Recently, I completed a study of land ownership, stewardship, and land culture for an academic institution. The core purpose of this study was to trace the ownership of the campus back to the European contact period so that an evidence-based ownership statement could be issued. These statements provide opportunities for conversations about indigenous heritage and culture associated with the ancestral ground while also reminding people they are on native soil.
Discussing the Impact of Disasters on a Community With Fox News
Various things make up the shared historical memory of a community. These narratives take assorted forms, but the most jarring materialize when an unthinkable tragedy strikes. Whether a storm or accident, the catastrophes are seared deeply into the collective memory of residents. They shatter many lives and became part of history in the aftermath — the shared experience remembered and passed down through the generations.
These large-scale disasters, which often change a community forever, are part of understanding the story of a place, so people want the disruptive occurrence documented. Thus in my community studies and social history practice, I sometimes do fieldwork centered on researching, documenting, and memorializing them. Often, the process involves oral history interviews, as people reflect and discuss recollections; for others, it happened so long ago that firsthand recall has faded, so the process involves archival research as stakeholders establish a remembrance archive.
One project I worked on in 2013 was the Flight 214 Remembrance Archive, which marked fifty years since the accident. On December 8, 1963, at 8:59 p.m. A Pan American jet on final approach to Philadelphia exploded in flight. That night, all 81 people on the jet perished instantly while hundreds of first responders rushed to a cornfield at the edge of the Delaware State Line. One firefighter answering the alarm was Stewart W. Godwin. While searching the debris field, he suddenly collapsed and died. He was the first North East Fire Company member to die in the line of duty.
Those connected with this tragedy don’t forget it; this year, as we marked fifty-nine years since the accident, was no exception. Too, major broadcast networks often mark the disaster. And this year, on December 8, 2022, the Fox Network asked me to discuss the disaster’s impact and how a northeastern Maryland town recalls it.
More on Researching Disasters
Historical Research into a Railroad Disaster: Greenwood, Delaware
Young Railroader Edwin Road Killed in Greenwood Explosion
Interview With WBAL About Hurricane Agnes
Delmarva Pandemic of 1918 Archive
Remembering Three Mile Island in Maryland
Hillside Arizona Santa Fe Railroad Station
THINGS FOUND IN AN OLD PHOTO ALBUM —
This July 2, 1929, photo of the Santa Fe Hillside Arizona train station came from an album full of pictures I purchased thirty to forty years ago. An unidentified adventurer compiled the images as he motored across the country. His series of albums had been dumped in a secondhand shop in Newark, DE. But, one containing photos from Maryland and Delaware Caught my attention, so I purchased that volume, which also had pictures of his western trips.
An internet search revealed that the Santa Fe opened the station in 1902. It was moved to Prescott, Arizona, much later. There the Iron Springs Cafe occupied it, but they closed not long ago. Hillside, an apparently abandoned community, is in Yavapai County.
Here is a link to a 2011 photo of the station when the Iron Springs Cafe occupied the structure.
170,000 Photos of American Life During the Great Depression and World War II
During the Great Depression and World War II, the United States Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information hired photographers to document American life. The documentarians, working between 1935 and 1944, captured 170,000 pictures. This included many in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
It is described as one of the most famous documentary photography collections of the twentieth century, “creating visual evidence of government initiatives alongside scenes of everyday life during the Great Depression and World War II across the United States.”
Once the program ended, The Library of Congress became the custodian of this work. They were placed in public file cabinets where researchers could browse the prints, searching for visual clues of earlier times. In March 2011, Yale University received a grant to create an interactive web-based open soured visualization platform for these images. The free online platform, Photogrammar, allows a rapid search of the large photographic data set. Easy to use, it includes an interactive map, which facilitates locating images of interest.
If you are interested in the images of the photographers who documented America during the Great Depression and World War II check out this free resource https://photogrammar.org/maps
Jack Collier, Feb. 1942. U.S. Farm Administration
