Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

Dublin: This is Tom Dublin and it's the twenty-ninth of May, and I'm with George Harvan at 307 West Patterson Street in Lansford, [Pennsylvania] beginning a series of interviews about his growing up, his coming to photography, and his photographic career over the years. So, George, why don't you tell me when you were born?

Harvan: Tom, I was born on February the twenty-fifth, 1921, right here in Lansford, on East Kline Avenue. At a place called Porvaznik's. My mother and father came from Europe. They had nowhere to go, they knew about the Porvaznik family on East Kline Avenue, and they rented a place up there. In the meantime, I had three sisters—Julia, Margaret, and Rose. So I was the fourth in the family.

Dublin: You were the young one.

Harvan: At that time.

Dublin: Tell me a little bit about your father.

Harvan: My father's name was Andrew. He came to this country right after World War I. He was married at the time. He came with my mother, and my three older sisters who were born in Czechoslovakia. When they came to this country, a lot of the immigrants migrated to the coal fields to find work. He came to Lansford and started to work in the coal mines. He worked at the Greenwood Colliery right from the beginning, Number Ten Colliery.

Dublin: And where in Czechoslovakia had he come from?

Harvan: There was a small town call Kudloce, K-u-d-l-o-c-e, something like that. It's near Bratislava. It's close to the Austria-Hungary border. They had more ties to that region than to the East Czechs, you know, to the Moravians or the Bohemians. In fact, a lot of the people in Lansford came from that village. I guess it was familiarity, so that when they came here they came from that village, almost to another village.

Dublin: Now when your father came, did he come the very first time with his wife and daughters?

Harvan: Oh yes, the first time.

Dublin: The whole group of five.

Harvan: No, no, I wasn't born yet.

Dublin: The rest of the family.

Harvan: Oh, I'm sorry. The five, yeah, the five. When they came here, my father started to work in the mines. In 1920, he was in a very violent explosion. His buddy was killed. They were firing a shot, I guess it was the manway they were firing from, and his buddy was out in the chute, exposed more to the blast, and my father was behind some timbers. His buddy was just blown away. My father was so badly injured, they never thought he would live. He had thousands and thousands of black and blue marks all through his body, just from the force of the blast. It was like a tattoo, where the coal dirt had blown into his skin. He never liked the mines after that. He didn't feel comfortable in there. The accident happened in '20. And in 1921 I was born, and the following year he decided he didn't want to mine anymore, so he packed up the whole family—wife, four kids, I was one year old—and went back to Czechoslovakia. He had saved a few bucks from mining and through compensation from being injured, with the little bit he had, he always wanted to own a little inn. So we went back to Czechoslovakia, and he had a chance to buy a little inn, and he bought it.

Dublin: He bought the inn in the town that you had mentioned, where he had come from?

Harvan: Yes, in that area. It was in that same area. And he was having a grand time. They would have dances there, and my mother was doing all the work, cooking, and the kids were helping. Julia, at the time, was probably about ten, eleven. Margaret was about eight. Now Rose was about four. There was about three years difference between the three girls. They remembered the time very well. They remembered Czechoslovakia and they often commented that I was a big kid. I was pretty big when I was born, and they said I would plonk down in the middle of one of those dirt streets in Czechoslovakia and they couldn't get me up. So, after being there about a year, my mother didn't like it. My mother didn't like it at all. She probably didn't like all that was going on in the inn and all the work.

Dublin: What was your mother's name again?

Harvan: My mother's name was Anna Sabol. Her father had come to this country and he worked down south somewhere. It was in North Carolina, and he earned a lot of money. With the money saved, he decided to go back to Czechoslovakia and buy a house and start a business. But when he got off the train and was walking down a road, he was waylaid and was murdered—when he still had the money on his person. [Portion deleted--one question] My mother was a young woman at the time, and she was in Czechoslovakia at the time, and of course, when she found out about the killing, well, this really turned her off—living in Czechoslovakia, having your father murdered there and everything. She wanted to come back to Lansford. Margaret wanted to come back real bad—she was the second oldest. Julia didn't particularly care. Rose was a darling little girl who everybody liked. The people in town liked her. But I think all they wanted was to come back, so finally my father reluctantly sold the place, and came back to Lansford. I was a little over one year old, and my parents packed up the whole family again and put them back on a train and boat and came back to Lansford.

Dublin: So you went back and forth across the Atlantic twice before you were about one and a half.

Harvan: Two years old, yeah. In fact, we still have the trunk up in the attic that they used to move all their clothes from Czechoslovakia to here. It was a big steamer trunk. But you can imagine, not having that much money and all that, and then the passage must have been kind of difficult in those days, with four kids, six people.

Dublin: So he must have saved a fair amount of money to be able to afford the return passage and then to buy this inn?

Harvan: Yeah, sure, he must have. But, a lot of those people were very thrifty. They did save money and they lived simply—how they did it, I don't know. But they did make two passages across the Atlantic. I don't know much about it because I was too young. But my sisters did—Rose—who became a photographer —often mentioned how the Captain liked her, and they'd get a lot of favors. She got extra food.

Dublin: Do you think the family went over and back in steerage or do you think you went in a cabin?

Harvan: I don't know. It's hard to say.

Dublin: One thing that's interesting about this story is that it sounds like, from your description of your father's accident, that he was already a miner, which would seem to me to be unusual.

Harvan: No, he wasn't a miner. The fellow who was killed was a miner—he was his buddy. He was his helper. And I guess the miners took more chances. Not more chances, but they expose themselves to more dangers, than his buddy, he was probably an older man. My father was able to get behind a timber. It probably saved his life. He didn't get the full force of the blast.

Dublin: Do you sense that he was recovering for quite a while after that accident?

Harvan: Yes, he did recover a long time. I imagine, in those days, they didn't have that much unemployment money coming in, you did it all on your own.

Dublin: It sounds like you think the company made some sort of payment to him as compensation.

Harvan: I think so. They did.

Dublin: Now when the family came back to Lansford, did he return to the mines?

Harvan: Yes, he did. He came back and started to work in Number 10, and eventually became a contract miner, too. He worked there until he retired when he was sixty-five. Of course he had black lung real bad then, too. But he worked through the years, through all the good and bad times. He never did anything else. That's all he did was contract mining. My father had two other brothers in Czechoslovakia at the time—Mike and John—Mike was next to him, and John was the youngest in the family. He brought both of them over to this country. They married here. They lived with my parents until they got married. My mother took care of them—they boarded with her. They also worked in the mines, and raised families here in Lansford. Mike had about five or six kids, and John had four boys—no girls.

Dublin: Do you have memories of yourself with these uncles when you were young?

Harvan: Oh, sure. In fact, John used to always cut my hair. Well, when you visit from one mining family to another, the first thing they do when you come into a house is they give you a shot, a shot of whiskey. Also, my father made wine, and he'd bring some wine for guests. This one particular time I remember my father gave John a little bit too much to drink, and then he started cutting my hair. Well, he made a mess of it. The next day, he remembered he had to cut my hair, and he come down. My mother said, "Why are you here John"" He said, "Well, I have to cut George's hair." "You cut it yesterday." Well, in the meantime, after he cut my hair, my mother had to recut it and had to take it all off! John was the family barber. Mike was a little different than my father or John. He was very quiet, never spoke very much. He almost always seemed like he was mad at somebody. But it was just his way—he was all right.

Dublin: So what was your father like as you were growing up?

Harvan: Well, he never much bothered with the rest of us. He stayed more or less to himself. He did try to educate himself. He read a lot, and he would buy different periodicals. Of course, they also had the Slovak books. He did learn how to speak English. In time, he also learned how to write. All on his own. My mother never really learned how to write. Toward the latter part of her life, she would try to read the daily paper, but she never really learned how to write. But in time she could pick out things in the newspaper. When I was growing up, my parents only spoke Slovak among themselves. Margaret was more of the home type of person—she spoke Slovak very well. Julia never did. When she got out of high school, she went to New York and she never came back to live in Lansford. My parents never encouraged us to speak Slovak at home. They felt we should speak English and learn the customs here—and get an education here. So they encouraged us to speak English in home. But when they talked among themselves, it was always in Slovak.

Dublin: And what church did they and you attend?

Harvan: St. Michael's church. My father wasn't much of a churchgoer back then. He had a little rebellious streak in him, too. I mentioned this just recently —when I talked with Rose a few years ago, just before she died, and I said, "Rose, what would have happened to us if we would have stayed in Europe and never came back to the United States?" She said, "George, Hitler would have killed your father, or somebody would have killed him because he was always finding something to rebel about." So when it came time to—the church had the practice then to take money off your pay-check for church dues—and my father didn't like that. He didn't like that at all. He thought that was something that they shouldn't do. So he had it out with the priest, and the priest insisted on taking it out, so my father said, well, I'm not going to go to church. So what the priest was saying was that if you're a member of the congregation, we're going to do this. We're going to take this out of your pay.

Dublin: And so he said, "You're not."

Harvan: That's right. This kind of devastated my mother, because she wanted to go to church. And she would go. After a while, I don't think he paid dues into the church.

Dublin: So in some ways, she might have felt not welcome there because he was making this stand.

Harvan: That's right. She felt a little more strongly about being a Catholic than my father did, and she made us go. We never went to parochial school. We always went to public school. And she made us go after school to get instructions for communion and confirmation and all that.

Dublin: And were you confirmed?

Harvan: Yes, we had to go after school. In fact, Sister Methodia—remember her? She was the one that taught me. She taught everybody in town.

Dublin: Was she the principal of this school, or just a teacher there?

Harvan: She was just a teacher. But it seemed everybody my age, who went to St. Michael's, was taught by her. She lived to be almost a hundred.

Dublin: But she just taught you in the after-school program?

Harvan: Right, yeah, it was after school. And that's why we were never really—like some Catholic families who observed a lot of things, the ceremonies of the church and things like that. My father—he just broke away. I don't know if he ever went to church again. I don't remember him ever going to church.

Dublin: So when you were confirmed, your mother would have been there.

Harvan: Yeah, she was there. They had a priest by the name of Father Lisitsky—who was very strict, he was almost dictatorial in his dealings with the people, and my father didn't get along, that's all.

Dublin: So your father resented that kind of authority.

Harvan: That's right. And that's just the type of a person he was.

Dublin: He probably felt he had enough of that kind of authority from the mine already.

Harvan: Yeah, either that, or maybe just his make-up, too. He was a strong union man. He believed in the union very strongly, but other than that, he never went out... trying to organize people or things like that. But I think he realized that the union was a good thing for the miners—in those days, it was a good thing.

Dublin: So did you ever go into a mine when you were very young? Did he take you in? What's your first memory of being in a mine?

Harvan: Actually, the first memory of me being in a mine was after I come out of the service, and I went down into the mines to take pictures for the coal company. The only other experience I had in the mine was when I was growing up —ten, eleven years old—I did have to pick coal and fill the coal bin up. We would go up Courtwright Street, all the way up to the top of the mountain, practically where Philip Ginter discovered coal, where the vein outcropped on Sharp Mountain.

Dublin: Now is that actually in Summit Hill?

Harvan: Well, I don't think it was in Summit Hill. It was just here southeast of Lansford— Sharp Mountain. There was places where a small vein would outcrop, and if you could find these veins, you could mine the coal. Pig it out, crack it, put it in bags, put it in a wheelbarrow, haul it down Courtwright Street, and dump it into the coal bin of this house, right here where we're sitting now—right underneath us.

Dublin: So how old would you have been when you did that?

Harvan: Well, I was in high school. I was twelve years old, thirteen maybe. My job was to fill the coal bin every summer. I mean, it had to be filled right up the rafters. I couldn't get another piece of coal in there.

