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Family photos help keep memories alive

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BY PAUL CZYZEWSKI

Special correspondent

Published: July 17, 2011

Looking back on my childhood in a predominately Polish neighborhood in South Bend, Ind., I can remember everything with remarkable clarity. For example, on my 4th birthday, it was sunny and hot, the temperature hovered in the 80s, and my brothers and I celebrated with a party in our back yard. Relatives gathered around, watching the kids run circles around each other, always punctuated with a big pile-up or a roll on the grass. My dad presented me with his present, a live rabbit! Up until then, I had only a cat, and fortunately the two pets seemed to tolerate each other. The rabbit was a last-minute thought by my dad, who had been at work that day, and on his way home remembered an offer from a friend to have one of his rabbits.

This was the early 1940s, and the Depression wasn't that far behind us. Times were still tough, and money was hard to come by, but as kids we were happy and just loved running around in the back yard, climbing trees and watching my bunny play hide-and-seek with the cat.

My parents married young; my mother was only 16, and by the time she was 24, she had four rambunctious boys to look after. There wasn't any television to sit down to, dishes were washed by hand, the clothes were hung on the line to dry, and my mother usually looked exhausted. However, to cheer her up there were frequent trips to nearby lakes, where we stayed in a little house that came with a rowboat. Of course, my mom was still the official cook, and her apron went with her to the lake.

All of these memories, and thousands more, are fresh in my mind. My dad made sure of that. He documented nearly every day of every year in some way or the other. He kept personal diaries, both black and white and color 8mm movies, and there are dozens of scrapbooks that go back decades. It was unusual in the 1940s to have movie cameras, but my dad was a master. More than 70 years later, the image quality and color is still amazing.

And then there are the photographs … hundreds and hundreds of them.

Froncek Czyzewski was definitely a Renaissance man. He was a newspaper reporter for the South Bend Tribune, and also the newspaper's official weather man, determining long-range weather forecasts based on sunspot activity. He also was an astronomer, building several of his own telescopes, which usually sat on our upstairs porch (reached by climbing through the bedroom window). And he wrote. He could be heard clicking away on his old typewriter until all hours of the night.

Then, there was the photography. He would wake up in the morning, look out the window, and say "this is an f/5.6 day." That, of course, was an indication of the amount of sunshine, and how he would have to set the exposure readings on his camera (actually, cameras, since he had quite a collection by the time his family came along). To supplement his income, he started his own photography business and took pictures of weddings, family reunions, church and business events, and more. I can remember when I was 10, I was allowed to help him print pictures in our homemade basement darkroom.

My mother was his favorite subject. He took pictures of her doing everyday chores, going for a walk with the kids, wearing a new outfit, or coming down the stairs dressed for a party. There are dozens and dozens.

This explains why I can remember my childhood with such accuracy. My plan is to let my children and grandchildren have a special glimpse of my dad and the world in which I grew up. I am in the process of reviewing all these old reels of film and converting them to DVDs, along with scanning the negatives to turn them in to digital images. My dad would be amazed at how easy it is to remove dust spots from pictures these days!

My eldest son referred to me as a "techno-anthropologist," and I guess I am.

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