Sometimes we don't notice things are missing until they are gone.
That's not a feeble attempt to sound like Yogi Berra. But who knew that New York's iconic Greek-themed paper coffee cups were an endangered species and that so many people cared?
According to the New York Times, these cups define Manhattan as much as the Statue of Liberty and are coveted as film and TV props by directors who want their New York scenes to look as authentic as possible.
Cardboard cup salesman Leslie Buck, who is credited with redefining the city's coffee shop landscape, died last week at age 87. It's wonderful that he got artistic credit for creating the beloved cup, which features the simple customer service slogan "We Are Happy To Serve You."
The Sherri Cup Company in Kensington, Conn., estimated that it sold more than 500 million cups with the design from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Buck, who had no background in graphic design, used the Greek national colors, Greek fonts and iconography to appeal to the numerous diners operated by Greek immigrants.
Although he overcame unspeakable tragedies in his life -- surviving two Nazi concentration camps --he'll be remembered for a fun-spirited paper cup, which he called the "Anthora."
"On the street, it warms the harried hands of pedestrians," his Times obituary notes. "Without the Anthora, “Law & Order” could scarcely exist."
"...It is safe to assume that the Anthora and its heirs will endure, at least for a while, in the city’s steadfast precincts. For some time to come, on any given day, somewhere a New Yorker will be cradling the cup, with its crisp design and snug white lid, the stuff of life inside."
There are countless untold stories like Leslie Buck's out there, and our Reel Profiles documentary crews are devoted to capturing them.
What family or community stories would you like to preserve forever? Drop us a line and let's brainstorm about how best to honor and celebrate your unsung heroes!
What will be your business or career legacy? Do you admire any small business owners for how they treat their employees or customers?
ABC News just reported on the amazing story of Bob Moore and his decision to grant ownership of Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods to his 209 employees.
Moore quotes the Bible's warnings against greed and notes some of the Wall Street scandals as the reason why he wants to share his wealth with the people who helped him earn it in the first place. He says he vividly recalls a time in his life when he worried about how he was going to pay his bills.
And the gift to his employees came as a celebration of his 81st birthday!
Do you know any men or women like Bob Moore? Consider capturing their stories in a Reel Profiles documentary or tribute video celebrating the role of small business in America.
Former presidential candidate John Edwards finally admitted to the rumor that dogged him all during the 2008 campaign. Yes, indeed, he is the father of his mistress's baby girl.
Edwards just keeps on smacking it to his traumatized wife Elizabeth, who is still battling cancer. According to press reports, the child was conceived in the middle of 2007, right around the same time that John and Elizabeth renewed their wedding vows for their 30th anniversary.
We're not here to preach against the pitfalls of infidelity -- although we are on the record that we are wholeheartedly against it.
The Edwards case begs the question of family legacy. How will his other kids see their new 2-year-old sister? How will this wind up on the Edwards Family Tree?
Essentially, when you make a personal documentary about your family, you are faced with two choices. Do you want to be a journalist/biographer telling the story from a detached, objective perspective -- or do you want to preserve family stories and memories for future generations?
There is no right or wrong answer here. Some people embrace the warts of their ancestors, even wear it as a badge of pride (like finding out an ancestor was imprisoned at Alcatraz or was a prominent mafia hitman). Others find it shameful.
When you put together a family documentary, it is up to you about whether to enact your power of selective omission.
Unfortunately for Edwards, his dirty laundry cannot be shoved back in the hamper.
So how about you? If you are the family historian or family filmmaker, do you see yourself more as a journalist or more as a memory keeper?
Tiger Woods. Blah. Blah. Blah. Sex Scandal. Blah. Blah. Blah. Pre-Nup. Blah. Blah. Blah. Mistresses. Blah. Blah. Blah.
In this era when no one wants to take a stand on anything, we certainly stipulate that adultery is selfish, mean-spirited and morally wrong.
But the Libertarian streak in us also makes us wonder why so many Americans care about the infidelity updates flashing across our screens every 10 minutes.
WHO CARES?!?
Let Tiger sort out his own family problems and let's focus instead on the people we care about. How about paying tribute to our parents or grandparents who have been married for (gasp!) 50 years or even 75 years!
Aside from a fabulous deli platter, there's no better way to celebrate these kind of happy life milestones than commissioning a personal documentary for a community screening and for future generations....