Dublin: And did your family basically get all of its coal that way?

Harvan: Yeah, that's how we heated our house, and I had to make sure there was no slate along with the coal—it had to be all coal. If ever a piece of slate got caught in the grates and they couldn't rake the stove, I would get it! But I was pretty good at that. I knew what slate was, and what coal was.

Dublin: Did your sisters ever do that, too, or just you, as the boy?

Harvan: They picked coal, but they didn't go up to the veins. They went down to the R.R. track, where the coal would spill off the trains, and they would pick it up there. My buddy was a fellow by the name of Bill "Bozo" Krycirik, from down here on Snyder Avenue, about four years older than I was. He was kind of a physical specimen. He had big muscles—a health nut. The first thing he did in the morning, in the summer, was to take his shirt off. He had this coal hole up on the mountain, and he would let me work along the fringes of it. We were down about twelve or fifteen feet on the pitch. He would carry the coal up for me, and I would crack it and put it in bins. He kinda took me under his wing, and I was his buddy. He would get two or three times more coal than I would, since he was bigger, strong, and knew more about it. He would also sell coal. After he would fill his coal bin, then he would contact the people in the neighborhood. Some of the widows—he would sell a bag of coal for a quarter.

Dublin: So would you normally take burlap bags up there?

Harvan: Yes, we used burlap bags to hold the coal. We would have screens, hammers, picks, etc.— and everything else—to crack and screen the coal. We would never take the real small coal, it would go through the screens. We only took what mostly was the size of a chestnut type, or an egg coal. That's all we would take—the rest we would leave up there.

Dublin: And you had some sort of a hammer? A sledge?

Harvan: Oh yeah, we had big hammers for the big lumps. And then the smaller hammer to break it down to the smaller pieces. There was no sense in taking the fine coal —you couldn't burn it—so we left it up there. We only took what we could use. It was good coal because it came right out of a vein—solid vein.

Dublin: So you did this in the summer?

Harvan: Yes.

Dublin: And about how much time in the summer would it take to eventually do this?

Harvan: It was every morning —all through high school. My father—he was kinda strict. If it was raining and I couldn't get up to screen the coal, when it was too bad —he would have other things for you to do. When huckleberry season came in, and the blackberry season come in—he handed you the can and he said, "Look, go pick huckleberries." So, all summer, every morning was taken up, either with coal, huckleberries, or blackberries, or later on, mushrooms, or whatever it was. But you had to go out. You couldn't sit around. You couldn't sleep until ten or eleven o'clock, that's for sure.

Dublin: And would you say that was probably common for other kids your age? Other families?

Harvan: I would say so. As I think about it, though, some of the other kids didn't have it quite so tough. I think there was a little more leeway in certain things they did. But, I guess it didn't hurt.

Dublin: It certainly got you a bit familiar with mining, in a way.

Harvan: Yeah, and the discipline, too. As far as you had to do certain things, and that was it. But then my afternoons were my own. I would come home after dumping the coal, and my mother would pour water into an old wooden tub where I would wash. We had a bathroom at the time, she would still pour water into the old tub. I was about ten or eleven when we had a bathroom put in upstairs. Up until that time we had an outhouse in the back, we had running water but we didn't have a bathroom—when my father remodeled the house and he put in the bathroom.

Dublin: Now this is a two-family house?

Harvan: Yes, it is. We lived here, right where we're sitting. This home, at one time, was a single house. And it's a very old house, because all of the beams underneath, there's no nails in them. They're all mortised. It belonged to a Frederick Evans, who was an engineer for the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. And at that time, on the 1870 map, there's only one house in this block, and that's this house. Later on, it was made into two houses. When my father bought the property, he made it into two houses and then when he was remodeling and all that, he put a bathroom in the other side, and they rented the other side out. That's where I live now—on the other side.

Dublin: And this half-house has how many bedrooms upstairs?

Harvan: Three bedrooms and a bath. Three small bedrooms and a bath, and an attic. And, of course, the basement. And the same thing on the other side. The three girls shared one bedroom and my mother and father shared one, and I had—being the boy—had the other. I knew a lot of times, if my mother would be sick or something like that, my father would use a bed next to me, we had two beds there—in the same bedroom. Julia graduated from Lansford High —Margaret also graduated, and so did Rose, and I graduated. And just as soon as Julia graduated, she went off to New York—went to Greenwich Village and never came back—stayed there until she died.

Dublin: What kind of work did she do in New York when she first went there?

Harvan: Oh, she was a pretty good artist. She had an artistic bent—there was something there—she worked in factories and places where she hand-painted ties and scarves. She did some design work. Then she married a fellow by the name of Marvel, Frankie Marvel, and they had three children. He practically drank himself to death—died an alcoholic. She lived alone, and when she was sixty-seven, one of her friends found her, she had died in her little apartment in Greenwich village. It wasn't much. One summer I went down to see her, and I couldn't believe the small place she was living in. I tried to get her to come back to Lansford, but there was no way she was going to come back here. She got so used to the city and the way people lived and she was not ready to come back here—never did. The only time she came back was when I buried her here.

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Dublin: What about your second sister?

Harvan: Margaret, like I said, was more of the home type girl. She went to New York for a while, didn't like it, and came home. She was close to my mother. They would bake together, would wash clothes together, and everything else. She stayed around here, worked in the factory, met a fellow down the street here called Frankie Sulek, who worked in Number Six. He was a pretty good musician and always felt that he should be leading a band or something like that, writing music. He did start up a little band, and he called it the Frankie Shaw Orchestra. Where I live now—that's Margaret and her family. Margaret and her family. where they lived—my mother and father lived here and Margaret lived next door. He would bring in about five or six people and they would start playing, and he would sit up at night after work, making arrangements. He had the orchestra for a while, up until the war broke out. He wasn't a young man anymore, but he wanted to get into the Service and stayed for two years, and then following the Service, they went to Levittown, New York [and then] they moved to North Carolina; he was writing technical manuals and instructional books. They bought a plot of ground and built a home on it. Frank died a young man—he was only sixty-one. He was out in the yard, out in the back yard one Saturday afternoon, raking the leaves, and just dropped over. That was it. Margaret was a widow from then on.

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Dublin: Now, were you closest to Rose?

Harvan: I would say so, yeah, because she was three years older than me, and especially toward the latter part of her life when I was retired I had more time myself. I didn't have to spend as much time with my children—they were gone—so I could readily drive up to Connecticut where she had a home, a nice place. I enjoyed going up there. It was great—I miss it now—even today I miss it. We were very close toward the end. . . . When Rose was in high school, she also had to work. So, during the evenings and during her vacations— junior and senior year—she got a job with Dr. Breslin here—at Lansford with our dentist. He kind of liked her, so he said, "You can be my assistant. If I need something, you can hand it to me." Things of that nature. She did that for a couple years, but as soon as she got out of high school, she also wasn't going to stay in town, and left. Depression-era Lansford. Courtesy Library of Congress. Depression-era Lansford. Courtesy Library of Congress. There was nothing here during the Depression. My father wasn't working—most of the time. I could remember the Depression was . . . taking a pot and getting it filled with soup. Even shoes, there was a bunch of shoes thrown on a pile, and someone would say, "Go pick out a pair." You'd try to find a pair that fit you. And going up to the grocery stores like the A&P, they would throw lettuce out, and oranges and apples, you cut out some of the bad parts. I remember doing all that, and bringing home some of the good. We had chickens in the back. And what we couldn't eat—the bad lettuce and all that —we gave to the chickens. My mother would kill the chickens and that's how we survived. We had a garden in the back, too. We had carrots, tomatoes, and things like that. My mother was a good cook. Well, most of the people that came from the old country were good cooks. She could make a meal out of just potatoes or something like lettuce. She'd get a bunch of lettuce out of the back yard and make a sauce with milk and butter and browned it. That was your meal in the evening. Or you'd get a dish of buttermilk. And she'd make a big bowl of mashed potatoes and put it in the middle of the table, and there'd be browned onions in it. You'd scoop the potatoes with a spoon and dip it into the buttermilk, and that was your evening meal. But we always had apples and things like that in the basement. You could always go down there and get an apple. The farmers came to the front of the house here, selling apples and other fruit. So we did eat well. It wasn't expensive—the food— but we never went hungry, that's for sure. Oh, getting back to Rose. She got this job as a dental assistant with Dr. Breslin, and when she got out of high school, she headed for New York City also. When she got to New York, I don't know how it came about— she never talked about it too much—but someone talked her into going to Spain with the Lincoln Brigade, as an ambulance driver/helper. So she packs up, no one knew it. My parents didn't know it. My mother would have been devastated. She winds up in Spain, in the Civil War between Franco and the loyalists. In order to hide her identity where she was, she would send letters to a friend in New York City, who would mail the letter from New York City to Lansford. She didn't want . . . my parents to know where she was—she was just nineteen or twenty years old. She would write a personal letter like she was writing it from New York City, and send it to somebody in New York. She would say, "I'm doing this in New York." It wasn't very often, but every now and then, my mother would mention getting a letter from Rose.

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Rose got involved in this Civil War in Spain as a very, very young girl. When she was in Spain she met people like Hemingway and Robert Capa— people who were involved in that effort. While she was there, she met Herbert Kline, a young filmmaker from Iowa, who was making a documentary film. She got to helping him. And after a while they married. When they finished the film in Spain, they came back to the United States, and when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, they had decided to make a documentary film there called "The Crisis." They spent a year in the Sudetenland, making this film. And they had a lot of good experiences. It was, at this time, that she decided she was going to start doing some still photography also. When she decided to do this, she used an old Rolleicord. They didn't have too much trouble in the Sudetenland until the latter part of the film, because the Germans at that time were kind of looking for publicity for their cause. Hitler was trying to get his message across all over the world, and [the Nazis] were receptive to a filmmaker making a documentary. They could only do certain things, shoot certain places, rallies, and things like that—group meetings. But toward the end of the year, when they started to get into the meat of the film, then it started to get a little bad for them. But by that time, the shooting was finished, and they came back to New York City, edited it, and it showed as a documentary called "The Crisis." Well, they weren't satisfied with that, so they decided the next year to go to Poland in 1940. And you know what happened in Poland. That was the start of the World War II. It was much different in Poland. They were under attack by the Germans, and different counter-people in Poland. The most vivid story she told me was when they had all the shot film in cans, and couldn't get out across the border—didn't know how they were going to get this film out. They finally found somebody sympathetic to what they were doing, and he decided one night that he would put them in a hay wagon and cover them up with hay along with their film, find a remote crossing across the border into, I think it was Lithuania. . . . one of those little roads. And when they were stopped, and I guess whoever stopped them just thought it was a load of hay—they never did search the wagon. They got across the border, and that's how they got their film out of Poland after Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II. Then they came back, and that documentary was called "Lights Out in Europe." It's still available, I imagine, someplace. Then the following year, that was 1941, just before we got into the war, they decided to do a movie in Mexico, and I think you saw some of those pictures. That film was called "A Forgotten Village," written by John Steinbeck. John Steinbeck also wrote the script. Rose did the still pictures, and Herbert and his crew did the documentary film, which is still available. I have a couple books here.

