Lucy Baldwin has a collection of 63 scrapbooks filled with thousands of family photographs and news clippings – most inserted into corner slot picture holders or attached with a light adhesive.
She's sure it's 63 scrapbooks because Baldwin has meticulously numbered every one of her books since she began assembling them as a freshman at Oregon State University.
Her memories occupy a cabinet inside her Pearl District condo that she shares with her husband, James. The books are neatly arranged.
How neatly? It took the 76-year-old Baldwin less than 10 minutes to find the exact book with the exact photo she wanted to share with The Oregonian. It's a picture of an adorable child drinking milk at the Kaiser shipyards inside the children's nursery in 1943. The girl, almost 3 years old at the time, is licking away her milk mustache.
Baldwin is that girl.
The older version of herself showed up recently to offer her family photo to The Oregonian as part of our new book project chronicling life during that era in Portland.
You might remember that last year we released Portland Memories – The Early Years, a picture book of black and white photographs dating back to the late 1800s and ending with the 1930s. We went into our archives for scores of photos. And we also received important contributions from the Oregon Historical Society, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education and the Portland city archives.
But we also opened the door to community submissions.
And people came. They brought nearly 300 pictures to share. And we published many of them in our book.
It was such a success that we're doing it again this year with the second volume of Portland Memories emphasizing how the city adapted during the war years. The shipyards were a main center of activity during the 1940s, but it's only part of what the book will cover. We're looking for photos that showcase people at work, construction, transportation, social life and civic activity during that decade.
If you decide to share photos like Baldwin did, the images will never leave your possession. Our publishing partners at the Pediment Group Inc. take instant scans of the image, gather caption information and return the photos right away.
And there is still plenty of time to contribute.
We have scheduled six more scanning sessions for the public to share their memories. Our plan is to release the hardcover coffee table book in time for the holidays.
Every photo we receive has a back story.
Baldwin's family obtained the photo of Lucy at the shipyards nursery because her grandmother Esther Wills happened to be watching a newsreel at the Moreland Theater about the shipbuilding efforts in Portland. To her surprise, there was Lucy, licking her lips on the big screen.
"It was common back then that if you saw your relatives in newsreels, they would capture the photo from the film for you," said Baldwin, a retired schoolteacher.
So Wills asked the production company, and they obliged by sending a screenshot of Lucy. For a while, the photograph was kept in a shoe box at Lucy's mother's house on Idaho Street in Johns Landing. Baldwin retrieved the image and added it to one of her scrapbooks. It stayed there until she saw the advertisements in The Oregonian about our next Portland Memories book.
Dick Holmes saw the advertisements, too.
When war broke out, his father Dale was 28 and the father of three working on a farm south of the city.
He had moved to Oregon from Colorado in 1936 and first found work on a hops farm. He earned a little extra cash driving heavy equipment to clear the way for Portland General Electric to put in a new power line. That side job netted Holmes about $100. He spent $96 of it to buy his first home in Gervais, according to his son.
Dale spent most of the war years at the Kaiser shipyards working as a welder. When the United States entered the war, Dale Holmes first contributed as a carpenter. One day he was practicing his welding when shipyard officials spotted him.
"They said 'Son, come with me' because they had a real shortage of people who could weld," Dick Holmes recounted.
Dale went to work building ships. He was so good at welding that he soon began teaching others. Before long, he was heading up the entire welding training program at the shipyards and ultimately became the welding foreman.
Dick Holmes, 76, fished out two photographs of his dad at the shipyards that he had been keeping in a dresser drawer at his Molalla home after his mom passed away. He shared them with us for the Portland Memories book.
"A lot went on here that isn't noticed or acknowledged at the shipyards," Holmes said. "We're very proud of dad's efforts and accomplishments but a lot of people made contributions to the war effort and after that went home or back to work. That's what dad did. And fortunately our mom kept everything. She didn't throw anything away."