My Blog

2ADA reunion Oct. 8th - 15th

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 18:24:44 -0400

Leaving tomorrow for the 2ADA reunion in New Orleans. I have a feeling it’s going to be really hot!! My goal is to document this year’s reunion and see if the members of the association have plans to pass their legacy on to the next generation. Rumors have it that they might begin talks with the Heritage League to officially transfer over. We will see! Also I have plans to follow and document Brian Mahoney, the President of the Heritage League. A call to him just a few weeks ago made me believe that something was going down in the Creole Capital. I’ll be hanging close to him and see what I can capture. Mmmm shrimp bisque.

Returned from taking an Honor Flight

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 14:40:01 -0500

Well I couldn’t have asked for better weather, better transportation and better people to experience my first Honor Flight with. If you aren’t familiar with Honor Flight - it’s a program started a few years back by Earl Morse. The program has many chapters around the nation devoted to transport WWII veterans to D.C. to see their memorial - FREE OF CHARGE!! I was given an all access pass to interview Mr. Morse and his Dayton director Jim Salamon. Then I jump aboard the plane to Washington, D.C. with 40 plus veterans (even Vietnam and Korean veterans were present). It was an exhausting day but we zipped around to every major site and ended up at a wonderful buffet dinner before jumping on the plane back home. I wish to thank all of the Honor Flight volunteers for a job well done!

Honor Flight November 7th, 2009

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:50:12 -0400

After hearing about the Honor Flight program during my year long filming for my documentary - I’m finally going to be able to hitch a ride. I contacted Jim Salamon, president of the Dayton, OH Honor Flight chapter, and asked if I could jump aboard and film the days events. He had no problem with it and also was able to set me up an interview with the founder of the Honor Flight program, Earl Morse. More to come soon - for now I have my plane tickets booked!! click the link for more on the program:
http://www.honorflight.org/

Discovered WWII 8mm footage transfered!!

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:38:29 -0400

I returned from my trip this week. I met up with Joe Duran in Los Angeles and we successfully transfered B-24 pilot Hap Kendall’s 67 year old 8mm film footage. About 25% of the footage was in color and the rest was in beautiful black and white. The guys at Spectra Film and Sound were great and really helped us clean up the footage and master it to digital media. The film really gives you an insight to why the group was called “Ted’s Traveling Circus” early on in the war. From the Rock of Gibraltar to the Pyramids in Egypt, it really gave you an inside look of the traveling that took place. At the end of the session we started to really see how old the film was. We started getting film breaks on the transfer machine due to the old cement splices and out of focus footage from warping of the film. All in all it was very successful and we now have 55 minutes of never before seen footage of the 93rd!!

Helping Joe Duran transfer long lost 8mm footage from war.

Thu, 3 Sep 2009 20:06:34 -0400

I’m off to Los Angeles to meet up with Joe Duran - one of our fearless organizers of the 93rd BG reunions. He called me a month ago and said that a nephew of a B-24 pilot Hap Kendall found some old 8mm film footage. Hap has sinced passed away but the footage has surfaced and all parties are interested to find out what’s on the film. Joe mentioned that one film cans is labeled Poletsi and another Egypt. Hap’s nephew Mark said he remembers seeing the footage as a boy but can’t give details. I’ve setup Joe with a transfer facility in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. I’m off to LA tomorrow to rendezvous with Joe. This story is definitely TO BE CONTINUED . . .