One of the things I really like about doing this site is occasionally people bring something to me or ask me to be a part of something that is community based. This happened a couple weeks ago when one of our members here (and an advertiser...thanks Steve/Dunbar Plumbing) gave me a VHS tape that is an incredible look back at Independence in 1938. The quality is suprisingly good and I hope to have a quick version of it digitized and posted on here so people can see it. There are a ton of great shots including children going to school in the area, some grade school kids and high school kids and quite a bit are shot at Simon Kenton. There's also footage of some of the old historic buildings that still stand in downtown Independence today. Now, I would find all of this fascinating just because I enjoy this kind of local history and community type stuff but it ended up being quite a bit more then I expected as I viewed the tape.

The first night while watching the video there are quite a few shots of just students lined up outside the school and then the camera shows the kids one by one. While I was watching all the sudden one of the high school kids they showed just stood out to me immediately. Looking into the camera form 1938 was a kid who I knew was my wife's grandfather. She had never seen him except in pictures. Unfortunately, he passed away at a very young age after having ten children. One of those ten children is my father in law (Jim Jackson) and it was easy for me to pick out the kid in the video because the resemblance was obvious. Well my wife of coarse teared up as soon as she saw it and couldn't believe he was in there. It's quick, you see him twice for like 2 seconds but...it's the only video any of the family has ever seen of Robert "Boots" Jackson and as my wife (Kim) showed it to multiple members of her family this weekend it was very touching to see how much that little 2 seconds effected people. The sweetest reaction coming from Kim's grandmother who was just incredibly happy to see this little moment in time she never knew existed. She was so taken by the video she handed my wife a yearbook from 1939 that had so many of the kids and teachers in the video within the pages. We immediately started putting names with faces in the videos because by this time my wife and I had seen the video multiple times. There are litterally hundreds of faces in this video to pour through.

This kind of really got me inspired and wondering if anybody else out there has any little video or photographs from the early days of Independence, Simon Kenton, the fair or anything community based like that. If you do, or know anybody who does, drop me an email or look me up in the book and call, if you're willing to share it. I don't know what kind of response I'll get (if any) but I would love to put something together with the history of Independence together.

Oh, and tonight I took a little bit of time and scanned in the senior class of 1939 from the yearbook grandma gave us. Check it out if you get a chance.

Steve Kitchen