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The story of "The Forgotten Village" was a story about a little boy who was kind of torn between—he wasn't a young boy, he was a young man —about eighteen. Torn between the old customs of a village and how they treated diseases like you could get from drinking water or eating bad food or exposed to bad sewage or something like that. Through a teacher he found out that there were a lot of these elements that were causing the various diseases, and he tried to impress on his father and on the other people in the village that they were treating these illnesses the wrong way, and that they should adopt modern medicines and all that, instead of listening to witch doctors, putting eggs on your stomach or snake skins on your skin, or something—to draw out the pain. So he was torn between thism . . . And in the final scenes, the people reject all his findings, and his father turns his back on him, and the boy has to leave the village. The people went back to what they had been doing. They rejected the modern medicine. And that was the basic message of the story. [deletion]

[Later in her life Rose Harvan wrote a novel based on the story of the Molly Maguires, a secret Irish American group that emerged in the anthracite region in the 1860s and '70s. George did some research at area libraries to help his sister learn more about their history. In the process he learned about the Mollies' trials. Several came from Lansford and lived just up the hill from George's home.]

When we were growing up, we had a lot of big families around here —a lot of ethnic families, mostly Slovak, Polish. And I would go up on Ridge Street and we'd play. At night we'd play all kinds of games or just hang out. And we used to play right in front of the house where Alexander Campbell lived and John Jones lived. Alexander Campbell was the one who was hanged for the murder of John Jones, and we actually played right in front of their homes, because they lived across the street from each other. We were living in this kind of historical place, as far as the Molly Maguires were concerned, and we never even knew it. Like I said, we had a lot of big families around here. And we all had nicknames. Everybody had a nickname. I was called Joe-Joe, I was called Sheriff. And we had Dula, and Moony, and Tilly, and Bunser. They're practically all gone now.

Dublin: Did a lot of those kids go into the mines?

Harvan: No, because we were about the age when—we got out of high school—the mines were not hiring—but then the war broke out, and you went into the service. If you were in the mines and were drafted, you got your job when you came back. They gave your job back. I never went into the mines because when I got out of high school, I couldn't get a job in the mines. I couldn't get a job anywhere. Every week I would go down—Roosevelt had initiated the Civilian Conservation Corps—a program set up for youth to get them off the streets and put them into camps to do some good—planting trees or building roads or whatever. Every week we had to go down to Jim Thorpe, which was Mauch Chunk at the time, and sign up. If you missed a week, they would take you off the list. So you had to bum a ride down there, or get a ride somehow, and sign up every week.

Dublin: And this was just a waiting list?

Harvan: A waiting list, yeah. They would try to take the people who they felt were more deserving, so when your turn came up, they called you and I signed up for a six month period. I spent two years in the Civilian Conservation Corps, that was my employment. We got a dollar a day, thirty dollars a month. You kept eight dollars and twenty-two dollars went home. And that twenty-two dollars was a big help to my parents at home. You're talking '38, '39—well, '39 . . .

Dublin: Your father wasn't working much in the mines?

Harvan: No. No one was. They were just making it. The mines at that time were pretty well finished. The only thing that really rejuvenated mining was the second World War. That was just an interlude, and the rest was just a carry-over from the '39s and '40s into the '47s, or '55s or '56s, and '57s. But that's how I got into the CC's.

Dublin: Where did you do your work? Were you living at home and doing it around here?

Harvan: Oh, no. They packed you off and they put you on a train and they send you to a camp. They sent me down to Waynesboro, PA. It's west of Gettysburg, but more on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania. There was two camps there. There was a forestry camp, and a SCS camp, which was a soil conservation camp. I was in the soil conservation camp. We went out to different farmers who needed terraces made, or maybe they had blocked off a pasture for cattle—and we'd put up a fence. It was real hard work, but you were young then. You'd get out there in the summertime, with all that heat. They fed you, gave you clothes. We had three good meals. We had breakfast, and then we'd get in the truck, and they'd move us out to a farm or wherever we were going to work—and then during the day's work . . . . At lunch time, they'd have a truck come out with huge vats of food. You had a regular mess kit, and they would scoop the food into it, and you'd eat it. They had coffee and bread. I did that for a year and half. I worked my way up. After a year, I became an assistant leader, and I got $36 a month, and I was able to keep $12, or $14. And then the last six months I was in the CC camps I became a leader. They sent me to New Cumberland. It's a small town south of Harrisburg. It was kind of a replacement center for new CC recruits. But by that time, people were losing interest in the CCs. I'm talking '41—the latter part of '40, '41. My job there was to take rookies to various camps—I was just a young man at the time. I was only twenty years old. So here I was taking young men to other camps. I remember going down to Camp David now, the CCs were building that camp—where the President now retreats—and Front Royal and down into Kentucky and Maryland. I picked them up in New Cumberland, put them on the train, and go to a camp, and I would drop them off, and then come back. It was quite an experience for a young man—to see the country and meet all kinds of people. And you would meet all kinds. One time we got this bunch of kids in from South Philadelphia. Most of them were Italians, you know, really rough. Oh brother, it was tough. But I was fortunate. The leader of the group and I became good friends. He could have clobbered me because he was so much bigger and tougher—but I became good friends with him, and that way I survived, I think. I think that you have to be a little diplomatic. That's another thing I learned. Another interesting thing that happened in the CC camps. There was another fellow from Philadelphia, an Italian boy also, who—he was a leader at the time when I was an assistant leader. He said, "You know, we could make some extra money." And I said, "How's that?" And he said, "I'm going to buy two small pigs. We're going to make a pen back in the woods and feed them all the slop out of the mess hall. We're going to take the slop up there and feed them, then we're going to have these two big pigs. We could take them into town and sell them and make some money." After a while, we had the two biggest pigs you'd ever want to see, because they had all this food that was leftover from the mess hall. And they were huge! They were so big—we got a truck and took them into town. The people in Waynesboro never really liked us, because we were so close to town. It was kind of—I can now understand almost—not quite how the Blacks feel, being an outcast in a town— they wouldn't have nothing to do with us. On Saturday night, we would never head for Waynesboro. We'd go to Hagerstown, which was further away. It was a little bigger town; they had dances and accepted us. After we had our bottle of wine, we didn't care where we were. [laughs] Well, we took these two pigs into town, to a butcher in Waynesboro, but we couldn't get anything for them. They knew we were CC boys—we couldn't get much for the pigs, so they practically stole the pigs from us. [laughs] We didn't make any money anyway.

Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

Dublin: So, George, when we spoke yesterday, you told me about your three older sisters. And now, why don't you tell me about your younger sister and younger brother as well.

Harvan: As I mentioned yesterday, I had three older sisters: Julia, Margaret, and Rose. They were spaced about three years -- between each birth. My younger sister was Claire, who also graduated from high school, became a nurse, went to New York City, worked in Mt. Sinai Hospital, in the cancer center. In those days, cancer was kind of almost a new disease, so she decided to get into that field of work when she became a nurse. She also treated a number of local people, some who even came from Lansford. In one case -- Mr. Sam Weiss -- a local merchant up on Ridge Street -- had a son, Joseph, who developed throat cancer, and they sent him to Mt. Sinai. Claire more or less adopted him there, and took care of him, as a nurse would do. Mr. Weiss would always tell my mother, "Look, anytime you need any clothes, you come up to the store and take anything you want." Claire was a very nice person. When my mother developed cataracts in her eyes, she decided to come back and take care of my mother when she was going through her operation, which was in Coaldale Hospital. During the course of her taking care of my mother -- after the operation which was performed by Dr. Houser, from Tamaqua. He noticed this young woman, taking care of her mother, this after he had just lost his wife. He saw this beautiful girl and became very attracted to her -- started courting her -- eventually they got married and she moved to Tamaqua, where they had a big home. He also had an airplane and liked to fly. He had two daughters. I would say one was in her late teens, and the other in her early twenties. The younger girl, after she got out of high school, decided to become a stewardess. One day, he had an operation to perform but the youngest girl had to be in New York to take a test, and fill out forms for this stewardess job. A friend of his, a Mr. Christman from Palmerton, was to pilot the plane, so the three of them -- Mr. Christman, my sister, and her stepdaughter, flew to New York. She had the interview, and on the way back, while trying to land at the Lehighton Airport, for some reason, the pilot never made the landing field. He hit a cement building at the edge, both my sister and Mr. Christman were killed, the girl was severely injured. Claire was only thirty-four at the time. And it kind of devastated my mother. She used to sit on the back porch here and cry every night. They were very close, and when she died a few years later, she died of a broken heart, just on account of that accident. She was very sentimental, but subjugated to my father. I think I mentioned, before about how the men kind of dominated the women. I think that was the case here. The women were more or less afraid to do many things on their own. If it was all right with the men, they did it. It's still the case around here. I notice a lot of people my age, where the men still dominate the women, more or less.

Dublin: Can you recall some examples, some incidents, from your growing up where you could see that going on with your father and mother?

Harvan: Well, mostly in buying things. She couldn't go out and buy anything. She used to like Hershey Kisses, and she had to sneak out to buy them and hide them at home so he wouldn't find them. Then at night she would have a couple of Hershey Kisses, just a couple pieces of chocolate. He never beat her or anything like that, but when it came to spending money, and buying things, well, it was all up to him. He made all the decisions, whether it was to renovate the house, or whatever, I mean, she had no say in anything, really. When you have to go out and buy Hershey Kisses in order to enjoy them, and hide them, it was kind of an extreme thing. But I don't think it was unusual around here. My mother had a good friend right down the street, a Mrs. Pekarik. They also had a big family. In fact, Julius -- well, we used to call him "Dula" -- was my age. We went to school and graduated together. She would come to our home, and they would talk on the porch, and her husband was -- I think he was even worse than my father, as far as being domineering. In fact, I think her main pleasure was coming up and talking to my mother, really, you know. Financially they were a little better off because he was a pretty good bootlegger. He'd make whiskey right in his back yard and would sell it. When the mines weren't working, he'd sell the moonshine. They also had a little store in the front room -- a little room about this size -- they would have canned goods and things like that for people to buy -- and he would sell the whiskey out of that store also, too. They were a little better off. But she was in the same boat. The Pekariks also came from the same town -- from Kudloce in Czechoslovakia. So, that was about the extent of my mother's life. Like I said, she was very devastated by the death of Claire. In fact, we all were. It was really hard -- you can't sleep at night and feel things would never be the same.

Dublin: How much older than Claire were you?

Harvan: There was a gap of about four years there. As I said, she was a very beautiful person. Rose was also very shaken by her death. Rose was so happy when Claire got married. I remember the day she got married -- in Chester, south of Philadelphia. After the ceremony, she said, "Oh, I'm so happy for Claire -- she found somebody, a professional person, a nice person." She was so happy for her.

Dublin: How long was it between Claire's marriage and the accident?

Harvan: Just about two years. Little over two years, it wasn't very long. I was working at the Bethlehem Steel at the time, it was in the afternoon, and over the intercom someone kept calling my name to pick up the phone. Well, I was in the darkroom at the time, and couldn't get out right away. Finally, I heard a person getting kind of angry, "Pick up the phone! Pick up the phone!" So I finally got to the phone. It was my wife and she said that Claire was in an accident, and I'd better come home. They didn't tell me at the time that she was dead, they said that she was in a real bad accident. By the time I got home, everybody was crying, so I knew at that time that she was dead. It was one of those things that happens while growing up that you never forget. Especially when it happens to a member of your family. You see a lot of deaths, but when it is part of your family who was a nice person, it's hard to take.

Dublin: And both of your parents were still alive at that time?

