An extraordinary piece of Fresno history is at risk of being lost forever. Make that 100,000 extraordinary pieces of history.
That's the size of the collection left by the legendary Valley photographer Claude C. "Pop" Laval, who chronicled life in Fresno and the region for the better part of a half-century, beginning way back before World War I. Here's what The Bee's Don Mayhew had to say about it in today's paper.
The priceless collection of negatives includes many that were produced using nitrocellulose, a highly combustible material. That, plus the normal ravages of time, threaten the collection unless it can be digitized and saved.
That's what Pop Laval's great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Laval, is working very hard to do. The process is painstaking and expensive. But it's worth every penny, and it's something the entire community should support. Check out the Web site of the Pop Laval Foundation here.
Our history teaches us how things came to be the way they are today. Without that understanding, we haven't got a clue about what to do with our future. And letting this particular piece of our history deteriorate into dust would leave us all vastly poorer.
("Pop" Laval took the photo of Clarence B. Young and Charles Daly, subscribers No. 1 and 2, taking the first issue of The Fresno Bee off the press on Oct. 17, 1922.)
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