Bottles of Grain Belt sat atop the bar at Minervas late Wednesday afternoon, but the man who usually ordered that particular brand of beer wasn’t there.
Instead, member of the Wednesday Study Group had ordered the Grain Belt in tribute to Bill Pay, a Sioux Falls photographer and historian who died Tuesday at the age of 99. If the African proverb “When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground” is true, then in Pay’s death, a library filled with picture books is gone.
But while his memories may be gone, his photographs can be seen in locations such as the Phillips Avenue Diner. Several years ago, Siouxland Heritage Museums acquired almost 1,100 of Pay’s iconic photos, many showing how downtown Sioux Falls changed from the 1950s to the 1990s.
“They’re one of those very iconic collections that span a time period,” executive director Bill Hoskins said. “There weren’t a lot of photographers taking pictures of the town, of the city as it changed and developed. They fill an important hole in the historic record.”…