Main Street museum opens its doors
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That?s why these two local history buffs, along with their fellow Heritage Alliance members, have spent many hours of labor renovating and preparing the Warren County Heritage Center and Southern School of Photography Museum to be open during Preservation Week festivities this week. In fact, the 2006 Preservation Awards are scheduled to be held at the facility this Thursday, May 4, beginning at 5 p.m.
The first exhibit at the museum will be on Veterans of Warren County, chosen, in part, because of the deployment of Warren County soldiers to Iraq.
Even as a child Haley says he was fascinated with Warren County?s past and the interesting characters and notables who populated it. As a result, Haley, who is now a high school teacher, McMinnville alderman, and noted local historian, has dedicated much of his life to preserving that past.
And it?s also the reason Haley became involved early on with the Warren County Historical Society, which eventually evolved into Heritage Alliance.
A goal of the organization was to establish a local museum to display local treasures. Haley had always felt one of Warren County?s more famous residents, celebrated photographer and teacher W.S. ?Dad? Lively, who founded the Southern School of Photography, would make a great subject for a museum, since he was world famous in his day, but is little known now.
?I think he is a major part of McMinnville history,? Haley said. ?If anybody had world renown at the time, it was Dad Lively.?
Haley said Lively is a perfect example of the cultural climate in Warren County at that period in its history.
?People tend to forget McMinnville was a cultural place. It never really was a backwoods, hayseed town. It was a cultural place. We had artists, we had musicians, we had an opera house. I think Mr. Lively, in that period after the Civil War, represented that new spirit of bettering yourself and bettering your community.?
Students came to the Southern School of Photography from around the country, according to Haley and Atnip, and Lively trained scholars and craftsmen who became some of the most noted photographers of the day.
Atnip, who is an accomplished photographer himself, said Lively was an inventor and innovator, designing many of the tools he used in his own photography, like Fletch Woodard, one of the county?s first photographers, did in his day.
One of the things Lively was noted for was designing a huge camera which was capable of taking life-size photographs.
?Kodak had to make it for him,? Haley said. ?He said, ?I?ve got this idea about making life-size pictures.? And they said, ?You mean like enlargements?? And he said, ?No, life-size pictures.? They said, ?That?s impossible, nobody?s ever done that.? And he said, ?Well, I?m going to try it.? He was friends with Mr. Eastman, of Eastman Kodak, and anything he needed they got it for him,? Haley added.
Lively did indeed get the camera and made several photographs with it. The museum has one of only a few of these photographs left.
Haley says he became involved in memorializing Lively because of his personal interest in local history.
?I?ve just always loved history and old buildings,? Haley said. ?We really need to preserve them. Once these old buildings are gone, they?re gone. You can?t get them back.?
Atnip agreed.
?We need to start working together to preserve our history,? Atnip said, recalling what one of his history teachers said. ?He said history repeats itself because we didn?t listen the first time. We need to create a place where our young people can come and learn about the past. A people who don?t know from whence they came have no road map as to where they?re headed. That?s been the main driving force for what we?re trying to do.?