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Ann Arbor 200
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I Remember When (Bicentennial Remix)

In 2022, the staff of the AADL Archives discovered and had digitized a collection of interviews that had gone into the making of the library's I Remember When series of television programs for Ann Arbor's sesquicentennial in 1974*.  We all knew what the folks in 1974 had made from these interviews, but we thought it might be interesting to see what someone from 2024 would do with the same set of footage.  So we handed the whole lot to filmmaker Aaron Valdez, who combed through 17 hours of footage to create this 15-minute remix for the bicentennial.  Aaron explores the personalities of the interviewees, the stories they tell (complete with contradictions), and the mishaps they all left behind in creating this now 50-year-old work of local history.

*See Ann Arbor 200 release #169

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Sesquicentennial Interview: Helen Kokales and Frank Kokenakes

This interview was conducted in 1974 as part of the I Remember When television series produced by the Ann Arbor Public Library.

Petty Officer Fred R. Hough, First WWII veteran member of Graf O'Hara VFW post, June 1942 Photographer: Attributed to Eck Stanger

Petty Officer Fred R. Hough, First WWII veteran member of Graf O'Hara VFW post, June 1942 image
Year:
1942
Published In:
Ann Arbor News, June 25, 1942
Caption:
LOCAL VFW TAKES IN FIRST VETERAN OF THIS WAR: Petty Officer Fred R. Hough, a veteran of the Battle of Pearl Harbor, last night became the first veteran of the Second World war to join Graf O'Hara post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Hough, who is home on leave from the Navy's diesel school at Norfolk, Va., is shown alongside Frank Kokenakes, acting officer of the day, as Commander Carl Ernst swore him into membership. The 23-year-old petty officer isn't talking about his part at Pearl Harbor --"official censorship," he explains--but he came back to the mainland in May to enter the Norfolk school. He is here on furlough visiting relatives. He has been in the Navy five years.