PUBLISHER’S COLUMN: THE JOHNSON NEGATIVES
The history of the Freeman community is told in the 120-plus volumes of newspapers that make up the archives of the Courier, but also in the numerous binders filled with negatives from when film was synonymous with photography. This collection spans the 1980s, 1990s and dips its toes into the 21st century, before the digital world consumed cameras and, eventually, phones took the lead. The negatives — almost exclusively black and white — are organized and protected in clear plastic sleeves collectively bound by three rings, sometimes identified by subject, sometimes by publication date, other times by nothing at all. Shot in rolls of 24 or 36 exposures, there are tens of thousands of images, an extremely high percentage of which have never been seen. But that’s how it worked; on a standard roll of film, only a small fraction would make the cut and turn into pictures for use in the newspaper. The rest would never see the light of day.
I thought about all of this last week upon hearing the news of the death of South Dakota political figure Tim Johnson, a United States Senator from 1997 until 2015 and member of the House of Representatives in the 10 years prior to that. Johnson, who struggled with health issues later in life, died on Oct. 8 at the age of 77.
When I heard about Johnson’s death, my mind immediately went to a classic photo captured by my dad when he was editor and publisher of The Courier back in 1994, my senior year in high school. It shows a candid and casual Johnson, coffee cup in hand, standing and leaning into a chair in the back room of what was then the Freeman Cafe, a building that has for years sat vacant on the west side of the 200 block on Main Street. It is reprinted on page 8A of this week’s issue.
I wondered: Could I find the original negative and, if so, what other images might be included in the same series of captures my dad made on his old-school Canon? Would those in attendance be shown and, if so, who was there? I double-checked the publication date and pulled out the big white binder labeled 1993-1994 and started turning the pages.
Sure enough. There, about a third of the way through the book, I found the Johnson negatives and, just as I had guessed, a few of the shots show the full room. I spotted former Courier Publisher Glenn Gering immediately; Willard Becker there in the front; and James Krehbiel, at the time the administrator of Freeman Community Hospital and Nursing Home, is pictured, too. The group was small — I counted about 12 — and I couldn’t place anybody else, but maybe you can.
This previously unpublished photo shows Tim Johnson meeting with a small group of people in the back room of the Freeman Cafe in April of 1994. COURIER FILE PHOTO
Finding the images and scanning them was a thrill and made me think back to when photography was different, and how valuable those binders of negatives are, especially since we don’t know what all is there. And it was another reminder that, if newspapers weren’t there to get and tell the story, what do we have all these years later?
Jeremy Waltner is husband to Stacey and Dad to Ella & Oliver. He still has a roll of undeveloped film in his first-ever camera — a Nikon FM2.