Harvan: Yeah. My father never showed much emotion. I never saw my father cry, really, or anything like that. He was tough. In his seventies he developed prostate cancer and when he was eighty-four he had an operation, and I never ever heard him complain about anything. I knew he was in pain, because he would sit there, almost where you are there, and I would see the expression on hs face. When he retired at sixty-five, he would just wheeze when he breathed, you could hardly stand it. In fact, it would be so annoying after a while, you would have to leave the room. I would say, "Okay, Pop, I'll see you tomorrow." He would just wheeze and wheeze. He came up with the cancer later on. As I said, I never heard him complain, though. He used to have a bottle here so he wouldn't have to walk up and down the stairs when he had to urinate. As I said, he never showed much emotion. I don't know if he was just tough that way, or if it was his make-up, but he never seemed to grieve. When my mother died, he just went along with things, through the motions of going to the funeral, etc., and life went on for him. I never saw him do anything to be physically mean to her, or anything like that. He wasn't a big man, in fact, he was kind of little. My mother really didn't have much of a life, except the family, and cooking, baking, doing the dishes, and going to church -- later on, in her life, going to church. She decided to go, regardless of what my father said. And that was her life, really. She just lived for when the children would come home for a visit. And for Margaret, who was living next door, they were very close. Margaret's first child was born next door. He only lived eighteen months when he died. His name was Frank, he was named after his father. And that also was kind of hard to take for my mother.

Dublin: That would have been the first grandchild.

Harvan: Yes the first grandchild. I imagine most families go through all these steps in their lives, heartaches, and good times. Dublin: Did your mother have a lot of good women friends? Harvan: Not many, no. Mrs. Pekarik, you know, and Mrs. Zonka. Mostly neighbors. They never had a car, never drove, never really went anywhere. In the early years, my father was a hunter, he would get out with his friends to hunt rabbits, pheasants and deer. Of course, when the mines were working, his first stop after work would be at the bar, up in Kanyuk's, next to the Am Vets Building, which was a pretty good watering place for miners, they would stop and have their shot and beer. So he would get out more than my mother. He was also the treasurer for a Slovak insurance society -- members would meet here maybe once a month. So he had friends, but my mother never did have many -- kind of led an isolated life.

Dublin: Do you think that was a little bit general for men and women of your parents' generation? That difference?

Harvan: I think so, yeah. Especially . . . . I don't know if it would apply to the Welsh or the English or the Irish, because they came over before the Slavs. But when you can't read or write English, you can't get too involved socially. Later they did get a radio. Rose bought them one, a Philco. In fact, that's the radio there -- the one Rose bought them. See it back there -- that old Philco stand-up radio? That was their main form of entertainment later on. They would sit around here in the evening and listen to Amos'n'Andy, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, and Gabriel Heater, and the news.

Dublin: I'm curious, just because you're mentioning it, do you recall -- you would have been at the age when you might have been home -- do you remember, for instance, listening to any of Roosevelt's Fireside Chats?

Harvan: Yes. In fact, I especially remember his speech on December the eighth, when war was declared. We listened to many of his Fireside talks -- yes, we did. My father was -- interested in world events. I think we got all our curiosity traits, Rose and I, from my father, more or less. He would read a lot, even in his eighties, he would sit and read as long as he could. He would especially like to read magazines.

Dublin: So he followed politics.

Harvan: Yes, definitely. Like I mentioned before, he was a strong union person, too. He never talked much about John L. Lewis or the mines or the union -- maybe he didn't want to discuss it at home. But I'm pretty sure, at the bar, he discussed it.

Dublin: And you figure he was a strong Roosevelt voter?

Harvan: Oh, yeah.

Dublin: Would have voted for Casey Gildea when he ran [for Congress in the 1930s]?

Harvan: Yes. We all followed that trend, we're all Democrats. I know Rose was, and I am a registered Democrat. We kind of followed in that line. We more or less had to, because the Welsh and the English in Lansford -- more or less controlled everything. I mean, you were second-class citizens then. There's no way of getting around it. They looked down on you. I guess it was probably that way in the other parts of the coal region, too, where people were entrenched in a certain town, and didn't particularly take to the people who couldn't read or speak English. I went through high school, and I could still remember -- there was pupils there who never spoke to me, all through high school. But then I wasn't an outgoing type, either, where I would go looking for people to talk to. And it was a time of the Depression, you know, there are other things on your mind. You were more worried about food and things like that as your parents were. There was two classes in Lansford. There was an upper class and a lower class. It's changed a lot now. Before, if you were a Slovak or Polish, you could never belong to the fire company. You had to be Welsh or English. They started it, and they just kept their people in charge. They were the bosses.

Dublin: Now, did they hold the various offices in the town government?

Harvan: Oh, yes. In fact, there was no elections, really. It was always Republican, and they always elected the burgess. They controlled the council and police. For certain reasons, I guess, it was just like a survival thing for them, too. And they were -- more or less -- pawns of the coal company, because the coal company ran the town, really, through these people, the Welsh and English. They were just trying to hang on to what they thought they deserved and was theirs.

Dublin: Was there a time that you can remember when a transition occurred, and all of a sudden you found Slovaks holding office?

Harvan: I really don't know . . . When I graduated from high school, I went directly to the CC camps, and stayed there for two years. Six months after I got out of the CCs I found out that there was some jobs open at an air depot outside of Harrisburg in Middletown. I was there for six months when the war broke out. I was gone for five and a half years in the Pacific, and then I came back to Lansford in 1947. I imagine the war changed a lot of things. I think the war did it -- I think they realized, that all classes could get killed just as well as our kind. I think the war changed everything. I think the war finally kind of put us all, more or less, on an even basis. And then when I started taking pictures for the coal company, on a freelance basis, I associated with all the bosses at the collieries and up in Edgemont, and I didn't have any problems. But in the beginning you were looked down on, held down a bit.

Dublin: But by the time you're talking about that experience, it's probably about 1950.

Harvan: I would say late forties and early fifties.

Dublin: So in that decade between '38 when you graduated from high school, and '48 or so, there is this transition.

Harvan: Yeah. When I was going to high school, I was not a very good student. I was interested in sports, in my junior year I went out for football, got on the football team, and then I played football junior and senior year. And I George Harvan quote. was on the track team. I wasn't very good, but it was something to do. You didn't go to movies, or anything else, so you went out for sports. But my marks were terrible! I just barely got through, -- I can't ever remember taking a book home to study. My parents wanted me to go to school, but they never knew enough to say, "Well, do this, because this is the way you should do it." So I never really studied. And when the girls went away, I figured eventually I would get out of high school and go away, also, and do something . . . . When I talked about going to the CCs, they knew that I was going to leave. And since the girls left earlier, they accepted it. They felt, "You've got your life to live." I imagine my mother would have been happy for some of us to have stayed at home like Margaret did. She would have liked it, but there was nothing here. Well, you're familiar with the condition of the coal regions at that time, during the Depression, there was nothing here, really. [deletion] In our graduating class -- we had 125 pupils -- and I think there was only one boy who went to college. Out of the 65-70 boys -- only one boy, he was Joe Skellshock who became a dentist, down in the Philadelphia area. But that was it. We didn't have much choice. When I was in the CC camps, after I became a leader, and I became very good friends with my foreman, Charley Crane. He always drove the truck out to a job site, and had a crew in the back, I would ride in the front with him. During the lunch break, he would start sharing philosophical thoughts about what's going to happen to this world, and this was '39, '40. He'd say, "George, there's going to be a big war. You're going to be caught up in the middle of it. You're going to be at the right age." For me, it was going in one ear and out the other. War was the farthest thing on my mind.

Dublin: This guy was ten years older than you, or something like that?

Harvan: Oh, at least, maybe more. He could have been in his late 40s, early 50s. To run the camps, they used to have a military person, reserve officer who treated us like military people, too. We went out and did our jobs during the day, but when we came back to camp and had our supper, he made us go out -- up to the woods and cut a stick into the shape of a gun, and he would start drilling us out in the streets! The company streets, there. And we also had to take up some type of sports -- boxing, running, or whatever. This really conditioned us, at this time, we were pretty trim and in good shape. If someone threw something at you after a while, you felt, "Well, this is the way it should be," and we accepted it. [deletion]

Dublin: Now your high school graduating class, would you say that eventually a good share of them left, or that really, they found ways to make it around here?

Harvan: No, I would say eighty percent of them left. But a lot of that had to do with the war, too. A lot of people got involved with other sections of the country, like Ed Ogozalek. But anyway, he settled in Alabama, because he was at an army base in Huntsville, Alabama and liked it there. When we would have class reunions, he would always come up from Alabama. People settled in New York City, Washington D.C., California. . . . I never thought I'd ever come back to Lansford. You know, when you get out in the Pacific and it's so big, and you've seen places like Hawaii, the Philippines, and Japan -- and then you come back to a little house in a little town like this. It's almost like a miniature village. Everything is confined, everything comes down on top of you. I remember walking in this door when I first came home, after I got out of the service, and I couldn't believe that I lived in this house. It was so small. But you get used to it after a while. It comes back to you.

Dublin: Why don't you tell me about how you got into the service, and what your war years were like.

Harvan: I'll tell you a little bit about [my brother] Ted, first, and that'll clear up the family, more or less. Ted was about four or five years younger than Claire. And Ted was pretty good with radios and electronics. He liked electronics. He could make radios, and listen to short wave broadcasts. When he got out of high school, he decided to go to school with RCA. He got a job with RCA and worked with them for many years. . . . After my mother died he came back to Lansford, he met a few fellows, and they decided to go into an electronics business here. The venture flopped; he lost all his savings. Kind of devastated him. . . . After that, he started to work for the television cable company here, in Lansford. Cable was just starting. He installed sets for subscribers. He then went into business for himself -- repairing television sets. He did that for a number of years[, but finally] started to work for an appliance store in Lehighton, the Koch Brothers, who sold television sets and other appliances. He repaired T.V. sets, washers, dryers, etc. He worked there for about six or seven months, and it was on Thanksgiving Day, we had dinner at our house next door. I noticed he was talking a little strange. I asked him, "Ted. What's wrong? You're slurring your speech." He said, " I had a wisdom tooth pulled and maybe it's not healing properly or something like that." "Farina" Kalny, who was his best friend, mentioned that it seemed like his speech was getting worse. "Farina" said, "Let's go down to the doctor." Farina took him down to the doctor in Jim Thorpe. I was working down at the steel, so he took him to the doctor -- Dr. McGimley -- he examined him, diagnosed him immediately as having Lou Gehrig's disease. . . . We had a couch right here in the parlor, and he used to just lay here and watch television. And . . . he would get very frustrated. Lou Gehrig's disease attacks all your muscles and nerves, but your mind stays intact. The doctor once told me, "If there was ever a disease that was devised by the devil, it is Lou Gehrig's disease." [deletion] It was kind of a sad thing, the way a body could deteriorate with this disease, a tube in his stomach and being fed that way. But he was getting worse. . . . He got to the point where he would try to write, but he couldn't grasp a pencil properly, and all of a sudden he would get frustrated and everything would go off the table -- the pencils and paper and everything else that was on it. And then I would pick it up. [deletion] The only one that died before my mother was Claire. And then the rest passed away. My father died in '74. Ted was alive then. In fact, Ted had just seen him at the Gnadden Huetten hospital. He was sitting in a chair, and it was in February when Ted last saw him. It had snowed the night before, because I had stopped in from Bethlehem on the way home, and I remember him telling me, "You'd better get on home. It's snowing out there." The roads were bad, and all that. So I stayed a while and went home. Ted visited the next day, and talked a while. My father said he was tired, and felt a little sleepy. So Ted headed home, and by the time he got there, we got a phone call informing us that my father had died. Ted never had a phone, so they called us at our home. He died sitting in the chair. He was 89. As I said before, he never complained.

Dublin: And considering that he had black lung, it's remarkable to live that long.

