What do you do with 65,000 historical photographic negatives?
If you are former professional photographer George Denmark Jr., you donate them to the Lenoir Community College Foundation to be displayed at Heritage Place in the Learning Resource Center.
And if you are a staff member at the LCC library, your work of sorting and labeling is cut out for you for at least a year — likely longer.
Denmark, 83, has been taking pictures since he was a young lad helping his grandfather, A.H. Coble, in his photography studio in downtown Kinston.
His experience led him to photographing the events taking place in the Kinston area starting in 1950 when he began working for The Free Press until the 1970s.
He stopped only to serve a couple of years in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned in 1953 to resume his photography work.
“They did not have any equipment,” Denmark said about the newspaper. “They did not have a darkroom.”
Denmark said he had to purchase all the photographic supplies and equipment. When his grandfather retired, Denmark took the business over and named it Coble-Denmark.
“He’s the one that got me started in photography,” Denmark said.
At first, Denmark focused on journalistic picture-taking; eventually, he broadened out to all types, including portraits and events.
He recalled taking photos at schools and of sports events and wrecks. He remembered one wreck where about nine people died and another with one death and one angry father.
“They told us we better get out because the dad was looking for the driver,” he said.
In 1961, he began taking pictures of the resurrection of the CSS Neuse as pieces were recovered from the Neuse River. That’s when he met historian Bill Rowland, a World War II veteran of the U.S. Navy who had a special interest in documenting the recovery and restoration of the old ironclad.
The two of them became good friends as they photographed together for nearly five years.
In the 1970s, Denmark retired from The Free Press.
“Just before I retired,” he said, “that was when Charles Buchanan came to The Free Press, and he was such a nice fellow.”
Buchanan passed away March of last year after three-and-a-half decades at the paper.
Denmark had boxes upon boxes of negatives from his 20-plus career stacked on a shelf in a shed — 54 pounds of them.
Rowland, who spent hours researching at Heritage Place, said he viewed about 30,000 pages of The Free Press to scope out any picture or mention of the CSS Neuse to document.
With a hands-on involvement in the excavating and recovery of the ram and the drawing of plans for the reconstruction, he tried for years to get the negatives of the CSS Neuse from Denmark in order to preserve them.
“He was reluctant to let them go,” 84-year-old Rowland said. “And I could understand that.”
Last year, Rowland helped him to see that neither of them is getting any younger and it would be a good idea to preserve the negatives.
“I just gave it some thought,” said Denmark, who taught photography at LCC, “to make (the negatives) available to the college. … I just thought this was the best place for them.”
In October, Denmark turned the negatives over to Rowland, who began categorizing the CSS Neuse negatives and turned the rest over to the LCC Foundation in June. He plans to turn over the ironclad negatives, as well.
“We estimate that there are 65,000 negatives,” said Jeanne Kennedy, LCC Institutional Advancement director, “so we have a very good history of Kinston.”
The photos are in numbered boxes from December 1959 to June 1973. It seems that two boxes — July-September 1968 and December 1968-March 1969 — are missing, she said.
Denmark wasn’t surprised and said he and his wife Ann had moved to Cedar Point and the boxes were likely moved out of place from the move.
Kennedy said LCC staff is looking at possibilities of how to display the negatives, but there is much sorting to be done.
“I’m very grateful that (Denmark) hung onto these (negatives) for all these years,” she said. “… Our ultimate goal is to be able to make them available to the public.”
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.