*** This story was extracted from one of Daves unpublished books *
Fred J Harrison & Charlie Benack never knew each other but together they played an incredFloridportant role in my life.
Here's how it all started:
It was one if those especially picturesque, crisp but not especially frigid Christmas days. The snowflakes seemed to dance as they fluttered and gently painted over the grayness of a very polluted post war Pittsburgh.
The peaceful and soft muted whiteness spread slowly beyond my vision.
My camera, a Voightlander Vitessa, was hanging loosely from its strap. I lifted it anticipating photographing the special scene of the snow dusted but ice encrusted gazebo in Granddad's vacant lot next to his Ben Avon house.
Photography and capturing the beauty of God's great creations was one of my favorite hobbies. I developed, printed, enlarged, retouched and framed my own pictures. And loved doing it.
My gosh! It was a Graflex, the very type of camera used by the real pros. I forgot what I was doing and hurriedly followed Uncle Fred onto the back porch, then into granddads big old kitchen and on into the coat room. Uncle Fred was hanging up his very worn, gray fur covered overcoat next to Granddads giant old iron safe. The faded coat looked like it was from Uncle Fred's roaring twenties Penn State days.
"I had no idea you had a camera like that"!
Uncle Fred broke into a very rare grin explaining he had loved photography since he was just a boy. Fred was an outdoorsman, a Penn State man who never missed a football game who especially enjoyed fine scotch, golf and the country club life.
An engineer who had gone to work for Chicago Bridge and Iron in their early days and accepted stock in lieu of cash for part of his pay. The stock did exceptionally well, and so did Fred who became a multi millionaire as Chicago Bridge grew and prospered.
Wealthy yes. Ostentatious no. Fred was a man's man who loved deer and elk hunting, golfing and people. He quietly gave a good portion of his wealth, mostly anonymously, to charity. A humble man who had lost his only son and namesake Freddie Jr, a B17 pilot, in the Pacific near the end of WWII. I never heard Uncle Fred complain about anything. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He was a remarkable but unnoticed man.
My excitment that day overwhelmed my usually cautious and reserved manners. Without thinking, my lips uttered the words "do you want to sell it?"
"Not really" said Fred. "It means a lot to me. No I really couldn't sell it"
After our fine family Christmas dinner with Granddad, Fred, Aunt Betty and my parents, I was caught up in the excitement of seeing a real Graflex. I found myself sitting on the piano bench in Granddads living room enthusiastically telling Uncle Fred of my love of cameras, enlargers, filters, developing my own pictures and everything else about my hobby.
Much later that evening I was sitting on the couch in the library when Uncle Fred approached me and said he would "sell me" the Graflex for maybe $100. I didn't really know how much it was worth, but Fred was offering me the bargain of a lifetime, even if I didn't know it at the time. (Later I found out the camera with all the accessories, filters and lenses he gave me later were worth about $1000. )
I didn't have a hundred dollars (a large sum in those days) but asked if I could not pay him a little at a time, then he could give me the camera when it was paid.
He looked me straight in the eye, smiled broadly, and then handed me the camera. "I trust you" he said.
Excited? I was more than flabbergasted.
I was overwhelmed with something called joy. I couldn't belive it. I just couldn't belive it. I now owned the camera of cameras for professional black and white photography.
That cold wintry Christmas day Uncle Fred's generousity permanently changed my entire life in a happy, wonderful and glorious way.
A couple years later I took on the job as yearbook staff photographer at my high school in Clairton, Pa. Aided and coached by the towns professional photographer Charlie Benack, I learned the arts of composure, developing and editing and related skills.
In fact Charlie gave me one of his older enlargers and some other equipment and patiently taught me darkroom skills and how to make ordinary photos sparkle with life.
Charlie was a professional photographer who started out in the early 1900's walking from one steel town to another with his equipment on a donkey, making portraits and school class photographs. A rare and generous man.
Using Uncle Fred's Graflex and Charlie's tireless lessons, within just a few years I would earn hundreds of dollars selling my photos to local newpapers and later even paying for part of my college education. Over the many more years to come those earnings became thousands of dollars. That Graflex of Uncle Fred's went wherever I went. Photography had become one of my closest loves and one of my reasons for being.
Many years later, in 1975, sitting in the living room of Uncle Fred's East Side Conneaut Lake cottage near Oakland Beach, an aging and now very fragile 84 year old Uncle Fred was sitting on his couch, carefully balancing his eternal glass of undiluted Scotch.
I found myself thanking him again for giving me the opportunity to own such a fine camera. Then I somewhat hesitantly asked why he decided to sell it to me after first saying no.
"It was Christmas" he said. "It was Christmas".
Sadly just a few months later Uncle Fred was gone forever, but his kindness and willingness to give up something very precious to him to help a kid was something I will never forget.
A few years after I got the Graflex, using money earned with the Graflex and the skills shared with me by Charlie Benack, I bought a Leica 3f red dial with a Summarit f1.2 lens. Later I added a Leitz 35mm wide angle lens as well as a Novoflex 400mm telephoto.
I used the 35 mm Leica for color photography, the Graflex for black and white.
Those two cameras captured much more than my life and the life of my children and family.
In 1957 or 58 one of my photos (of water lillies next to our dock) was even exhibited by Kodak at the Rochester International Exhibition. (See similar photo below).
Another, a candid personal portrait, sat on the desk of endochronologist Dr Edward H. Rynearson in his office at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Photos I took of the moons of Jupiter with the Novaflex telephoto helped get me an A in Astronomy at Florida State University in 1957.
Other photos from those wonderful cameras live forever in old school yearbooks and aging micro filmed newspapers and goodness knows where else.
My heartfelt thanks to the generous Uncle who gave up something he really cherished and had paid a small fortune for, to help a young man and make all that possible.
And my special thanks to Charlie Benack for taking me under his wing and teaching me professional photography.
These men didn't act for money. They didn't know each other. They were plain hard working folks acting out of kindness and compassion for another human being. A young man named Dave.
There were literally over a dozen men like that who contributed, with absolutely no expectation of money or financial benefit, their time, effort and resources to helping me when I was growing up.
And this brings me me ask: "Are you reaching to help a young person explore and cherish this amazing wonderful world we live in?"
*** Footnote: Inspired by the Fred's of this world I went on to become a teacher and later a professor. Not long ago I received a message from a recently retired student I had taught in 1969 thanking me for my effort on his behalf and telling me how well he had done in life. What greater reward can anyone have? *** This story was extracted from one of Daves unpublished books ***
