 52:03 | |
people go to the gym or they walk or run. | 52:07 | |
You know, she just, was healthy, seemed healthy, | 52:10 | |
but I think she must have had some heart problems | 52:13 | |
and they were possibly angina and they just | 52:17 | |
didn't treat them the same way they do now. | 52:22 | |
So if she were living in this decade, | 52:25 | |
she probably would have never died at that young age, but. | 52:29 | |
- | Her twin sister, Cindy, lived to 95, her twin sister. | 52:33 |
- | She had a twin sister? | 52:37 |
- | Oh yes, yes she did. | 52:38 |
She lived to be 95. | 52:40 | |
- | Oh, I see. | 52:43 |
And they were in the orphanage together? | 52:44 | |
- | Yes, they were. | 52:46 |
- | There was a younger sister, Vivian. | 52:48 |
- | Yeah, Vivian. | 52:50 |
There were three of them. | 52:51 | |
The twins and one younger one | 52:53 | |
and they were three older siblings, that-- | 52:54 | |
- | So, sorry. | 52:59 |
- | Go ahead. | 53:00 |
- | So after 1974 then, your father ran the studio on his own. | 53:03 |
- | Yes but it wasn't... | 53:08 |
even by that time he was winding down. | 53:11 | |
He would just go up when he felt like going up. | 53:15 | |
You know and he would just take appointments by phone | 53:18 | |
and he didn't do weddings anymore. | 53:21 | |
He gradually just wound down to accommodate his aging body. | 53:23 | |
- | Some dementia was setting in by then too, he'd get tired-- | 53:29 |
- | So it wasn't just one day he decided not to do it. | 53:32 |
It was-- | 53:34 | |
- | He pushed as long as he could, | 53:35 |
and I advised him very strongly, 'You know dad, | 53:37 | |
you don't need to be doing this.' | 53:39 | |
He was getting his orders mixed up, one family, | 53:41 | |
he'd probably have the children over here | 53:44 | |
and half of them over here. | 53:45 | |
And, I remember the last part of an entire taking, | 53:46 | |
he had lopped off one end of it. | 53:49 | |
- | Yeah, it was you know, it was just time. | 53:51 |
- | Was it at that point that he started looking back | 53:57 |
at these older films and trying to get them back | 53:59 | |
to their own communities or was it before that? | 54:02 | |
- | It was before that. | 54:03 |
- | Okay. | |
- | Yeah it was before that. | 54:05 |
I don't think he did anymore of that | 54:07 | |
after she died, did she? | 54:09 | |
- | No, I don't think he did, either. | 54:11 |
- | No 'cuz it was sad, because you know, they were, | 54:13 |
they worked together, they lived together, | 54:16 | |
it was his best friend, his partner was gone. | 54:18 | |
And he was very lonely. | 54:22 | |
So it was, I'm sure it was heartbreaking | 54:25 | |
just to go to the studio without her. | 54:28 | |
So at that point I would say he was pretty much done. | 54:33 | |
- | He was. | 54:36 |
- | You know, at that stage. | 54:37 |
- | I think that, | 54:45 |
that really covers many of the questions that we have. | 54:47 | |
You answered one of our questions earlier. | 54:51 | |
We wondered if your, if you thought your father | 54:53 | |
ever considered the movies he made would have | 54:56 | |
had the life beyond their immediate purpose at that time. | 54:59 | |
And do you think that he knew the documentary value | 55:04 | |
of what he was doing? | 55:09 | |
- | Well, foremost. | 55:12 |
He was looking for a way to support the family. | 55:14 | |
Other than the studio because they were not getting | 55:17 | |
the people to come into the studio. | 55:20 | |
People did not have the finances to do that. | 55:22 | |
So he was looking for a creative way to support the family | 55:26 | |
and to make enough money to support us. | 55:31 | |
That was probably the initial reason. | 55:33 | |
But then, I think as he became involved in it, | 55:35 | |
he realized what he was doing. | 55:39 | |
I don't think he had any idea it would be | 55:41 | |
to the realm that it has become now. | 55:44 | |
I really don't think he knew the impact it was gonna make. | 55:47 | |
But because he liked being a part of history, | 55:50 | |
and a part of everything that was going on around him, | 55:53 | |
he wanted to document that. | 55:57 | |
And as a result, we're very fortunate because of that | 55:59 | |
that we have these films. | 56:03 | |
But, | 56:05 | |
I think he did realize somewhat what he was doing. | 56:07 | |
That these were something, and that's why | 56:13 | |
he went back to the communities. | 56:14 | |
To share them again to make sure | 56:17 | |
that those communities were able to enjoy these. | 56:20 | |
- | Right. | 56:23 |
- | And like I said that's probably the first stage | 56:23 |
of his sharing and passing this on to future generations, | 56:27 | |
but he's had fun too. | 56:32 | |
- | You can watch the progress or the development | 56:36 |
of his techniques and his way of setting up scenes, | 56:39 | |
types of things that people responded to. | 56:45 | |
The audience tempted him to grow in his style | 56:47 | |
and his technique as much as anything. | 56:49 | |
In response to what they were seeing | 56:50 | |
and it developed into lines and more crowds | 56:52 | |
and more applause and more patrons as it were, | 56:56 | |
patron saints could put their dime or quarter in | 57:03 | |
and watch the movie. | 57:06 | |
He made some of the first commercials | 57:08 | |
this country's ever seen. | 57:09 | |
You may notice that in some of those films | 57:11 | |
you look through there, the mechanic would be working | 57:13 | |
