Jack Carver
Jack Carver was staff photographer for The Bellingham Herald from 1945 to 1981; indeed much of this time he was the Herald's only photographer. Though the newspaper routinely credited his photos to an anonymous "Herald Staff," area residents knew who Jack Carver was. He seemed to be at every community event, however momentous or modest, with that large camera he lugged around.
Faced with printing deadlines, Jack had to quickly assess each situation and determine how to take the picture that fit the story. His compositional sense was well-crafted by use of a 4x5 Speed Graphic press camera, focusing on particulars that defined the moment. Added up, Jack Carver's high-resolution images (an estimated 60,000 negatives and 21,000 prints) document in daily detail nearly forty years of local history.
In Jack's Own Words
"The Bellingham Herald has been my life… since I started delivering the paper way back in the pre-Depression days of '29. It still is. With the exception of World War II and a few years preceding that while at the University of Washington, virtually every paycheck has had the stamp of the Herald on it. When Nancy McKinnon, our promotions director, asked me to write a few recollections for this year's Look Into the Eighties Progress edition, that put the wheels into reverse -- and a bit of research was needed.
Unknowingly, full time duty began, no doubt, with my interest in a Kodak Brownie camera during the war. I sent home rolls of prints from years in England, and my father, who was Herald editor, must have had something to do with my landing a job here in late October, 1945. Ben Sefrit, on the management team in those days who later became publisher, was the sole photographer. He relinquished the job by showing me which end of the big 4 x 5 Speed Graphic to use to get pictures. My first assignment was to head to Lynden to photograph Tribune editor Sol Lewis with a plaque he received from city hall. Surprise! The photo came out, it was used and a career was underway.
Shortly after, Bellingham High was playing Olympia at famed Battersby (Bog) Field here and I had to roam the sidelines. Wallie Lindsley needed a sport photo. Lugging a sack full of film holders, I took a bunch of photos, developed them and decided there wasn't much there. But Don Gooding, a reporter who'd been weaned on the big camera from time to time, came to my rescue. I can still hear him as he gleefully enlarged part of a negative that showed Chuck Olson, now a local attorney, catching a pass high in the air for a TD. That was another learning experience.
Then came the boom at Western Washington University in '46 when Squire's College Inn was torn down to make room for the first dorm outside Edens Hall, at the corner of High and then 21st Streets. Not long afterwards, photographing the removal of hills of dirt for the Viking Union and Haggard Hall were busy days. Because I was with the Herald, I was asked to be scorekeeper for the City Basketball League in those post-war years. Budding attorney Sam Peach was recruited to assist.
Blossom Time began in 1947 with the crowing of Bernice Chatterton as queen and BT was an event I enjoyed through the years. Weather photos have always been a must. In those times, Sefrit, then city editor, and those who followed such as Bill Fowler and George Boynton, all wanted weather shots whenever there was the slightest change. Probably the best were in our cold winters of '49 and '50 when zero and a northeaster combined to put long-johns on most everyone. Many photos were sent out on the wirephoto -- and AP would send back a couple bucks. Those were the years when the Jaycees put up the world's tallest Christmas tree on Railroad Avenue and photographing that episode was memorable.
Another was the arrival here in the late '50s of Japanese mayor of Tateyama, our new Sister City, a pregnant idea of Mayor Jack Westford. Taking a photo of the Japanese mayor munching on his first American hamburger at Bunk's Drive-in was a Page One-r.
Photographing Presidential "timber" was important because way out here we're not in the mainstream. There was Earl Warren in '48, John F. Kennedy (in Tacoma), Lyndon Johnson (at Blaine), Richard Nixon (Seattle) and Hubert Humphrey (at WWU). Even Eleanor Roosevelt came to Bellingham for a family christening.
Taking New Year babies was an annual "must," so snapping pictures of my family's new-born in '51 was a joy. When No. 1 arrived reporter Nellie Brown Duff, our irrepressible grammarian, put together an article and someone got a photo of Dad with a typical cigar and tie emblazoned with "It's a Boy."