Harvan: It's a funny thing, though, about the black lung, Tom. Through the years, he used to like to walk a lot, from the time he was 65 to the time he was in his eighties, his lungs seemed to get better. I mean, he didn't wheeze as much, not near as much. In the beginning, when he would spit out in the basement sink, all this black stuff would come up, it would be horrible. He would gag almost like Ted was gagging when he had Lou Gehrig's disease -- not quite as bad as that, but he would cough -- to get all the coal dust up. He did like to walk, however, and would get out every morning, and walk up through the woods, up in the back hills, up around the Acme store, up in the mountains, and come back and have a meal. He had a routine. He was in bed every night at nine o'clock. [deletion]

Dublin: So you were about to tell me about going into the Army, your service in World War II, and how you became a photographer.

Harvan: I mentioned I was working in Middletown for six months after I got out of the CC camps. I knew nothing about airplanes. I don't know why they hired me, but I had an interview, and I put down my CC experiences, and how I worked myself up. I think that had something to do with it. I filled out all the forms and got the job. There were about four or five fellows from Lansford working at the depot. The two Melnick boys up the street here, Mike and Johnny, "Petie" McHugh -- he was a little older -- "Bunker" Boyle, Joe Philipovich, and "Speed" Piaia, they all worked there -- and also Joe Sniscak. Through them I found out about the job. We all stayed in the same house -- same rooming place -- taking turns sleeping, some were on night shift, some worked days. I got the job about May of '41, and they put me in the engine department where all I was doing was tearing down aircraft engines and cleaning the parts and putting them on racks, and I would then have to polish certain parts. And after a while, I started to do other jobs around the hangar. The air depot was -- as I look back now -- something the government had been planning. They anticipated perhaps there was going to be a major confrontation in the future. So they started to utilize these air depots -- civilian air depots all up the United States, to repair aircraft, rebuild engines, replace skin on the fuselage, change electrical components, or whatever else had to be done. They had a number of them in the east -- one in Middletown, one up at Westover Field up near Boston, and they had one down in Florida -- Homestead Field. And I know they had one out in California at San Bernardino.

Dublin: And these eventually became Air Force bases? Or Army Air Force bases?

Harvan: No, these were just air depots, they called them -- where they would bring airplanes in to have them repaired -- . . . military planes. At that time, they must have felt, "This is a good way to start training people, in case we do have a war, we will have trained people." So they started to train people, and that's how they took me. As I said, I didn't know anything about an airplane. I'd been up in small planes, but that was about it. After I worked there for about six or seven months, when it all happened, World War II broke out. It was December the seventh, 1941. I was on a night shift at the time. I was with "Dula" Picarik that Sunday night, who was working at the Mack plant at the time. His brother got the job for him at the truck plant in Allentown. He did have a car, and went out for a ride, and we talked about the bombing at Pearl Harbor. That was Sunday night, and then the war was declared by President Roosevelt on December the eighth. I remember listening to the speech right here, the declaration of war. I had to be at work Monday night, so I headed back to Middletown. A couple of the fellows who worked at the depot had cars. We'd come home practically every weekend -- because we were so crowded living in the same house. Petie and I had the same bedroom. I would use it in the daytime, and he'd use it at night. So it was cheaper that way. We weren't making that much money, really.

Dublin: So that's fifty, sixty miles away.

Harvan: Harrisburg. No, it's ninety, one hundred miles. Harrisburg's about eighty-five miles, and then Middletown's about seven, eight, ten miles south, along the Susquehanna. And we would have to go from Harrisburg to Middletown, but there was always a ride; people had cars. When war was declared on December eighth, I had gone to work Monday night. The first thing they told us was to meet in the hangar, and I still remember the steps. A Captain got up on them and started explaining about the damage that was done at Hickam Field to the planes. They didn't have too much information, he said, but they are looking for people to go to Hickam Field, on a volunteer basis, to work on the damaged planes. That's all he said. Well, there must have been about two hundred people there, on the shift, and somebody in the back said, "I'll go." I was up in front, and the Captain looked me right in the eye, and he said, "You'll go, won't you?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll go," just like that. I never much thought about it. They got about eighteen volunteers, and we went back to work. When I did get back to my job, John Correl who was my foreman, said, "George, what do you want to do that for?" I said, "John, they're not going to take me." I said, "I don't know anything. They're going to take people who know a lot more about airplanes than I do." I never heard another word and never gave it much thought. Christmas came, New Year's passed. No one heard anything. Just a dead silence about the matter. I was on a night shift again, and was in the men's locker room, I just got to work, when I heard my name being called. I was informed to report to headquarters. I went up to the office, and they told me that in two days a plane is going to take us to California. They told me to be at the depot the next day to get some shots. I said, "I can't. I have to remove all these clothes at my room and get them back to Lansford." So they said, "Just before you get on the plane you can get the shots." It was a military plane, an old DC-6. It didn't have regular seats, it just had a benches along each side. So I immediately left work and I came back to Harrisburg, got a little sleep, got up early, and took a bus to Harrisburg and then to Pottsville, and to Lansford. Got in here about two o'clock in the afternoon. My mother was surprised. She said, "What are you home for?" And I told her, and she started to cry. I said, "All I had to do was sign up for a year." I said, "After a year, they'll send me back." In those days, we knew little about the Japanese, and thought the war was going to last a few months and will be all over with. We're going to be back soon, and that would be it. My father was not home -- we waited around here a while, and finally my mother calmed down a little bit, and started to make supper. She said, "You're going to eat?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll have supper." Frank, my brother-in-law, was living next door, and he said, "I'll borrow my father's car and I'll take you back to Harrisburg." We waited for my father and it was starting to get late. When he never showed up, I went up to Kanyuk's Bar. And he was surprised to see me. So he told Steve, the owner, "Give him a beer." Told the bartender, what I was up to so I had a free beer. After I told him what was happening, my father came home. He had a pretty good load on, but he wanted to go to Harrisburg with Frank and I. . . . they let me off. And the next morning, I go down to Middletown. They gave me the shots. And at that time -- they had eighteen volunteers -- I got the required shots. The other people got them the day before. For some reason, one of the shots they gave us, a yellow fever shot, was contaminated. Well, we go on the plane, and the engines wouldn't start. [laughs] This was January, just after the New Year. We got off the plane, went into the hangar. They worked on the problem for a while and then they started the engines. Then the engines quit again. I thought, "Oh brother, this a good start." So finally they got the engines working and we took off -- we were supposed to land at New Orleans. Spend the night there, and then go cross-country to California. We ran into a very bad storm over Tennessee, really bad. In the meantime people on board were getting sick. Everybody was throwing up, I mean, it was a mess. I was the only one that wasn't sick. I couldn't believe it. Things were really bad. Some people were worse than others. They were bent over. So the pilot decided to land in Maxwell Air Base, outside of Birmingham, Alabama. It was raining very hard at the time. We ran off the runway into a muddy field, and when we got out of the plane and we were knee-deep in mud. When we got to the base, they put all the sick into the infirmary because they had a bad case of the heaves. I was the only one not throwing up, but the next day I got it. It took a day to get the bug working as I had taken my shots a day later . . . We never knew what it was. It turned out we all had Hepatitis B. After I got to Hawaii I never did anything about it, and I had the illness practically all my time I was out in Pacific. I never really felt good after that. . . . I found out about the contaminated shots when I came out of the service, years later. I was reading one of the service journals, and they mentioned how they were looking for people who had gotten these shots early in the war -- and you're talking something like fifteen years later, would they contact the veterans [administration]. So I went up to Wilkes-Barre, and they started checking me out. The effects were still there, but eventually I got rid of the symptoms. [deletion] That's how I got to Birmingham, Alabama. After a few days, when people picked up a little, we took off, and landed at Moffett Air Base just outside of San Francisco. It was an air base run by the Air Force. We were there about two or three weeks, lived in tents, rained practically every day. One day they informed us that we were going to board a ship in San Francisco the next morning. It was four o'clock when they got us awake, we left everything there, mattresses, and bunks and everything in the pouring rain and mud -- and took what clothes we had on us -- a bag -- and that was it. It was still dark when we got to San Francisco, it was still pouring. The ship was called the U.S.S. Grant. It had just come down from Alaska with dependents who lived in Alaska, they brought them out of Alaska, back to the States. They must have had a rough journey, because the place was full of vomit. The crew had no time to clean up the mess, it smelled to high heaven. I went down into the hold and couldn't stand it. You had to just get out of the quarters and get out on deck. I can still remember, when dawn broke, going underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. That's how we set sail for Hawaii, and Hickam Field.

Dublin: And you were going to be something like an airplane mechanic, although you weren't that skilled yet.

Harvan: I didn't know what I was going to do, really. I was just doing the basic things -- well, what can you learn in seven months? Not much. It took us seven days to get from San Francisco to Hawaii. I would always stay up on deck, it was kind of cold and chilly, I still had my CC jacket. It was a three-quarter length -- a little bigger than a suit coat -- but it was pretty heavy and it kept me warm. I remember wearing that thing practically all the way. They gave us life jackets the first thing. I would always stay up on deck. I would sleep on deck. It was an old ship. The U.S.S. Grant was confiscated by the United States from the Germans after World War I. It actually was the yacht of the Kaiser but was a fairly big ship -- it still had the brass railings and other ornaments. This was 1941 and the World War was over in 1918. You can imagine how old this ship was, and boy did it creak. I'm telling you, it was like a haunted castle down below. As I said it still had some of the brass railings and the carpeting in the officers' dining. We ate with the officers. We had troops on ship, also, GIs. In fact, it was the first convoy to leave San Francisco after the war, for the Pacific.

Dublin: So about how many people were in this convoy? On the ship, and were there other ships with it?

Harvan: Oh yes, we had two destroyers, a cruiser, a freighter, and our ship -- the troop ship. As I said, we had GIs, enlisted men. They had their own quarters. We more or less stayed with the officers. We ate with them. The enlisted men had their own mess hall. Well anyway, it took us seven days to get to Hawaii. I can recall watching the sun, it seemed sometimes you would be going west, other times the sun would be off to the left. You knew that we were zig-zagging. It was about six days later -- it was a Friday then. We had set out on Thursday. That Friday, at night, the Navy personnel chased us off on deck, and told us, "You have to go below." You didn't ask questions, you went below. We go down below in the hold of the ship and some time later the engines quit running. Everything was very quiet. Then the depth charges started to go off. Evidently, the Japanese had been following us all the way, in submarines. They decided since we were going to land shortly -- we did land on a Sunday. The Japanese figured if they're going to do damage to our ships, they should do it now. The cruiser and the destroyer tried to get the submarines, so they dropped the depth charges. It was very quiet below, and we were told, "No one could make a noise," and you could hear whimpering, and crying -- the tension getting to them, because it lasted some time. You were almost expecting a missile to go through the side, a torpedo or shell. Finally, after a while, the engines started up again and we were on our way. I was quite relieved to be moving again. But they never would allow us up on deck again to sleep. First thing in the morning, I went up on deck, and asked one of the crewmen, "What was going on last night?" He replied, "The Japanese -- we were trying to get the submarines that were after the freighter." They never did get it. What was on the freighter? We didn't know it at the time but the ship was carrying B-26 Bombers packed in crates. That's why they were sending us to Hickam Field, to put these bombers together. We didn't land in Pearl Harbor but at a small naval station, Kanehoe, between Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. After departing the ship they put us on a train. I can remember going by Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor, and then I saw the devastation. Up until that time, I never realized how much damage the Japanese did on the 7th. Then it hit me! Even more than the encounter with the Japanese subs but that changed when I saw the damage. Well that's how I got to Hawaii, to Hickam Field, as a civilian, supposedly for one year, to work on air planes. We worked practically day and night assembling the B-26's, on different shifts, putting them together and checking them out. The B-26 was called the Martin Marauder -- it was a very hot ship, had a Davis wing. It wasn't really fully tested at the time, but we didn't have much of an Air Force in those days -- the early days of the war. We were at rock bottom. The plane was built down at the Martin plant in Baltimore. And evidently it took all that time to crate them, the engines, the wings, the fuselage, and everything else. And that was our job, to put the parts together and make a flyable airplane. . . . the main thing I did . . . after we got through with the B-26s, was repairing and rebuilding engines.

