The glass plate negatives were a mystery. Who knew what images they might contain? They were so fragile that I didn’t want to touch them.
Lucille Hageman (1915-2009), former vocalist for the Denny Thompson Orchestra, gave the 4-by-5 plates to me nearly 25 years ago. As I recall, she said the negatives had been passed down to her late husband, Harold “Red” Hageman, a radio announcer at WADC, WCUE and WAKR.
She had planned to throw them away but thought maybe I could find a use for them. Well, it took awhile. Wrapped in old newspapers and glassine envelopes, they’ve sat in a cardboard box in our basement for years.
It recently occurred to me that I needed to get the black-and-white photographs printed before the images were lost forever.
I took the box to Ed Halamay, the owner of Halamay Color Lab on South Main Street in Akron, who had helped me on other projects involving local history. His parents, Walter and Pauline Halamay, started the business in their basement 65 years ago.
Glass plate negatives, which went out of fashion in the 1920s, were already obsolete when the company began and they are extremely rare to see these days. Customers show up with the delicate plates only once or twice a year, although the equipment to process them is long gone.