Fun with Film

In supervising the photo finishing operations, I noticed that a lot of the films coming in from the soldiers for processing didn’t have anything printable on them. This was because they were buying advanced Leica and Rolleflex cameras at the PX but didn’t know how to use them. I took some of the bad rolls of film down to the Armed Forces Radio Station in Munich and showed them to the manager. He got the idea right away.

“Why don’t we set up a weekly program where you can talk to the GI’s about operating their cameras and taking good pictures,” he suggested. That was what I had in mind.

Within a few weeks our new half hour program “Fun with Film,” debuted on AFN Munich-Stuttgart. Later it expanded to include almost all of the AFN stations in Europe.

The station assigned Alan Bergman, an experienced announcer/disc jockey to work with me on the program to ask questions so I could offer helpful hints on how to operate various cameras and take better focused and composed pictures.

I also visited the Leica camera works at Wetzlar and a film manufacturing plant in Munich and described these operations on the program. Being on the radio was not only a lot of fan but I was happy to note that there was a noticeable decline in the the number of unprintable films received at the Munich Photo Plant.

As we neared the end of 1947, I was offered the job of regional manager of Army Exchange photo operations but this would have involved relocating to offices in Frankfurt, Germany. I preferred Bavaria. Besides, I figured that the U.S. Army presence in Europe was not going to last much longer so I had better go home, finish my interrupted college education and get a long-term job. So I declined to sign a new contract.

My interpreter, secretary and administrative assistant for the past two years had been Elizabeth Oeser, and we had been privileged to fall in love.

Now that I was leaving, we began making arrangements for her to come to the U.S. as my fiancee under a new law that allowed fiancees of U.S. military personnel to visit the U.S. for a limited period if they did not get married, or to stay permanently if they did get married.

Qualifying under this law was no easy task. It took six months to complete the necessary interviews and investigations to prove that she was not a former Nazi party member, as well as numerous physical exams and x-rays to prove that she was in good physical and mental health. Compared to today’s immigration standards, it was ridiculous.

Nevertheless, she finally cleared the bureaucratic hurdles and arrived in the U.S. aboard the good ship George Washington on a sweltering day in July, 1948. I met her in New York and we returned to my parent’s home in Ohio where I had been living since my return from Europe. We were married in Elyria, Ohio on September 1, 1948, culminating my European venture which began with joining the U.S. Army in 1942 and entering active service in 1943.

We are married still.