Our First Christmas in the Movies

July 6, 2024. Precompose Payment #19 of Seventy.

Reel #1 Clip #1. Christmas, 1947

Dear Sara, my sweet dead Sister, and Peter, my musical Brother, only two months dead,

Christmas, 1947, I love this clip. I am five years old and carrying you, only 15 months old, under your arms down the narrow stairs in our first home on 7th Avenue in Hopkins, Minnesota. Our lifelong bond was silently documented.

Consequently, it’s the first footage on the first four-inch reel you assembled from Dad’s boxes and boxes of tiny reels of regular 8mm film. Cutting out the marginal footage of 23 years of home movies had to be a mammoth task, where every cut is held together by carefully applied splicing tape. I never told you, dear Peter, that there was not one break in the digitizing process of the 22 reels!

I say again, “Bravo, Pete!”

As I recall, you and Suzanne were living in Oregon with another couple in a commune-like situation when you “accepted” this mission. I remember a sense that it was not a good time for you, but you rallied and assigned yourself the goal of assembling the 22 four-inch reels containing the Blake Home Movies, 1947-1970.

Wish I had asked you more about that time in your life.

Reel #6 Clip #2. Peter’s Birthday Party, 1953

Reel #9 Clip #5. Peter’s First Communion, 1954

Reel #10 Clip #2. Christmas, 1955

Reel #14 Clip #3. Summer & More, 1959

Reel #16 Clip #3. Christmas, 1962

Reel #17 Clip #3. Peter’s Graduation, 1963

Reel #17 Clip #4. Christmases 1963 & 1964

Reel #18 Clip #2. Saturday Steaks Night, 1963

Reel #18 Clip #3. Kurtz Family Visit, 1965

Reel #19 Clip #2. Another Backyard Party, 1966

Clicking on the Still Images will take you to the Reel Page of Clips, where you may need to scroll down to the annotated Clip. (Closing the page of clips, when done, will bring you back here, and prevent the gathering of pages behind you!)

I wish to express sympathy with Pete’s widow, Donna, who has been a reader of this letter since the beginning. Follow this link to Peter’s Obituary.

We miss you every day, dear Sara and Peter,

If you are new to this letter, follow this link for the background of our monthly Letters to Sara, and if you enjoyed reading this letter, please share it with a friend. Thanks ~w.