OK, we do wanna make one comment about the Tiger Woods thing. If you have to pay someone to stay married to you, maybe it's not a healthy relationship.
It is extremely rare that we know when history is unravelling before us.
Pearl Harbor. The JFK, RFK and MLK Assasinations. 9/11.
One of the best ways to merge personal history and American history in a personal documentary is to ask your interview subject what he or she was doing when the World Stopped. Tomorrow's interviews might be anticlimactic, with answers like "Why, I was on Twitter, of course."
But your parents and grandparents likely have fascinating snippets on how earth-shattering news impacted the most minute details of their lives.
World War II veteran Clifford Barrett, who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was 15-years-old when America entered the war. He heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio. A dramatic reminder of how close teenage years are to adulthood, he was running around Europe with a gun only three years later.
For the past 41 years, Barrett has been writing letters to politicians, celebrities, athletes and military figures -- asking them to share their personal memories of Pearl Harbor. The amazing collection of correspondence, which he refuses to sell to memorabilia dealers, includes replies from President George Bush (the first one), first lady Lady Bird Johnson, golfer Arnold Palmer, broadcast news legend Walter Cronkite and actors Jimmy Stewart, James Cagney and Gene Kelly.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, actor Walter Matthau ("The Bad News Bears") wrote that he was listening to a New York Giants game:
"I was listening to a football game and I thought it was very
presumptuous of them to tell us about Pearl Harbor while this important
game was going on. I have since changed my mind."
Sometimes the contrast of life's simplest things are the most powerful reminders of history.
Of course, putting a life story in a wider historical context need not be centered around tragic events. You may choose to get your interviewee animated about a World Series game, a county fair, a presidential election, the theater release of a classic movie or even the music that was popular decades ago.
These personalized stories used in a Reel Profiles documentary can be enhanced with archival footage and photographs of historic events, and of course, vintage music.
Do you know your grandparents' wedding song?
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Pedro Martinez, who inarguably owns one of the biggest egos in professional sports, was unable to deliver his team to the Promised Land this postseason.
But Pedro already has a bunch of Cy Young Awards and a World Series ring from his Red Sox days, so what's another trophy mean? Just something else to collect dust on the mantel.
What's really important to Pedro, discovered Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley, is Pedro's legacy.
“Normally, when you die, people tend to give you props about the
good things. But that’s after you die. So I’m hoping to get it before I
die," the ballplayer told Buckley.
“I don’t want to die and hear everybody say, ‘Oh, there goes one of
the best players ever.’ If you’re going to give me props, just give
them to me right now.”
Pedro's right. We don't praise him as frequently as we should.
Just kidding. Although Pedro's words are hardly meant to be altruistic, they do apply to those of us gathering family histories, planning a milestone birthday or anniversary gala or a corporate tribute dinner.
Why should a person's obituary or funeral eulogy be the most prominent occasion to lavish praise or celebrate a life's accomplishments?
Pedro's life has been well covered -- although we will take your business Mr. Martinez if you are interested -- but one of the moments we would include in a Reel Profiles personal documentary about him is captured here:
When you are performing exceptionally well at your job, participating in acts of medical tape bondage is hilarious. If Pedro were a so-so pitcher, these hijinks would probably be seen as a sign that he doesn't take his job seriously.
In any case, you don't have to win a Cy Young Award or wrap yourself up in medical tape to have a movie made about you. Whether you are interested in commissioning a personal film about family history, a business legacy, an amazing philanthropist, a military experience or a profile of your nonprofit organization, just remember what Pedro said.
If you are going to give someone props, give them props right now.
Looking over old letters, the kind that get read by actors in those Ken Burns documentaries, you have to wonder what's been lost due to the dominance of text messaging and email.
Will our children's grandchildren fondly scan their grandpa and grandma's Facebook messages with the same sense of wonderment that many of us feel toward handwritten letters?
Author Nancy Rial, a library media specialist for the Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts, just wrote a book about her Uncle Alan W. Lowell, who was killed during the Battle of Metz, shortly after landing on the beaches of Normandy, France.
The self-published "Alan's Letters" is exactly what it sounds like -- a compilation of his correspondence during World War II, interspersed with a detailed account of the actions of his comrades in the 66th Infantry Division.
"Alan represents all the young soldiers voices when he expresses a
yearning for a normal home life again after the war," Rial writes, "and an appreciation
of all that he has had as a youth growing up in America."
Although Rial was able to create an amazing tribute to her uncle by interspersing world history with the thoughts of an average guy, you need not have such a dramatic purpose to preserve your family letters.
Whether your uncle wrote love letters to your aunt from the foxhole or from his college dorm, it's all precious stuff that helps bring him back to life for the family who never got an opportunity to know him.
Even if you don't have an ambition to tell "the big picture," it makes sense to scan all your family letters and documents worth saving, sort them in chronological order, and publish them in a simple photo book.
We've used all of these on-line publishing companies and have been extremely satisfied with the quality of the printing and binding:
1. My Publisher
2. Blurb
3. Mac Photo Books
But if you do want to tell a bigger story with your letters and photographs, the Reel Profiles team can help you accomplish that. Writing thematic family history coffee table books -- using the best interview anecdotes and your favorite photos and documents -- is one of our specialties.
Ask about the coffee table book option when you are exploring our personal documentary services!
By Darren Garnick
Other than harboring a deep gratitude that the Good Guys won World War II, my personal connections to that chapter in history are peripheral. I have a few great uncles who fought for the Good Guys -- and I am feverishly documenting their service -- but I did not know any of them well.
So I was fascinated to observe how my 7-year-old son would respond to an overnight educational sleepover on the U.S.S. Massachusetts battleship, which saw action against both the Nazis and Japan.
Looking at a display of plastic models of enemy aircraft, my son asked: "Dad, did America win?"
For the most part, these Cub Scouts enjoyed the battleship as a playground. The canvas and steel Navy bunks were jungle gyms and the endless series of ladders and corridors comprised the Greatest Maze of All Time.
For the dads, those jungle gym beds were a chiropractor's fantasy. I would love to see what today's Navy sailors sleep on for comparison, but the World War II guys had to be much much tinier -- or they got over claustrophobia rather quickly.
For anyone lucky enough to have World War II veterans in their family, what an amazing experience it would be to follow them on a ship like this with a camcorder -- recording their dates with destiny for future generations. Wish I had footage like this of my uncles.
The WWII Navy vet on board to talk with the Cub Scouts surprised many adults with his frank and candid anti-heroism. "What was it like being on the battleship when it was under attack?" he was asked.
"I don't know. I couldn't hear anything," he shrugged, explaining that he was usually going over inventory in a supply room deep within the ship.
(Click here for more information on Battleship Cove's Maritime Camping Program)
Reel Profiles launches its marketing blitz on Boston radio starting August 17th. Listen to our new FM spots, which will air on WROR 105.7 and WTKK 96.9. Let us know what you think!
You can catch our ads on WROR's Loren & Wally morning show, and WTKK's, Imus in the Morning, The Michael Graham Show, The Jim & Margery Show, Jay Severin, and the Michele McPhee Show throughout the day.
If you like the intensity and passion of talk radio, you'll love the process of collaborating with us on a Reel Profiles documentary. To learn more about making personal documentaries, click here.
Fundraising for non-profit organizations is tough enough these days. Imagine the horror of the national Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority when they learned that their president, Barbara McKinzie, blew $900,000 in organizational funds to commission a "living legacy wax figure" of herself.
According to the Washington Business Journal, the sorority filed suit against McKinzie earlier this summer “to restore their beloved sorority to its former high standards of
governance, corporate transparency and active member communication."
The wax statue is supposed to be displayed at a wax museum in Baltimore, but it might serve the college gals better if it was placed by the punch bowl at the next fraternity mixer.
We don't know where McKinzie buys her wax figures, but she's getting cheated. Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, considered the filet mignon of wax sculptors, will immortalize you for only 150,000 British Pounds ($248,500).
Alpha Kappa Alpha has 950 sorority chapters and has a successful track record inspiring African-American women to pursue their career dreams. AKA members and alum include writer Toni Morrison, singer Alicia Keys, astronaut Mae C. Jemison, actress Phylicia Rashad, ballet dancer Carmen de Lavellade Holder, poet Maya Angelou, singer Gladys Knight, opera star Marian Anderson, Miss America Suzette Charles, civil rights activist Coretta Scott King and actress Jada Pinkett-Smith.
Just a guess, but we think that Alpha Kappa Alpha would have gotten a better value by commissioning an Organizational Profile documentary -- than a giant wax figure.