There were many in the Herald who made impressions with their typewritten words. Names old timers still in town will recall. Besides those referred to above, there were Steve Kurtz, Eliot Gilmore, Aura Rugg in society, Frank Strachan, Eddie Griffin, Frank Downie, Bert Kincaid (retired county clerk and auditor) and Glen Larson, the newsman who gave up the Coast Guard to "watchdog" Bellingham's city hall politicians for 25 years.
Chet Young, our personnel manager, was a young newsboy in the late '40s. It proved to be a breaking-in for his later position of circulation manager. I recall newsboy Walt Obermueller when he roared into the Herald on his motorcycle to pick up papers for his route.
Recollections of the '40s and '50s at the Herald wouldn't be complete without something from the advertising department. Bill Wetherell was as symbolic of the ad section as anyone. A real jokester and glad-hander, he could bring in the ads -- something he did for 56 years. He, Frank I. Sefrit and his sons Chick and Ben, plus Coston Carver, were the power behind the paper for 40 to 50 years.
Hot type put out by the linotypes was the vogue in the growing-up days. Fred Goodman, Dave DeNeui and Joe Henley were as busy then under the tight-fisted pressures of composing room boss Mike Westby as they are today in a calmer, less hectic atmosphere. Engravers Wes and Jean Ulrich suffered through all the purple developer and gas flames inherited from predecessor "Nitric Acid" Egbert in making metal plates for the press before the current modern use of film arrived. Speaking of the press, the old one served the Herald well, thanks to the baling wire Foreman Roy Hale needed to keep it operating daily. When we receive our new press this summer, it'll make the original look like manufacturer Hoe's nightmare.
One of the joys of being Herald photographer, especially in those early years when I grew up right along with the city, was getting to know so many people. And people is the name of the game in news photos. The Herald was great at promoting events, club doings, school activities and innumerable other functions perfect for pictures. With the advent of the "new-breed" in photojournalism and a cutting down on news-hole space in recent years, the image has changed -- perhaps for the better.
Travel was a plus up until the last 10 years or so when "freebies" (travel paid by someone other than your company) were put in the deep freeze. Prior to that, however, the Navy in '49 took me on its first jato (jet) flight out of Oakland non-stop to Washington, D.C. Others, all good for stories and photos with a local touch, were to Tinker AFB, Fla., for the world fighter plane competition; West Point (along with school counselor Carol Ericsson), and Air Force Academy.
One "no-no" that time has erased is the idea that advertisers weren't to be mentioned in news stories or photos, nor was the competition such as radio or another newspaper. Nowadays, it seems, anything goes. Advertisers and commercial establishments are just as newsy as city hall. Even the Times and P-I. Time has a broadening effect -- just ask any sedentary reporter.
Cameras have changed drastically, dropping in size from the shoulder-bending 4x5 Speed Graphic to the 2x2 square shape of the Mamiya system to the current 35 mm format. With a need for more photos in the '70s, reporters were taking pictures, too. All this changed with the coming of Gannet, Don Anderson from Mount Vernon, and Martin Waidech from Shreveport via Mount Vernon, two fine photographers.
Along in the late fall of 1975, soon after the arrival of Publisher Chuck Wanninger, I was asked to put something together for senior citizens. For me, the guy with the longest service to the paper beating out Goodman by a month, it's been positive. Again, it's working with people. An age group that's getting more powerful and influential with the passing of each year.
Don Gooding, down there in his lookin' 'n listenin' post in Olympia, says we're doing as fine a job or better, with seniors, as any newspaper in the state.
That's nice to know.
When my retirement time arrives, maybe I'll go full circle. How's about my old paper route, Chuck?
Looking into the Eighties, I see nothing but good times for the Herald. Electronic writing and editing are "on stream," and a new press is in the wings. The video display terminals are used daily and when the entire program is operating 120 percent, an open house is planned. All this is a long way from the day I started at the Herald.
It's called Progress."
—Jack Carver, Bellingham Herald, Sunday, March 2, 1980.
