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A treasure of historic photographs, scrapbooks and other materials relating to World War II, donated to Leonard H. Axe Library, Pittsburg State University, is now available for researchers around the world.
“It’s a tremendous asset to have the Arnold Clayton Watkins Collection here, but being able to make it available to the whole world is what we’re excited about,” said Robert Walker, Axe executive director. “The collection is Googleable now.”
Watkins was born Nov. 15, 1915, in Pittsburg, graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1934, and attended Kansas State Teachers College in Pittsburg for two years. He was inducted into the U.S. Army Air Force on Nov. 10, 1941, at Camp Crowder, Mo., and spent World War II serving in northern France, the Rhineland, central Europe and England.
Following the war, he worked for Gulf Chemical and Oil Company for 34 years in Kansas City, Kan., and in Houston, Texas. He and his wife, the former Joan Ovadon, returned to Pittsburg in 1981, and Watkins died in 1996.
“I got a call from Mrs. Watkins and visited her at her home,” said Randy Roberts, PSU curator of Special Collections at Axe.
She asked Roberts if he would be interested in having the photographs, scrapbooks and so on. He didn’t have to think twice about his answer.
“We were delighted to get this collection,” Roberts said.
The scrapbooks were kept by Mrs. Watkins, and primarily contain newspaper and magazine clippings regarding the end of the war and Crawford County citizens involved in the war effort, including servicemen killed or injured in the war. The scrapbooks are not on line.
The photographs include many images of Army Air Force personnel and Army Air Force planes carrying out bombing missions, and photos of Dresden, Cologne and Hamburg, Germany, after being bombed a few months before the end of World War II.
Of particular interest are photos of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, possibly taken around 1935, talking with other Nazi leaders and officers and inspecting German troops.
“We don’t know how Mr. Watkins happened to get these photos, and Mrs. Watkins didn’t have a lot of information on the background of the photos,” Roberts said. “Some of these we haven’t found in print before.”
Walter noted a possible explanation — Watkins was an intelligence officer.
“We don’t know a lot of the people in some of the photos,” said Janette Mauk, Axe senior administrative assistant, who did extensive research and scanning of the photos. “We hope down the line that people may recognize some of them.”
A treasure of historic photographs, scrapbooks and other materials relating to World War II, donated to Leonard H. Axe Library, Pittsburg State University, is now available for researchers around the world.
“It’s a tremendous asset to have the Arnold Clayton Watkins Collection here, but being able to make it available to the whole world is what we’re excited about,” said Robert Walker, Axe executive director. “The collection is Googleable now.”
Watkins was born Nov. 15, 1915, in Pittsburg, graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1934, and attended Kansas State Teachers College in Pittsburg for two years. He was inducted into the U.S. Army Air Force on Nov. 10, 1941, at Camp Crowder, Mo., and spent World War II serving in northern France, the Rhineland, central Europe and England.
Following the war, he worked for Gulf Chemical and Oil Company for 34 years in Kansas City, Kan., and in Houston, Texas. He and his wife, the former Joan Ovadon, returned to Pittsburg in 1981, and Watkins died in 1996.
“I got a call from Mrs. Watkins and visited her at her home,” said Randy Roberts, PSU curator of Special Collections at Axe.
She asked Roberts if he would be interested in having the photographs, scrapbooks and so on. He didn’t have to think twice about his answer.
“We were delighted to get this collection,” Roberts said.
The scrapbooks were kept by Mrs. Watkins, and primarily contain newspaper and magazine clippings regarding the end of the war and Crawford County citizens involved in the war effort, including servicemen killed or injured in the war. The scrapbooks are not on line.
The photographs include many images of Army Air Force personnel and Army Air Force planes carrying out bombing missions, and photos of Dresden, Cologne and Hamburg, Germany, after being bombed a few months before the end of World War II.
Of particular interest are photos of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, possibly taken around 1935, talking with other Nazi leaders and officers and inspecting German troops.
“We don’t know how Mr. Watkins happened to get these photos, and Mrs. Watkins didn’t have a lot of information on the background of the photos,” Roberts said. “Some of these we haven’t found in print before.”
Walter noted a possible explanation — Watkins was an intelligence officer.
“We don’t know a lot of the people in some of the photos,” said Janette Mauk, Axe senior administrative assistant, who did extensive research and scanning of the photos. “We hope down the line that people may recognize some of them.”
One puzzling photo, for example, probably taken around 1935, shows a group of German officers standing around a civilian man who’s wearing an American Indian headdress and holding a miniature tomahawk. “We think the civilian might have been an industrialist,” Mauk said.
A more lighthearted photo shows American soldiers standing around a jeep. Behind the steering wheel is a donkey. “Because most of the soldiers aren’t wearing shirts and it looks like sand in the background, I’d guess this was taken in Northern Africa, probably Libya,” Mauk said.
She said that Gertrude Bush, Pittsburg, a German native, was a big help in translating writing on the backs of some photos. Mauk also researched World War II planes. “A lot of Web sites have all the U.S. planes, and if I had the serial number, I could identify the plane, its bomb group and about what year,” she said.
“There’s a lot of text with each photo,” Walter said.
Other Axe employees assisting with getting the collection online included Morgan McCune, Axe cataloger, and David Nance, who has experience with CONTENTdm and did a lot of the technical work.
“Fortunately, most of the photographs were in very good shape and they scanned very well,” Mauk said.
