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Digitize Family Pictures From Flood or Fire

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Contributed by: Shirley Grose on 8/28/2008

Dad kicked the ash pile that the fire department left; a glob of Kodaks glued together by heat curled up to show one family photo in the middle of the stack that was seared around the edges, but salvageable.

Dad picked up the picture, took a deep breathe and said thanks; no one had been hurt. I remember him standing there staring at the rubble, nothing left but the clothing on his back, no home, no trace of our lives before, and probably wondering where to go from here. Neighbors opened their homes, the small community helped us get through the shock.

We had insurance, my family would rebuild, start over with a fresh stack of pictures. My mother loved photography. She had taken pictures on holidays and in between. She wrote names and such on the back or bottom faithfully, so we would remember our childhood.

After the fire, cousins, friends, and neighbors helped her gather photos she had shared with them. Some of them were memorable, many not as memorable as those we had lost. Of all the losses, our history in pictures is the one my mother and father, Hays and Lou Johnson, mourned the most.

Photo scanners and computers wouldn't come along for some time.

My family with my help as a young publisher gathered what we could from relative's photos, each person wrote their own captions, some hilarious some interesting, all original, and I compiled and designed and printed a pictorial family history that was in a way a journal of their new life in their new solar home, built from scratch by my father, mother, and brothers and sisters, and the community.

Our family history book includes pictures of neighbors building the passive solar house side by side with my father and brothers. In honor, the neighbors named the new place JOHNSON CITY. The name stuck, and a sign was posted at the end of the driveway, and that street name is now official.

We titled the book THE JOHNSON-HAMMONS FAMILY HISTORY, and printed 300 hard bound copies which are now gone; I have only one. I wish so often that I had had a scanner then so that the photos we could not include in that book would have been preserved; instead the extra pictures were returned to the owners, some who are no longer around.

Mom and Dad had a special picture taken in their matching Johnson City T-shirts for the book. My cousin Carol was alive then, soon after she died of Leukemia, soon, Dad and Mom passed on, and my brother died in an accident.

That book caught our whole family at the juncture of a crisis and a very happy time when we were a family as a whole. Of all the books I've published since then the small oblong family history that I published as a gift to my parents remains my favorite.

I wish I had a digital copy of that book, too.

It's not enough to stuff your photos in a box or crowd them onto a CD; fire or flood will destroy both. Put your family history and especially photos into book form even if you do not print them into a paper book.

Distribute your digital book to as many family members and friends as you can so that if fire or flood strikes someone will have the favorite pictures identified along side family history that you don't want to rewrite or re-remember.

Digitize your photos, now. Scanners are less than $100.00. Take the next step, make a book from your photos and digitize the book; a book, basic or fancy, is so much more powerful and satisfying than loose photos or a mishmash of photos on your computer, somewhere.

Digital Family History books are easy nowadays. Protect and preserve your family history the easy way with Microsoft Word and a scanner.

Shirley Johnson Grose
Photo: Unknown couple, Floyd Co. VA Heritage book
shirley.publish@gmail.com

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