on the cars, the grocery man would be sackin' up groceries, | 57:16 | |
beauty parlor would have their electric curlers | 57:20 | |
come down like this and curling their hair. | 57:21 | |
The milk man delivery or certain dairy. | 57:26 | |
The hardware store man would-- | 57:31 | |
- | And didn't he sell those? | 57:32 |
- | Yeah, he sold commercials. | 57:34 |
- | Commercials, using those images to put on the screen. | 57:35 |
- | And back in the 30s, that was unheard of. | 57:41 |
- | That was a lot, | 57:42 |
- | Yeah, that's a really good point. | 57:45 |
- | Did he talk to you about | 57:49 |
when he started getting attention, | 57:51 | |
Tom Whiteside made his film, and he was on the tv news, | 57:53 | |
did he talk to you about that much? | 57:56 | |
- | No, I wasn't around, I was in Pennsylvania. | 58:01 |
- | We knew that it was gonna happen, | 58:03 |
we knew that they were working on a story, | 58:06 | |
and we saw the movie, well, the end product. | 58:09 | |
But, he may have thought about it, he didn't mention it. | 58:13 | |
He didn't say it really wasn't a bragging point or whatever. | 58:16 | |
He was not that kind of person. | 58:19 | |
he didn't brag about it. | 58:21 | |
I think he just felt kind of good about it, though. | 58:22 | |
- | He did. | 58:25 |
- | I think he felt honored, | 58:26 |
but he didn't make a big deal of it. | 58:29 | |
I don't think he really knew | 58:31 | |
how much publicity he was getting. | 58:34 | |
But it was nice that that happened before he died. | 58:38 | |
That he saw that people really did appreciate his efforts | 58:43 | |
and his images and I think also at that point | 58:47 | |
he realized the impact that was coming. | 58:51 | |
That he was passing along a real heritage there. | 58:53 | |
To not just our family, but to many families. | 58:57 | |
- | He understood and appreciated Duke's initial thrust | 59:01 |
into getting into collecting his movies and restoring them. | 59:04 | |
He understood that quite well and he was 100% behind it. | 59:08 | |
He thought it an honor that a large institution | 59:12 | |
like Duke would begin a work like this, | 59:13 | |
and he was all in favor of continuing. | 59:17 | |
- | But he didn't like being in the limelight, | 59:22 |
he really didn't. | 59:24 | |
I think it's very obvious, | 59:27 | |
he was a humble person. | 59:28 | |
And this was just kind of fun to see this happening for him, | 59:32 | |
but he didn't feel any more special because of it. | 59:34 | |
(chuckles) | 59:38 | |
Even though he was and is. | 59:41 | |
- | That's true. | 59:44 |
- | Have we failed to cover any ground here | 59:45 |
that you can think of? | 59:47 | |
- | Well, let me see here. | 59:50 |
Many of these questions you had asked my brother, | 59:55 | |
of course I wouldn't have had an answer to them | 59:59 | |
'cuz I wasn't around. Like how life was like before he-- | 1:00:00 | |
- | Right. | 1:00:05 |
- | When we were, when he was gone. | 1:00:06 |
- | She was meticulously detailed and one of the things | 1:00:09 |
that showed up was totally not related to the studio at all, | 1:00:12 | |
was making clothes for her new daughter. | 1:00:16 | |
She made many of the clothes that Mary wore. | 1:00:18 | |
Little fine embroidery work on 'em, | 1:00:21 | |
sewin' little buttons on 'em. | 1:00:23 | |
I don't see how she did it but that was her style. | 1:00:25 | |
Anything she attempted she made a profession out of it. | 1:00:28 | |
Raising flowers, pollinating the flowers, new breeds. | 1:00:31 | |
Fish, same way. | 1:00:35 | |
We use to talk about fish for years. | 1:00:37 | |
When it came to making crafts, like a pine straw basket? | 1:00:41 | |
Remember that? | 1:00:46 | |
- | I have that. | 1:00:47 |
- | That was pine straws, ya'll wanna make sure you got that. | 1:00:48 |
She made the most beautiful purse | 1:00:51 | |
and hand baskets here you've ever seen. | 1:00:54 | |
It was a, you could take it to a trade show | 1:00:56 | |
and it would bring quite a few dollars in | 1:01:01 | |
if somebody knew what they were getting. | 1:01:02 | |
But that kind of meticulous detail, | 1:01:04 | |
followed her in every phase of life | 1:01:07 | |
for every hobby she'd get into. | 1:01:08 | |
And Dad was meticulous in other ways, other avenues, | 1:01:11 | |
other activities. | 1:01:16 | |
But, she had her own unique creativity and it came out | 1:01:17 | |
in her work in the studio and his area of creativity | 1:01:21 | |
and it came out in movies. | 1:01:25 | |
In some ways, you'd call 'em a perfect match. | 1:01:29 | |
- | They were. | 1:01:32 |
But she was just a very creative person. | 1:01:33 | |
I mean she was too, in different ways. | 1:01:39 | |
- | Right. | 1:01:42 |
- | But it was a good marriage in more ways than one. | 1:01:43 |
- | Yeah. | 1:01:45 |
They set a good example for us. | 1:01:46 | |
(mumbles) | 1:01:50 | |
- | Well thank you, very much. | 1:01:53 |
This has been a pleasure | 1:01:55 | |
and very interesting. | 1:01:56 | |
- | Well thank you, it's been fun to talk about our family, | 1:01:57 |
it's always fun. | 1:02:00 | |
Like I said, it brings up memories | 1:02:01 | |
that you didn't realize were there. | 1:02:03 | |
- | As you go through these various pictures and movies, | 1:02:08 |
they just, they bring back memories | 1:02:10 | |
you thought you forgot about. | 1:02:13 | |
- | Yep. | 1:02:15 |
- | Yes. | |
- | They're like triggers, some of them. | 1:02:15 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund