| [Author's Note: Originally announced in my Web
log on Father's Day, 2005.] My grandfather served in the U.S. Army
during WWII, eventually being stationed in Germany during the occupation after Germany's
surrender. In 2004 I started thinking that someone in the family should write down
that story, because even though my grandparents are doing as well as 80-year-olds can, so
many stories are lost because survivors realize too late that irreplaceable memories have
slipped through the cracks. So I started talking to my grandfather about doing an
interview and borrowing some of his mementos in order to make copies. He ended up
being so tickled at my interest that he gave me all of his old photos, papers and
letters home, which he'd kept tucked away in a box for the last 60 years. And thus
my role as family historian began.
I spent most of a weekend scanning his photos (almost all of which were small
2"x3" black-and-white prints of a printing technique no longer used) at 600 dpi
(which made my scanner just a little unhappy), which produced images on my computer of
just astounding levels of detail. I then used an interview that my uncle Bob had
done with my grandfather, along with the photos and my own independent research on the
events and places mentioned in the interview (taken mostly from the National Archives
online and various WWII history sites), to create a
45-page photo journal of his entire military career. I finished a rough
draft in late 2004 (made in Word, with graphic work done in Photoshop), mailed my
grandfather a copy to edit and expand, then added 7 more pages and did final editing in
June of 2005 before having a run of 6 printed in color the week before Father's Day (one
for my grandfather, one for each of his kids and one for me). I also converted the
file to PDF for the rest of the family to view online.
Below I've included some of the full-sized images scanned from his photos (resized to
1020 or 800, depending on how the picture was oriented), giving an idea of the quality of
the printing process and the amount of detail captured (remember, these were all
2"x3" prints). If the picture appears to be small on your screen, you most
likely have automatic resizing turned on (move the mouse over the picture and click the
small box that pops up in the lower right corner to see the full-sized image). All
of these photos were taken by my grandfather (and are copyrighted).
| Damaged Cities:
My grandfather:
|
Occupation:
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|
Memories of a War: A Journey in Words and
Photos of Pfc. Virgil W. Cooper
(5.8MB PDF) |