Dublin: How long did you stay?

Harvan: Well, I was too young for the draft. I was twenty. The draft was for age twenty-one. I got to Hawaii in January. I wasn't twenty-one until February 25th. So when the time came, I signed for the draft, in Hawaii. They sent me up to Schofield Barracks. I was there a few days. And since the work I was doing at the time was important -- putting these planes together -- they sent me back to Hickam. But they put me in the Reserves. We could have very easily done the work as GIs, but I guess we were working as a team, certain people had certain jobs to do. Then the next year, when my year was up, they came and asked if I would stay for another year. And I said, "No," at first, I said, "No, I signed up for a year and I want to go home." And the other fellows felt the same way. We lived in these homes, and we were all kind of together -- close-knit. Finally six of us decided to sign up for another year. . . . So I did that. And then it was two years. And after the third year -- it was '44 -- they put me in the service as a G.I.

[While serving in the Army, George Harvan became sick with an ulcer. After a lengthy recuperation, he returned to duty, though not to work on airplanes. While awaiting his discharge, an opportunity emerged that would give him his life's work. He described the incident]

I didn't have much to do, not much of anything, really. Just trying to recuperate, more or less. I worked for a Captain there, one day he came to me, the war had just ended. "George," he said, "I know you like photography." I said, "I like taking pictures." I used to, on my days off, go to Honolulu and use the camera. The war, as I said, was over now. A few months later he came and told me that he was going to Japan. "Special services," he said. "You want to go?" I said, "No. I have a few months to go. I'm going home." So then he replied, "If you change your mind, let me know. I could rig up a deal for you to get a leave back home. You'd have to join the regular Army, however, for eighteen months. But it would be a chance for you to see Japan, with the Army of Occupation." I wasn't in the mood at the time. I thought about it after a while, and then one day accepted the offer. "Put the papers through. Will the thirty days be from Hawaii?" He said, "No, I'll set it up from Ft. Meade, Maryland." So all the travel time was on the government. So I got to Ft. Meade, Maryland, got my thirty days leave, spent a nice thirty days here. It was in the summertime, in June. After it was up I went back to Ft. Meade. I did this all on my own, I had to go cross-country again, to Ft. Lewis, Washington, again, and get on a boat there and go to Japan. And that's how I wound up in Japan, with the Special Services, and that's how I became a photographer.

Dublin: And that would have started in '46?

Harvan: Late '45, yeah. The sergeant who had gone to Lawry Field, through the photography school there, was in charge of the photo lab. His time was up so he left the service. I never went to any service photography schools, or had any photo training. They did change my MOS to photographer. They put me in charge of the lab. We were doing aerial work, developing aerial film, for reconnaissance and mapping. They gave me a Speed Graphic with film and flashbulbs. And I also had a Jeep. I had a patch on my sleeve that was able to get in off-limit places, and for almost eighteen months I had a pretty good experience. I was able to learn about the Speed Graphic and how to use it, at times some important people from the Air Force would be coming into Yokohama on ship, and they would send me down to get pictures of them getting off the boat, or meeting other dignataries. I never did any combat work because the war was over, but it was a good experience for me. We did do some aerial work.

Dublin: So your formal training occurred then.

Harvan: Yes, as I had a Jeep, I was able to roam around Japan quite freely. I would often go to off-limit places. This one instance I would like to relate was when I didn't use the Jeep and I took a train. Train travel was the best way to get around Japan. If the Japanese wanted to go a hundred miles, they thought nothing of it, they would travel by train to get some rice or other food stuffs. This one day, when I used the train, I got lost. I really got lost. I got a little confused to where I was. I had my camera with me, and I also had some C-rations. I just didn't know where I was, because in most off-limits areas, there was no GIs around. As it was getting dark, I got off at this one railroad station, and when I did, all the Japanese people at the station just circled me -- completely around -- I'm asking them about "Johnson Air Base." Where it was located. Well, they couldn't understand English, and I couldn't make myself known, so finally I walked off to the side, and some kids followed me, I sat down on the stoop, pulled out the C-rations, and they were staring at me. Finally I just threw the rations at them, they grabbed the rations and started eating them. I thought, "Well, I can't stay here." So I got back on the train, and I rode the trains all night -- different trains -- it would stop, and I'd get on another one. It was starting to get crowded in the early morning. I remember the Japanese getting aboard with chickens, pigs, and other animals -- going to market, I guess. Finally, late in the morning, I got off and I ran into an MP -- I wasn't too far from my base, maybe fifty or sixty miles, but I had been going in circles all night long. Finally, I did make it back to the base. Being as I was in charge of the lab, I was more or less my own boss. I had three Japanese working for me then, who used to clean up the place, mix chemicals, and stuff like that. Two of them were good. The other one was a former officer who felt he was still in the Japanese army, and every now and then, we would find things missing. So, I mentioned this to the MPs, and they caught him one day, stealing things, and they beat the daylights out of him. That was the end of him. But, I had another fellow -- a fellow by the name of Watanabe -- we became pretty good friends. I wasn't too happy with the Japanese for the things they had done to the Americans, especially the prisoners, in the early part of the war. It took me a while to really get used to them. This guy -- he would speak in broken English to you about his family and the trouble he was having getting food to them. I even got to the point where I would get things out of the mess hall, canned things, and I would slip them to him, so he could take them home. He would tell me about going two hundred miles up to the northern part of Japan on a weekend, to get rice. I guess we're all human beings after a while. You get compassion for some people when they tell you these stories . .. And they were just people in this country. You were told to do certain things and they did them. There was just this minority up on top who decided to make war. The ordinary people had to suffer for it. As I said, I used to slip him some food, every now and then. When I was ready to go back to the states, I was there for almost a year and a half. I also became pretty good friends with other Japanese. There were some who had converted to Christianity, and had their own services. Every now and then, I would drop in. All during the time I was in the Pacific, I never went to church, never went to Mass. I went by hundreds of services being said in the field, and I never bothered to stop. I would go right by. But, when I got to Japan, I started to see things a little differently. I would, now and then, participate. It wasn't a Catholic mass but a Christian service. I would just stop in, and I would just sit there. When I was ready to go back home, Watanabe came to the lab one day with a nice looking case, a jewelry case, and he wanted me to have it. I asked him what was in it, he said a string of pearls. When I opened it, it was a hand-cultured set of pearls that had been in his family for hundreds of years, and he wanted to give them to me, and I didn't want to take them. Finally, he insisted, and I accepted. We didn't have any lockers in the barracks at this base. The place was called Iramagaua. It was here where the Japanese trained the Kamikaze pilots, so it was kind of a spartan camp. We had just a plain, wooden building which had a false ceiling, every night the rats would run up and down the ceiling. You could see spots where they made their droppings. They seemed to have a race from one end to another. So it was a very simple camp, with no lockers. We did have barracks bags; that's where we kept all our clothes and all other possessions. If you had a camera, as I did, you carried it with you, because it would be surely stolen. I couldn't carry the pearls with me, I thought, if I wrapped them in a lot of clothes and put them in the bottom of my bag, no one would find them. Some GIs used to go around and feel around the barracks bags for solid objects, they were into the black market and anything they could acquire they would peddle. One day I checked on these pearls, and sure enough they were gone, someone stole them. I never told Watanabe what happened. I guess he always felt I still had them. I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. When I would have some free time, I started to take pictures with a Rolleicord -- a twin-lens reflex -- a German camera. Being that the Germans and the Japanese were allies during the war, they were trading partners. So we were still able to pick up some good German cameras -- like the early Leicas and the Rolleiflexes -- in Tokyo. I didn't smoke at the time, but every week I got a carton of cigarettes. You couldn't keep them in the barracks because they would be stolen. However, I knew the head cook, and I'd make prints for him. When I got the cartons of cigarettes every week as a ration, I asked him to keep them for me. He kept them in the mess hall, locked up. After I got about twenty cartons of cigarettes accumulated, and it was three or four months before I was scheduled to go back home -- my time was up -- I felt I should get me a Rolleiflex. Which at the time was the top of the line. I'm going to be sitting on the top of the world owning a Rolleiflex. So I packed up the twenty carton of cigarettes in the barracks bag, got on the train, and I didn't want to go all the way into Tokyo itself, too many MP's. So I got off in a suburb of Tokyo called Wayno. While walking down the street, I saw a Rolleiflex in the window, I quickly darted into the shop and showed the cigarettes to the owner, and he agreed to give me the camera, took the camera out of the window and gave it to me. It was a standard Rolleiflex. The standard had little levers on the side while the automatic had little wheels that designated your F stops and shutter speeds. When I walked down the street a little further I saw an automatic in a window, so I ran back to the first store, got my cigarettes and gave him the camera -- he was quite upset. That's how I got the automatic Rolleiflex, my first good camera. Well, I guarded that camera with my life. And, as I had more free time then, I used to walk the streets of Tokyo. I started to photograph the people on the streets. I couldn't get any standard film for the Rolleiflex, but what I would do so I could use the camera was use aerial film. I had some old paper backings -- and I would go in the darkroom and I would cut the aerial film into strips, and I would tape the film onto the backing, it was kind of flexible, aerial film was a little thicker than regular film, but I was able to utilize it. Making twelve exposures on the spool. That way I had film for the Rollei. I had film packs for the four by five Speed Graphic, but it was much easier for me to take pictures on the streets with the Rolleiflex, so that I did.

Dublin: So the Rolleiflex is anticipating 35mm, it's getting a little bit closer to that size?

Harvan: Well. . . the earlier 35mm films weren't as good as they are today. They were grainy, and you could blow them up to five by seven, or just a bit larger, but that was it. The lenses were faster. But the Rolleiflex had a real good lens, a Tessar F 3.5 AS. The film size was bigger, you didn't have to blow up your negatives as much. After the war, magazine and newspaper photographers weren't shooting 35mm, most were using Rolleiflex or 4 by 5 Speed Graphic -- people like Fritz Henle were making a name using the Rolleiflex. They were utilizing the two and quarter square image. When Rose worked for Holiday, she used three or four Rollei's, two for color and one for black and white. I still have three of her cameras, which she gave me. She liked working with these cameras, because the negatives and transparencies were bigger, you did get a bigger color image, too. So, it helped in the reproduction, and in selling your work. The Leica really didn't come into vogue until about ten years after -- during the Korean War -- when David Douglas Duncan, a Life photographer, and a number of other photographers started to use the 35mm. There were some who used the 35mm in World War II, like Eugene Smith, but not many. Most of the good work was done with the four by five Speed Graphics, or Compat Graphics. Joe Rosenthal's picture at Iwo Jima of the flag raising -- that was made with a four by five Speed Graphic. Well that's how I got into photography -- it just seemed to grow on you, as if you had to take pictures. It never seemed like I was happy or contented unless I was taking pictures, or out with the camera. I spent all my spare time in Tokyo taking pictures of the people on the street. That's how I accumulated a sizable group of pictures of the people at that time.

Dublin: So were you able to bring back the negatives as well as the prints?

Harvan: Yeah. We had trouble with the mail, things getting lost, but I did manage to get my negatives home. I would like to relate another incident when I was taking pictures as the base photographer. I got a note from our Commander that a General in the 5th Air Force, his name, I believe was Burns, had requested that a photographer be sent to Tokyo on a certain day, that the Emperor of Japan was having a birthday party for his son, Prince Okihito, who was eight years old at the time. The emperor was inviting members of the military government to this party in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The palace has a moat around it, to isolate it. People who worked in the Imperial Palace weren't allowed to leave. They had to work and live there on the premises. Very few people from the outside world had a chance to really get into the Imperial Palace, and here I was, going to see the inside of the Imperial Palace. Well, I got in there, went across the moat, went into this huge room where all the guests were, the Emperor was present, and also his son. I had to take pictures, posed shots with them and the General. After the session for pictures taking was over, they retired to the dining room, to which I wasn't invited to and I had to leave. But I did my photographs, I was there for maybe an hour or so, forty-five minutes or an hour, but I did get into the Imperial Palace.

Dublin: So you went back and you developed those?

Harvan: Yeah, I went back to the base, made prints, enlarged them to eight by ten and delivered them. They were real happy with the results. Actually they were nothing, really -- you know, just group shots, people standing around, talking and drinking. A lot of military people. I thought General MacArthur was going to be there also, but he wasn't around at the time. He was at the dinner however, at the seating, but I never saw him. I did, however, see General MacArthur many times, coming out of the Dai'Ichi Building, which was the headquarters for the Army of Occupation. I would wait outside the building with my camera, so did make some negatives of him, these negatives got away from me.

Dublin: About how many photos or prints or negatives did you eventually bring back with you?

Harvan: Oh, I have about three, four hundred negatives. I never really counted them. From those, I would say I have about fifty or sixty that I really thought are worthwhile. About six months before I was ready to come home, I got word that there was a bad Japanese train wreck, about twenty miles away. I went to headquarters and asked permission to photograph the wreck. After I got this, I got in the jeep, taking my 4 by 5 Speed Graphic. When I arrived at the scene I found bodies all over the place. Evidently, a train -- like most Japanese trains, at that time, the cars were made of wood, the only thing made of metal on them was the undercarriage and the wheels, but the rest was all wood. The train had been coming down the side of a mountain, and when it got near the bottom, there was a sharp turn which it failed to negotiate. It went off the tracks, and the cars, which were crowded, went down an embankment. Most of the Japanese trains were almost always full. The undercarriage come down on top of the passengers and just squashed a lot of them. By the time I got there, they were starting to lay the dead in the open field, some were still being pulled out of the wreckage and laid in rows to be identified. I started taking pictures of the tragedy. Even then, I started to look for the human interest angle. I just didn't want to show bodies -- I looked for people showing -- in what I wanted to record. Most Japanese had these little buggies with the one wheel in the front and two in the back, and they would lay the corpse in a buggy and pull it away. When I got back, I developed the film, and the negatives came out all right. As far as I knew there were 156 dead, that was a lot of corpses. I didn't know what to do with the photos when I printed them. While in Tokyo, I went into the AP office, just for curiosity. A man by the name of Russell Brines, who was head of the AP Bureau there, I showed him the negatives, along with a few prints -- it was just the next day. He liked the pictures a lot and wanted to use them. I gave my permission. I never saw any in print, but he did send them out. I never got anything for them, because the negatives weren't actually mine as I was still in the service. The military had no use for them. The pictures were strictly civilian, so they didn't care. Anyway I got to know Russell quite well. Every now and then, I would stop in the office. One day, he asked me if I would like to stay here and join the AP. I refused the offer and told him I was going home soon. I had been here a long time, since January of '42 -- and this was about April of '47. I had decided that I was either going to either go to journalism school or to photography school. I had sent some pictures to the Art Center School in Los Angeles in the meantime. They wanted to see about six pictures -- work I had done in the past. I corresponded with them, told them I would be discharged in June. They told me to stop in the Center on the way home in June. I was discharged at Ft. Hamilton -- and I went down to Los Angeles, and I saw the school, and I thought, "This is going to be neat, and get a good education. I'll finally get some instruction." They informed me that they could take me in after Labor Day -- I thought I'll go on home for a couple months, and I could start school in September. Well, anyway, Russell was kind of disappointed that I didn't take the job. I often wonder -- as you look back, what would have happened had I stayed. I mentioned this once to Rose, and asked her what would have happened if we had stayed in Europe -- and I said what would have happened if I had stayed in Japan? You make certain decisions, later on, you look back, and you ask yourself, "Why did I do that? What prompted me to do that?" I guess, sometimes you don't even think, I guess. You do a certain thing, you make up your mind, and you do it. That's all. Probably, if I hadn't contacted the Art Center School, was thinking about going there, I probably would have taken the job with A.P. I think I would have. I probably would have wound up in Korea, because the Korean War started a few years after that. That's when the Japanese started to manufacture lenses and camera again. It took them ten years, but they did make some real good lenses. At this time, Duncan put some Japanese lens -- Nikkor lens -- on the Leica body -- he was working for Life Magazine at the time -- when he sent the negatives back to New York and the people at the lab couldn't imagine why the images were so clear -- and so sharp. They wanted to know what lenses he was using. The Japanese had decided to try the lenses out with some of the American photographers. And they gave these lenses out to compare them with German lenses. They're worth thousands of dollars now, these were the early ones. The early Nikons, was the range finder camera. An early Nikon now will run you about ten or twelve thousand dollars, just the body. They made very few of them. It was a well-designed camera, a little bigger than the Leica camera, a little boxier -- not a round, but very efficient. It was built more on the German Contact design than the Leica. That's how the Japanese broke into the camera market, which they practically dominate now, all the good cameras are made there. The Leica cameras are still very good, and are made in Germany -- but most of the good cameras now are made in Japan.

14m47s

Thomas Dublin

George Harvan

"I think the greatest accomplishment . . . I could think of is that I was able to stay with photography for practically my whole adult life."

Dublin: Another project, one that I've been aware of you working on in the years that I've known you, has been this Polaroid photography project, where you've moved into another medium that you hadn't used that much earlier in your photographic career. You want to describe a little bit, what you've done with that, and what that's given you as another way to express yourself in your work?

Harvan: As you know, I've done very little work in color during my career in photography. I concentrated mostly on black and white. I did that because I was able to control all of the facets of it. I regularly got the film that I wanted, I could process the negatives, make the prints, and I could manipulate the prints any way I wanted to. Also, if I wanted to make them darker or lighter, or bring out certain highlights, I was able to do it. For that reason, I concentrated on the black and white. I stayed away from color because I felt I always had a lot more to say making black and white photos. Even to this day, I feel there are avenues that I could still pursue in working within black and white. A number of years ago, a friend, Henry Jones, from Bethlehem, gave me this SX-70 camera, a Polaroid camera that kind of spits out exposed film from out front. It takes a 2½ x 2½ picture. The film is called Time Zero and it has a plastic coating on the front and back. The emulsion is trapped between these two coatings. I read at one time that you can move this emulsion around with a sharpened stick or some other pointed object, and as long as you didn't rip the plastic, you can move it around, and change the image. I was able to secure some outdated film and I started to manipulate the emulsion. I thought it had possibilities and in time, I was able to purchase good film. Through manipulating this emulsion, I have transformed a realistic image almost to an impressionistic type of a painting-type of a photograph. Most people think that I have copied paintings when I show them around. I have to convince them that these are not copies of paintings, but actual photographs. I explain how I manipulate the soft fluid emulsion. Sometimes I will start the process, right after I make the exposure. Other times, I'll wait maybe a half a day or a day. That way, I get different effects. When I accumulated a few, I sent them to Bill Johnson, who is the editor of Camera Techniques. In a few days, he replied in a letter that he likes them very much and would like to use them. When they will be published, I have no idea, but they are in the works.

Dublin: Are you continuing to do a little more traveling and shooting in that medium?

Harvan: Yes. They work very well with buildings, certain types of buildings. I had traveled to different areas of the state when I was able. Places like the Hopewell Village, near Boyertown. And the Daniel Boone Homestead, and Jim Thorpe, with its mansions, or the old buildings in Wilkes-Barre. These are just a few of the places that I have photographed. At the outset I thought I could move around the eastern part of Pennsylvania and put images of these places on polaroid film. I knew they would be kind of unique. Eventually, I'll donate them to the Canal Museum, in Easton.

Dublin: That's an additional chapter in your work.

Harvan: It's kind of a fun thing, because you don't need a darkroom, just a few sharpened sticks. You take the picture, sit down, look at it and determine how you want to work on it. You can obliterate and use your imagination. Maybe there's a telephone pole or some power lines in the photo when you took it, something you had no control of. But now you could block them out. By moving the emulsion around, you could more or less take out objectionable objects. It does give you some freedom and a little more control. Almost like a painter has. He starts with a blank canvas and puts down whatever he wants to. Sometimes in photography, when we're taking a certain subject, you'll notice something that should not be there, but there's nothing you could do about it. You've got to include it, either that, or try to come in a bit closer, but at times this is not possible. But with this process, you could take out a lot of these objects that you don't feel should be in the picture. But the best part is that you change the photographic image to make a more painterly rendition.

Dublin: Do you ever feel like you'd like to work with a program like Adobe Photoshop or printshop, because it sounds like, that in the computer, digitized world, one can also manipulate a photo in a way that the old darkroom techniques don't allow.

Harvan: No, but I'm sure you can do that with Photoshop. It's a little late, I think, for me to get into that. There's still a lot I want to do with black and white in the conventional way. There's a lot I can learn in the medium. But I agree, if I was just starting out or had more time, I would definitely get into it. I don't approve of what some are doing with the digitized images. I don't think putting a man's head on a horse is the way to go. But I realize that there are uses for the modern technology and the digital way of doing things.

Dublin: It's one thing as art. It's interesting that the contradictions that it entails as a documentary record, because people can actually manipulate and doctor the records to make it appear as if a person was at a scene and a location when he wasn't. Or to take the person out. I mean, as the Russians used to take out political leaders when they went into disfavor at a certain point. So as a photographer can do something like that, which is problematic.

Harvan: In documentary photography though, you have to be very careful of what you take out. A photograph might include a row of buildings, with service poles, and wires connected to them. Someone might decide, "The picture's going to look a lot better if the poles and the lines were taken out. It's going to look nicer, cleaner." But, it's not going to tell the truth because not only is the building historic, but the poles that hold the wires are part of the actual scene. If taken out, it would falsify the record. I feel they should be left in.

Dublin: It's very confusing to the historian who wants to date a photo. All of the sudden, suppose you know that telephone poles were put in at a certain date. So you say this has to be before, let's say, 1895. On the other hand, it may be that some of the buildings on the street were only built after 1895, and yet, the buildings seem to be there, but the telephone poles don't. So, all of the sudden, it becomes a little too much a work of art and not enough a work of documentary photography. That, then, throws people off.

Harvan: That's why I said you have to be very careful with this new technology, that we don't go too far with it as far as changing the actual scene. I could understand where a rare photograph is torn or there's a big mark on it, someone should decide whether it is proper to take the mark out and restore it to its original form. In a way, you are altering that particular photograph, but maybe it would reveal more if it were restored, especially if the defect was occurring on a person's face or of that nature. I have noticed a lot of photographs of President Lincoln that good museums will not touch. If dirt marks or other blemishes are on the print they just let them on, they don't retouch. They just show them the way they are, and they have a point.

Dublin: This leads in very nicely, for some final reflections on your part, about what you tried to do in your career as a photographer. Maybe a little bit also how photography has changed in the years that you've been doing it. Do you have thoughts you want to reflect on? We've been doing your career in chunks, each of the interviews. But now maybe a bit a of an overview of your own.

