Published: July 18, 2008 04:46 pm            

New book projects help ignite appreciation for the present

Sometime last year, Arcadia Publishing, the publisher I work with on the “Images of America Series” picture books I assemble, agreed to publish a new title: “Bluefield in the 1940s.”

During the course of assembling the images for my Virginian Railway book last year, a Princeton woman, Vera Hambrick gave me a group of negatives of what she thought was a political event in Bluefield. Her father, Ellis Leon Martin, was a Navy photographer during World War II, and was home on leave during the event. He passed away in 1994, but the legacy he left in photographs of that day is nothing short of amazing.

When I looked at the negatives, I instantly knew they represented a collection of never-before-seen photographs of the July 4, 1945 “Heroes Day Parade” in Bluefield honoring Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Staff Sgt. Junior Spurrier, as well as all men and women who served in World War II.

I proposed the book before really examining the negatives, and have had almost a year to assemble more photographs for the project.

I’m in the process of bringing it all together now as well as searching for a few more images to help me tell the story. I would like to find photographs of Patrolman William M. Land, a Bluefield Police officer who was killed in the line of duty on Oct. 2, 1942; a real photo of Greer Garson during her Sept. 4, 1942 visit to Bluefield (I have a newsprint image); a real picture of Squire W.W. McNeal (I have a newspaper photo); and a picture of the Freedom Train stop in Bluefield on Sept. 28, 1948.

The absence of any of those pictures won’t ruin the book, but all of them would help me tell the story. I submitted the cover images for the book last week, my deadline for submitting the completed project is mid-September, so I have a little time to continue my search.

Carlton Viar came through for me again, as have Mel Grubb, David McNeil, Heber Stafford, Joe Davidson, Charles Thompson and so many others. I’m on the edge of the real fun time in this project.

I always learn a great deal when I research and compile the photos for the books.

The decade of the 1940s was a special time for Bluefield as well as for many other communities in the United States. The nightmares of the Great Depression remained fresh in the minds of everyone and the trauma of world war touched everyone’s family through the service of family members, neighbors and friends in the military or through sugar, coffee, gasoline, meat, rubber and all manner of product rationing for the sake of the war effort.

Women entered the workforce and African Americans who traveled overseas discovered that the American apartheid wasn’t a universal model for race relations. We changed as a society in that time.

Of course, a lot of things have changed since the 1940s, and it’s hard to tag any particular change to this or that thing had the most powerful impact.

However, in the 1940s, Bluefield was a rail transportation, public transit and ambulatory community. With a few exceptions, that is not the case any more.

Like most American cities, the widespread ownership of horseless carriages had a huge impact on the city’s overall orientation. A half-century’s worth of construction was based on a rail-centered city. There are still as many trains passing through town, but most people arrive in the local highways.

I truly enjoy the luxury and convenience of having a personal vehicle in good running condition that can take me from home to just about anywhere I want to go, but I also enjoy walking to places. I live in a residential section of town, and even though the orientation has changed, I could pretty easily slide back into a pedestrian-style of life.

I don’t want to surrender the World Wide Web or the creature comforts I enjoy, but I could see how the simple act of walking to some of the places I now drive to without thinking, could help me from both a health standpoint as well as saving on gasoline. As an added bonus, I always see so much more by walking and looking around than I do when I keep my eyes on the highway and look out for the other motorists.

When I work on a new book project, I always learn so much more than what I knew before I started. These projects don’t cause me to live in the past. Instead, they give me insights and a greater appreciation for the present.

Bill Archer is senior editor for the Daily Telegraph. Contact him at barcher@bdtonline.com

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.