OPR copy run at Seaside heights, NJ

[Mhayes]

Great shot Shujen. Thanks Team OPR and Team Home Depot!

[G3User]

Awesome :wnw:

Congratulations to all involved

Athol

[pixelesh]

And here's the article from Asbury Park Press, also very nicely done!

http://www.app.com/article/20130505/NJNEWS/305050092/Volunteers-try-repair-damaged-photos?nclick_check=1

I'll post more thoughts on the run later on - I'm still decompressing...but I am SO glad I was a part of this - what an incredible experience - humbling and uplifting and a whole host of other adjectives. It was a most memorable birthday weekend, no doubt about that.

Leslie

[Mhayes]

Leslie, you beat me to in posting. A very nice article/video and not to overlooked is the slide show below. I'm so glad you got to come and you had a pretty long drive. A reported noticed that you came from RI and sent us an inquiry about having a volunteer from RI and also wondered whether we would plan a copy run up in that neck of the woods. It really gets hard to see so many places need help, but we are limited on how much we can do at one time.

Wish I could have met you and the others, but so proud of what you you all did and enjoyed all of Shujen's photos.

Margie

[paulpegg]

Thank you all for making our first copy run such a great experience. Barbara and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and working with you and learning all about the intake process. We dealt with an overflow of press people on Friday and still did our jobs. Saturday was a bit slow but Sunday made up for it.

The stories that come with the photos can only be guessed at by the members who will tackle their restoration, but they will stay with us for a long time. It is a great privilege to work with a team of people who give so much and expect nothing in return.

Paul & Barbara Eggermann
Raritan Photographic Society
Milltown, NJ

[schen]

Paul,

It was my pleasure working with you at the copystand.  Thank you for your help and the members of your photographic society.

Shujen

[Mhayes]

It was a plus that David and Jean Ehnebuske brought their own copy stand  Three is a good number to have, but we have also done runs with just two. Before Pat and Mike brought their professional copy stands we were using tripods and that is so hard on the back. OPR went and bought a tripod with a horizontal arm and that better, but not as nice as a regular copy stand. On the Joplin, MO run I had a cheap one made which was an old enlarger stand with the head replaced with a tripod head. I then bought some reasonable priced studio lights. Not as nice, but at a cost of $150 it works.

The one thing that impressed me with the press on this copy run is that they got their facts straight and they really went all out to get the word out. One station that I talked to wanted to be able to link to our "Fundraising" page after he heard that we operate solely on donations. The other nice thing about the press is that they showed up at the start, unlike NY that did a great story but on the last day.

Hope all of you get rested up as I know you have to be tired. Probably the biggest run OPR has done was in 2007 with the Biloxi run where there were no limits set on number of photos per family and that resulted in a total a little over 3,000. After that we had to set a limit as it took us almost 2 years to finish that back-load.

Margie

[schen]

Here is the group picture with names.  I apologize for missing some of the people.  There are at least three on the Team OPR side and three on the Team Home Depot not pictured.  Mike and Pat brought two copy stands.  David and Jean brought the other one.  Mike and Pat usually worked together on one  copy stand.  Paul ran another copy stand with Barbara or Shujen.  At the end, Mike and Pat checked all the files to ensure the consistency among the three copy teams.  The others (Leslie, Barbara, Jean, Hilda DeSanctis, Vicki DeVico, and Liz Roll) work on the intake and preprocessing.  It was a great team work.

Team Home Depot gave us any support we asked for and more.  When Pat Grosso was not busy with work, he came over to make popcorn and serve as the greeter for us.

[Mhayes]

Thanks Shujen, now I can match names with faces.

Margie

[Pat]

Margie and Jan we missed you both!  We had an absolutely top notch team of volunteers on this run.  The first timers hit the ground running and fit in just like old pros.  We truly could not have pulled it off without this team of OPR volunteers.

All of the Home Depot personal are absolutely wonderful people who have suffered the same devastation to their homes and property as the residents they are trying to serve by volunteering to work in the little Seaside Heights satellite location.  They seem so very thankful for our coming to their area and were continually popping in to see how we were doing, watch the process, and just being sure we didn't need anything.  Their gratitude for our being there was remarkable.

Mike and I were invited to attend a meeting of the property owners association and were given the opportunity to explain about OPR to the residents.  We also learned a lot about what they are going through in trying to get compensation for the damaged to their homes and what needs to be done to bring their homes up to current regulations which often requires the home to be raised and rebuilt /repaired many feet higher than ground level.

Friday morning four television stations and one newspaper had crews on site.  They all spent a tremendous amount of time filming and interviewing.  It's amazing how much time and effort they spend to finally pare the whole thing down to a couple minutes of on air video report.  It's too bad they don't end up using more of the material because they all really did a knock-out job.  They were all extremely nice and seemed so genuinely appreciative of what we doing for the storm victims it was overwhelming.

I will never forget how welcomed and appreciated we were not only by the families bringing in their damaged photos but by the entire area.

Pat     

[pixelesh]

The Asbury Park Press story is now up on the USA TODAY website!  :up2:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/06/sandy-photos-restore/2138735/

[Pat]

Fantastic!  Thanks for the link :loveit:

Pat

[paulpegg]

Thank you Mike and Pat for bringing your second copy stand. We enjoyed working on it and learning your system.

Thank you also to Shujen for all your support and help and identifying all of us on the group photo. This was a functioning team from the very start and it was due to all of the knowledge that the experienced members brought to us and the wonderful spirit that took control of us for those three days.

[Mhayes]

Pixelish thanks for posting the link to USA Today. The one thing that has caught my eye from Amanda Oglesby story is that this statement is kind of misleading:

About 9,000 photographs have been restored this year, he said.

We know within OPR that over 9,000 photos is the total count since we started in 2006 and not how many we have restored this year.

The great thing about the New Jersey run is that the press is still reporting on us and want to check on us further down the road. I have had some requests for coverage if we will be back.

Margie

[Mike S.]

Hello everyone,

I will make this short because even though the NJ Copy Run is over there is still a lot of work.  Pat and I are cropping and getting the photos ready for the galleries.

I want to thank all the people on the copy run.  I have never worked with a better team.  You see most of the people in the photos that Shujen has posted but there is a few that did not get in the photo.  Liz Roll from FEMA who set up the space for us with Home Depot and then worked very hard during the copy run on both the welcoming table and the copy stands, Vicki DeVico who worked very hard on Friday and was on call if we got short handed the rest of the time, and Hilda DeSanctis a friend of Paul Eggermann.  I also want to thank Home Depot Manager Mitch Emslie and his people (Kathy Marciniak, Pat Russo and all the rest) for providing the location and support while we worked the copy run.  

Even though Margie was not on the copy run she still worked tirelessly with the News Agencies and supporting us on the copy run making things happen.

My thanks to all for making the copy run the success it was,

Mike