Harvan: Well, I think the greatest accomplishment that I think I could think of is that I was able to stay with photography for practically my whole adult life. A lot of people get into certain things, and after a few years they try something else. They branch into other fields. For some reason, I was able to stay into photography and a certain type of photography. I'm really not a maker of photographs, I'm more or less of a taker of photographs. I have to see a certain type of situation, and be part of it. When I go into a mine, for instance, I will never tell a miner to do something because it's going to look better, or "Look this way, you're going to look better." I would rather take him the way he is and what he is doing and let the chips fall where they may. If it's a good photograph, fine. If it's not, at least it's real. So that's why I think I'm a taker of photographs. Many photographers set up different situations, and they're good at it. They can manipulate lighting, manipulate subjects, and come out with very good results. I can't do that. I have to work the other way. I think that's what I've been able to do through the years. I do still-lifes every now and then, I might set up some objects, mostly as an exercise in creativity. But for my documentary photography, I would never alter it in any way. As for the remaining years I have, I would just like to continue taking pictures as long as I can. I'm working on circular prints now. I make these with a simple 4x5 box, outfitted with a 47 millimeter lens, which is a very extreme wide angle for a 4x5. It's equivalent to maybe about a 16 or 17 millimeter, on a 35 millimeter, which is fairly wide. What I'm doing is using all of the exposed area on the negative. I had done some work with the 8x10 circular prints, in the past, but for the last four or five months I've switched to the 4x5 and I've come up with a whole series of circular negatives. I haven't printed them so far. At the present time, that's the project I'm working on. I'm seeing things a lot differently, working up close on a tripod, shooting everything at a second, a half second, at f-32, getting extreme depth of field. I'm photographing subjects like -- on Saturday, when they were through shoveling the coal out of the mine car, onto a pile at the No. 9 museum. A shovel had been placed right in the middle of the coal pile. I thought it would make a good picture. Things like that, taking ordinary things and making a photograph of it. Nothing spectacular -- I'm not looking for the large or spectacular subject. Shovels, roots of trees, stumps in water, driftwood, things like that. I'll see how they print up.

Dublin: What do you do if you're using a 4x5 negative holder and negative, what do you do to block it so the light only hits the negative in a circular portion of that negative?

Harvan: All lenses give you a circular image. Camera manufacturers alter the above. They cut off a certain amount of the image, to suit their format. All images are round since the lens is circular. What designers do is if they want a square image, you have a square format, or they give you an oblong format, but in all cases you are missing part of the image from the top and bottom and from the sides. However, I am using the entire image just as the lens sees it. Nothing's cut off. Almost all the image, there's very little I'm missing with the round image. I think just that alone gives you kind of like a peephole effect. It's something that might attract your attention a little more than if I used a 47 millimeter that covered the entire 4x5 format. This is what the circular image is all about. I also am going to start printing my pinhole negatives, which I have been making for the last year or so. This is a very unique way of making photographs. I have collected about fifty negatives up to now, which I'll start to print whenever I can. I'd like to mount them eventually and have an exhibit of these unusual photographs.

Dublin: And this is through a pinhole camera that you've made?

Harvan: Yes, I have about six or seven different pinhole cameras, of various formats that I use. Some use photo paper as a negative base. These run up to 13" wide, 10"x13". Then I'll contact this paper negative onto a piece of paper. I'll expose right through the back of the negative onto a piece of sensitized paper. When you're in photography for a long period of time, you strive at times to get away from what you've already done. You don't want to duplicate what you've been able to do in the past. I have much better cameras now than I ever had. I have cameras I never dreamed I would own. Automatic Nikons, I have a 645 Pentax, with three lenses that 20, 30 years ago I would have given my eye teeth for. But, basically, they all give you the same type of picture that I was doing 20, 30 years ago. It's just your imagination that changes things. And sometimes, the instrument you use, like the pinhole or other cameras that I have made, that will change the way you see things. There are subjects that I take now using the circular image that don't work. Then you have to look for a subject that will work. I might go out for two or three hours and come back with two or three pictures only, but they will all be different, I never duplicate. I take one exposure and that's it.

Dublin: You think about a street scene. And it's extremely rectangular. The way we visualize and the way a city block is constructed, that might, for instance, not fit so well into a circular format. You would sort of lose some of the defining characteristics of that image.

Harvan: Yes, you must find a subject that fits your conception of what you are trying to say. You do look across a street, a long street. It's got that horizontal look. And you look at a building, a skyscraper, a vertical look. You can't put a subject like that into a circular image, no. But, a subject like…let's see, what did I just photograph? I was up at the G. A. R. Cemetery, in Summit Hill and I noticed that some flags had blown off their supports and were just lying on the grass. It was wet and they just lay crumbled. It seemed awfully ironic that these flags, at one time, on May the 30th, were flying proudly over some veteran's grave, and now in the fall, with the rain and other elements, they were discarded more or less. As I walked around I saw numerous flags in the grass in the same condition. I thought these would make an interesting statement about discarding certain values that we shouldn't be. And for this it worked out great. I was able to work maybe 2, 2½ feet from the flags, real close to the ground, and make the exposure. But I have got extreme depth of field, with the small aperture, if something was in the background, say 30 feet, I was also able to keep that sharp. Yes, it works for certain subjects, you're right. Square subjects should have a square format. And there are subjects that only take with the pinhole camera. You can't expose into the sun because the direct light goes into the pinhole and causes an excess amount of fog, so you have to wait for a cloudy day or have the sun to your back. You learn after a while what will work. Mating a particular type of camera to a certain subject is what it's all about. It's always been that way.

Dublin: So, you end up seeing things differently, disciplining your work differently. There's no one picture that's a better picture than another. They serve different purposes or do different things. And you capture them in different ways.

Harvan: After a while, you want to go into different areas of photography, exploit other areas, where you have a better way of expressing yourself, or perhaps as you get older and you look at life a little differently and look beyond the obvious -- also try to get a little more of your feelings beneath the surface image. To make an image that is sharp and clear sometimes doesn't work. A soft image made with a pinhole, in which the depth of field is uniform but nothing is really sharp, can express your purpose a lot more. A subject can be 2 inches away, but all the surrounding area will still have the same degree of sharpness, but it will not be needle sharp, not like the image a good lens would give you.

Dublin: It's a little bit like, I see parallels in being a historian. At some point, seven, eight years ago, I made a decision to begin a major project on the anthracite region and on the twentieth century. I'd never done that before. I was much more prepared at that point in time to write yet another book about the nineteenth century in New England, and yet, it wasn't calling on all the range of skills or ways of doing history that I wanted to do. By doing the coal mines, 1) I learn a lot about the coal mines, 2) I have to learn about oral history; it's something I couldn't do for the nineteenth century. There's no one around anymore who could talk about it. So, it forces me to grow. And you're talking about growth and change and ways of expressing yourself that have the same integrity and the same richness as other things. But, for a while, you won't be as good at. But, the outcome will be that you will learn in the process.

Harvan: I think that's what it's all about. You're constantly striving to learn more and by using other instruments, it changes the way you think about different subjects. You can't take action shots, for instance, with a pinhole camera, because you're not going to get a satisfactory picture. So you have to choose a static subject, and you have to transform that static event into something that people look at and appreciate -- an image they could never visualize. If you can succeed to put that image onto a piece of paper and can look at it and wonder how that was made or what it is, then maybe you have accomplished something. I like to take an ordinary subject and transform it into something entirely different. Perhaps a new way of seeing a railroad engine or a railroad car. The pinhole image lets you do that in a kind of abstract way.

Dublin: There's an element of seeing things differently.

Harvan: Mysterious, in a way. I think that's what it is. A certain amount of mystery creeps into the image and that is what you try to show, something that you can't do conventionally. If you're working commercially, with a certain client, you can't do this. They would want to show their machinery to their best advantage, nice and clean and sharp. Then that's what you have to give them, but fortunately I don't have to do that (laughs).

Dublin: So you can express your understanding, or your vision of it, not someone else's vision.

Harvan: If I want to go overboard and let my imagination go, I can; it is all up to me. Documentary photography has to be made realistically. You just let your eye guide you to what you want to record. Not only your eye, but your own heart, how you feel about the subject. I think you have to understand your subject no matter what you photograph in order to make a successful image. I had to know the coal miners, for instance, not only when I was taking their pictures, but also when I listened to them, when they talked or kidded around with each other, constantly learning and taking it all in. I had to be part of them before I could photograph them properly.

Dublin: What you're expressing is not just what you see at that moment, but you're expressing all that you know about the world they are a part of, and their lives that lead up to that point when you document it.

Harvan: There was a lot of times when I wouldn't have the camera, and they'd be talking, and I would say to myself, "That's something I should be photographing now." But, you can't constantly keep using your camera. You've got to stop every now and then and sit back and just listen and observe. And then, put it in your memory bank, and perhaps exploit this memory later on should it come back to you and you could use it for vital elements of a photograph. It is like the memory you store when you take a picture inside of a coal mine. It's dark and cold, a couple of miners working at the breast, perhaps drilling. This is the image you make on the negative. Then you process the negative and print it; your memory that will tell you how the print should look, how it should be printed. This is how you saw it, and this is the way the print should look. That's why I believe a photographer should actually do his own printing. I can't visualize or imagine another person doing my printing. There is a lot of big name photographers, some like Cartier-Bresson, who never printed his own photographs. He always had someone make his prints and he's one of the most famous photographers in the world. It works for him but I couldn't do that. I could never give a printer enough information to print one of my negatives made inside a coal mine and have it look like the actual scene as I saw it, print the way I actually visualized and felt when I pressed the shutter.

Dublin: So your work as a photographer is not done when you snap the shot.

Harvan: Yes, and it's what you retain in your mind when you were taking the picture. There are certain aspects that you will think about when you are printing. You remember to inject a feeling on paper because this is the way it looked and felt to you. For instance, you take a picture on a foggy day; you could manipulate it so that it can almost look like it was made on a bright day. But, you don't want to do that. If it's a foggy day, that's the way you remember it and you want to print it as such, soft, with all the ingredients of fog and mist.

Dublin: There's obviously this wonderful fit between the choice you made coming back from the service in 1947 and the world that that's opened up to you and the way that you can continue now a little bit more than 50 years later to reflect on what that has made possible for you, and the growth and the continuing change. You probably wouldn't have imagined when you came back that you would have been able to do this life, this way. 

Harvan: Oh goodness, no. It's a continuing process, it's still going on. I'm going to be 77 pretty soon and I hope I can do it for quite a bit longer. But I don't want to repeat on what I have done. I don't like to keep printing coal mining pictures, but people keep asking for them, so I have to reprint them every now and then. But I do go into different types of photography. That's why I went into manipulating the polaroids. It was so different from anything I have done in the past. I remember when I wrote a letter back to Bill Johnston, editor of Camera Technique, and I said, "That's what's great about photography." On one hand I am able to make stark black and white photographs of coal miners, but also, I could make pictures in color on polaroid film of a beautiful tree in the fall, a building, or a bowl of fruit. And that is what makes photography so interesting. It is one of the most important means of expression we've had. Photography has allowed us to see how people looked during the Civil War, more so than a painting would reveal. And it's fairly new, 150 years old, not very old, really.

Dublin: It's really changing so much, or it has so much potential for change in all this.

Harvan: Sure. We say it's one hundred fifty years old. I've been in it for 50, one-third of the time it has been in existence. That gives you an idea of how new it is.

Dublin: So you're a part of that art form.

Harvan: Yes, and I've learned it all myself and I think that has a lot to do with it, too, that I was able to do all by myself. I never worked with anybody and whatever I have accomplished, it has been through my own efforts. I imagine a lot of what talent you have is given to you. Everyone is given an amount. I guess some more than others. There are other people who have perhaps almost the same make up I have, maybe they are just missing one little ingredient, maybe the vision is not as intense, or the desire. I'm nothing special or unique. I'm just fortunate that I was able to do a particular thing for a long period of time and enjoyed it.

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