Preservation of Motion Picture - Tulsa

Amelia Earhart lands in Tulsa. Fortunately, several people were at the airport with home movie cameras that day to take pictures. These are home movies of the real pistol peat, the lawman who patrolled rugged Oklahoma and who the OSU mascot is patterned after. And this footage takes us back to World War II, when a prisoner of war camp in Muscogee housed German prisoners. These images from yesterday were taken by Oklahoma's. Back then, they were simply home movies. Today, they're valuable pieces of the past. The Tulsa Historical Society has collected a lot of newsreels in home movies, but they want to expand the collection. They're asking people to contribute old motion pictures, curator Robert Powers. We're sort of on a roll with collecting footage right now. We're under a lot of interesting secrets from our community, and it seems that this is a good time to go out and make a press for donations. Old home movies and newsreels are stored at the Historical Society. It's important

this stuff be preserved so that future generations can enjoy moving images from yesterday, like these scenes that show life and harmony in the 1920s. Robert Powers figures there's a lot of footage tucked away in addicts and garages, and he wants to get his hands on it. They wound up being put in boxes, slid underneath beds, stuck up in addicts, that sort of thing. So I'm quite confident that there's just a lot of footage out there that people are not aware of that can be valuable to help explain something about our community's history. This is a small sampling of the old home movies that have been donated. The film show an Oklahoma that doesn't exist anymore. Those who donate films to the Tulsa Historical Society receive a free video copy of their movies,

and all formats of films are accepted. The Historical Society believes it's important to preserve motion pictures because it's a fascinating way to teach people about the state's past. All you have to do is look at the number of hours in which children today sit in front of television and know that if you are going to try to reach those kids, the best way to reach them is the medium that they're already comfortable with. I'm Jack Frank with Oklahoma Memories.