WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE

GROUP ADDS WORDS TO PICTURES

Tommy Kendrick and Margaret Johnson look over old photos at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. The two are part of the Photo Identification Group, which meets once a month to identify people, places and events in photos taken in Northwest Arkansas in the mid- to late 20th century.
Tommy Kendrick and Margaret Johnson look over old photos at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. The two are part of the Photo Identification Group, which meets once a month to identify people, places and events in photos taken in Northwest Arkansas in the mid- to late 20th century.

Photos may be worth a thousand words, but they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on if no one can identify the people or the places in them.

“Mystery photos do us no good,” said Dolores Stamps.

Stamps, 69, of Springdale, founded the Photo Identification Group in 2004. The volunteers, which also includes her husband, Truman, spend about three hours one Saturday a month at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale looking at and identifying people, places and events in photographs that were given to the museum. The photos, which span from the 1960s to the 1990s, are archives from The Springdale News, Northwest Arkansas Times and two local photographers. Between the photos and the negatives, the museum has hundreds of thousands of images to identify, said Marie Demeroukas, photo archivist/research librarian for the museum.

The photos from the two newspapers have some identifiers in “newspaper language,” Stamps said, but captions were not attached to the photos. They are, however, grouped in categories, such as fire engines and paramedics, women’s events or public service industry, she said.

The goal is to identify all of the photos so research will be easier in the future.

Darlette Kendrick, 74, and husband Tommy, 75, both volunteer with of the group. One day was all it took to hook these two. They have been back every month since for the last seven or eight years, Darlette Kendrick said.

“After this generation is gone, people won’t know who these people are,” she said.

Tommy Kendrick drove a truck and delivered freight for Jones Truck Lines in Springdale for many years and knows where a lot of stores and churches used to be, his wife said. The Kendricks are lifelong Springdale residents. Both graduated from Springdale High School.

Darlette Kendrick said identifying the photos often takes teamwork.

“All of us will look at it sometimes and, working together, we will come up with it, the place or people or the time it was taken,” Kendrick said. “If someone thinks of a fi rst name, someone else will think of the last. Sometimes we remember the name after we get home.”

The volunteers often bring their yearbooks or church directories to help make identifi cations, Kendrick said. The work the couple has done for the museum has made them more aware of preserving their own photos as well, she added.

“We have old photos of our families from years and years ago. We don’t know who they are,” Kendrick said. “It made us think to identify the ones we know. Years from now our family won’t know who they are.”

The group has fun and gives a lot of good information to the museum, Demeroukas said.

“They’ve been a very valuable group, to look through all of these things, to help us whittle away a little more information,” she said.

“While the knowledge is still here, we need to capture it and include it.”

More and younger volunteers are needed to help identify the photos, Stamps and Kendrick agreed.

“We tell people (about the group), and they think you have to live here forever, but that’s not true,” Kendrick said. “Someone who’s lived here only 10 or 15 years would know. We don’t know some of these younger people. A lot of (the photos) are school pictures in the ’60s, ’70s, and we don’t know some of those people.”

Stamps said not only is she at the meetings to identify photos, she also is there to teach people how to safeguard and record their own photos.

“Do not write on the back of the photo,” Stamps said. “Write the information on a separate piece of paper so your family can come back to look at that photo and see who that woman is in the weird dress.”

Stamps said she’s been to estate cleanups where people have dumped boxes of old photos into a fire without looking at the photos.

“It’s sad. It’s your history and your heritage,” Stamps said.

She warned those who keep digital copies on their computers to make sure they have backup copies of their images.

“Some day that computer’s going crash. You could lose that whole history in a second,” Stamps said. “What you have to do is keep (your photos) safe. It’s your story. It’s your history.”

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