Dear Sara, my sweet dead Sister,
This is the smile you’ve had for a lifetime. It was captured at age one by your father, shooting a home movie, his new hobby at age 35.
Black Lake is one of Minnesota’s “10,000 lakes” located less than an hour west by car from Hopkins. This is where Grandparents Sadie and Howard lived in a cottage-style house that Dad helped build. I remember an annual gathering out at the lake throughout our Minnesota childhood.
As you might expect, footage of visiting the Grandparent’s home on Black Lake shows up throughout the early years, but this clip is the best. Dad’s footage is steady and easy to follow, and the evidence of a cinematic bond with his one-year-old daughter, Sara, will last forever.
The footage opens on the Mellema Family as the camera moves past the daughters, Sandra and Diane, to the father, George, then to his wife, Myrtle, who is a daugter of Sadie and her first husband, Joe. As is Aunt Priscilla, who approaches with a dish for the table, then stops to do a double-take for the camera.*
The footage cuts to your one-year-old self, Sara, in your highchair of matching fabric with your bib. The child holds the camera’s gaze, looking to the right, then looking back to her Dad — who has not moved the camera. Bravo! Movie magic, for sure.
Then a jump cut to cousin Phillip and his dad Harold. Phillip lived with cerebral palsy, but it didn’t stop him from joining in playing with us. I remember our visits to Black Lake as great fun. I would so love to know your memories, Sis.
Panning past the Kurtzner (misspelled in the title) family, Dad holds, then moves the camera down to show Mom taking care of us at the Blake table, which includes our Grandparents. He captures another wonderful shot of his father, Howard, referring to his son, Warner Sr., about movie making; is cut with a shot of you, dearest Sara, still in full gaze mode.
She looks down at her food, and Dad cuts back to Mom, pans down to show Peter, whose gaze is still developing at age two. The camera continues, pausing to capture our grandparents, then pans past Mom, down to me, and then cuts to a wide shot of the family table, showing both Mom and Dad; so who's running the camera?
Regardless, the footage of a smooth, steady pan to the left stops at the Mellema table, with a clearer shot of the daughters — note Uncle George’s chair is empty!
Return pan shows Sara in her highchair as an island table, holding the center of a unique family picnic scene at Grandma and Grandpa’s home, out at the Lake.
*I used this footage in a ‘home movie’ of my own in 2001, documenting our return to Minnesota for what I called a “Reunion of the Motherless Cousins,” but the extended road trip included a visit to Aunt Priscilla, still living on Black Lake, which has been excerpted below. Aunt Priscilla died in 2007.
There is a nice shot of you, Sis, talking with Aunt Priscilla silhouetted in the picture window with the cascading leaves of a house plant, overlooking the lake. I sat next to you at first to use the Minnesota daylight filling the room. What a stroke of luck for Aunt Priscilla to walk around the room, showing wedding pictures in the family album to each guest. It’s the reason for dividing the screen, otherwise I could not have used it, because Aunt Priscilla had wonderful stories for the camera, just as she did with the double take at the picnic over 50 years earlier.
I have annotated the clips on the first two reels at Blake Home Movies and plan to continue, as time allows, to complete the collection. And you may count on future features of you in the movies, dearest Sara, we’re in this together.
Missing you every day —
—
Very loving of you to present it so nicely Warner. Sad she's gone - Neal
Very touching video. Cool to see your entire family including grandparents. One detail I noticed that intrigues me: How each family enjoyed their meal separately. No mixing among the families., no putting all the tables together and sitting helter-skelter to visit with those one doesn't see very often. I'm trying to remember if it was the same with my family and relatives.