Photographs for Mr. Reber

Rochester Angel #1
July 2006 Rochester, NY
____________________________________

It’s Labor Day in America, a day we Yanks, in typical Yank fashion, celebrate by not working.

During the many years of my childhood it was also the day that marked the Last Day of Summer Vacation. As such, I hated this day. I dreaded it’s arrival and everything it seemed to stand for.

One of the ways the day is commemorated in the US is by the airing of the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon. For my non-Yank readers, this event is far from being a telethon for the original Nutty Professor, but is, instead, the telethon Lewis has hosted for umpteen years for Muscular Dystrophy research.

For more years than I care to remember I would spend at least some time during that gloomy, depressing, hopeless day watching the eclectic mix of vaudeville variety show and guilt-ridden impassioned pleas for money that is the Jerry Lewis Telethon.

To this day there’s still something that draws me back to the Telethon, even if I only manage to watch a few minutes of it each year. It’s not a desire to relive that intense dread again, but something very different.

Back in high school I was lucky enough to take two years of photography classes. Mr. Reber was a tall, lanky, balding guy with a bushy, 1970s mustache and love for photography. Most of his classroom contained the standard chair-and-desk combinations facing a blackboard. The back third of the room, however, was behind black curtains and housed the photo processing baths, the black and white enlargers, the developing fluids and all of the other magical bits and pieces that make up black and white film and print developing.

It was a great introduction to photography, although as much as I wish I could credit Mr. Reber with some of my techniques and photographic style, I can’t remember much of anything he taught us, aside from his drilling in the Division of Thirds rule of photographic composition into my head. It was through his class, however, and his posting of some of my images in the showcase outside his classroom that gave me the confidence in myself necessary to buy my first SLR (a Fuji ST-605).

Once a year Mr. Reber would stop his class completely and bring in his large film reel and spend his day showing his classes something of a personal Greatest Hits collection. Mr. Reber, during his non-working hours, was a member of The Tall Cedars of Lebanon, a Masonic organization with strong ties to the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Mr. Reber turned out to be a member (one of the younger members, in fact) of The Tall Cedars of Lebanon Singers and every year they made their Labor Day Pilgrimage to Las Vegas to take part in the Telethon.

The film reel started off with a musical performance from the late 1960s, with Mr. Reber pointing out which members of the Corale were now dead. “He’s gone,” he’d say. “He died a few months after the Telethon. He just died a few years ago...”

The Telethon’s opening graphics would change, showing us yet another year had gone by. Ed McMahon’s stellar introductory voice would sound the same as ever, Jerry would look disheveled and one more quick, awkward cut and we’d be back to The Tall Cedars of Lebanon Singers doing their Lawrence Welk-ish standards. As an added treat, occasionally Jerry Lewis would wander over to the singers and climb the risers, goofing on all of the stuff-shirted singers, trying to make them laugh instead of sing.

One year’s song went into a prolonged humming interlude. After a few moments you could see curiously concerned looks passing over the Tall Cedars’ faces.

“This was the year that Jerry got sick during the Telethon and Ed had to take over,” Mr Reber explained. “He was supposed to come over and interact with us but he was off somewhere sleeping. No one had told us what was happening.”

It was the end of the 70s. Disco had come and (thankfully largely) gone, punk was starting to make inroads into American culture, “My Sharonna” was one of the early hits on MTV. We were part of a generation witnessing major changes in our world and The Tall Cedars singing on the Jerry Lewis Telethon was something that did not connect with most of the people in the classes I took with Mr. Reber. Even the Photography Nerds who spent hours and hours in his classroom would largely disappear during Tall Cedars Days.

I understood, however, that what Mr. Reber was trying to do was at least try to make some sort of connection with his students beyond the classroom. His Tall Cedars work and support of the Telethon was obviously very important to him. It showed us not only his love of music, but the importance in working with countless others for something greater than yourself. And if that work takes generations and it’s conclusion is something you don’t live to see, so be it. It’s the work and working towards a common goal that’s what’s really important.

A decade or so after I graduated from high school I was sitting with some friends watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon. I told the story of the yearly showing of Mr. Reber’s Greatest Hits Film Reel.

And then, as if on cue, Jerry Lewis introduced his next act, The Tall Cedars of Lebanon.

And in amongst the singers, was my old photography teacher.

I don’t know where Mr. Reber is these days (I can’t even remember his first name -- sakkijarvi, do you remember?) but I still try to catch a few minutes of the Telethon these days in hopes of seeing him again. I hope wherever he is, he’s still singing and still taking photographs.

...