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