By Kathy Borlik
A bit of history stored away in a box. Richard Feingold studied at Indiana University South Bend and later worked there in multimedia and communications.
All the while he took photos on campus for 20 years from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. He was a photographer for special events, for the student paper, The Preface, and the literary journal, The Analecta.
Like any good photographer, he stored the negatives. Boxes and boxes of them in his basement.
There were many close friends from those days and he even met his wife, Nancy Sulok, there. They were married for 37 years.
A lifetime South Bend resident, he also worked as a stagehand at the Morris Performing Arts Center. Although he was in poor health for a few years, he still carried a camera around nearly all the time. Dick died in October 2015.
Nancy, who was the city editor and a columnist for The Tribune, looked at her basement earlier this year and made a decision: Some of this has got to go. She donated several hundred negatives to IUSB’s archives. “I read that IUSB was looking for historical memorabilia for the campus jubilee celebration this year,” she said.
“He never threw anything away. Some negatives and boxes were labeled. Others were not. I was able to pull out the ones marked IUSB.” Some of the negatives are from events such as trustee meetings, registration and dance rehearsals.
IU South Bend archivist Alison Stankrauff welcomed the donation with open arms. “I’m seeing layers of the campus community — at all levels — events, students, classes and faculty. We’ve not seen anything like this to date. It is a total gem. He had an eye for capturing a moment. We’re very excited and grateful. We’re learning more about the early days of the campus. We didn’t know (Senator) Birch Bayh was here.”
Alison received an equipment grant from the IU Bicentennial office to digitize the negatives. A student intern is busy processing the photos now. The photos eventually will be added to an online site. Visit http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/images/public-index.htm to see other historical photos.
IU will celebrate its bicentennial in 2020. Alison hopes alumni and faculty will donate more photos to the cause.
Nancy said there may be donations from her. There are more boxes.
Nancy wondered if there was a photo of her that was taken when she was in a reception line to meet Henry Kissinger who came to campus to speak. Not yet, but there are more boxes.