Cover of film designed by William T. Gambill

Joe Hodges has been busy ever since the “world premiere” of his two films about LOF Glass and OI Glass was presented at The South Charleston Museum in June. Over 100 people requested copies of the two films, so he has been making them at home and getting them to the people. Thanks to Mr. William T. Gambill, a local filmmaker, now the public can borrow the two DVDs from either the West Virginia Library Commission in the Cultural Center or from the Kanawha County Public Library. ( David Schau, the West Virginiana librarian at KCPL, will know about the DVDs. It will take both libraries a week or so to get the copies in to their circulation computers.)

 William T. Gambill

I have written about Mr. Gambill twice before – once about a DVD copy of a film called “Mountain People” and another time about his work on the great WVDOT film on the building of the WV Turnpike called “The Road to Opportunity.” WVLC made copies of “Road” and mailed them to all 97 public libraries in the state. Both films are well worth seeing. Unfortunately, I have just the one DVD of “People” that he gave me, and I have shared it with the relatives of people in Mingo County who were in the film, made  in 1978. One of my biggest obsessions is not only collecting every film made about West Virginia, but also trying to make all of them available NOW, which means buying DVD versions of 16 mm and VHS films. Thanks to Mr. Gambill, the people of Mingo County can once again see a film that shows the positive side of living in “Bloody Mingo.”

Mr. Gambill wants to show his 99-year old aunt the two glass factory movies since her husband once worked at LOF. Given that there were at least 20,000 people that worked at the two glass plants during their existence, and only about 200 came to the ONLY public showing of the films, I would imagine that thousands of others would like to see them. Now they can.

 

Design by William T. Gambill

The WV State Archives also has copies for future scholars and historians. I gave one set of the DVDs to local glass historian Dr. Fred Barkey, the man who wrote about the Belgian glassworkers of South Charleston in his book, “Cinderheads in the Hills.” Barkey worked at Owens-Illinois during his summer vacations from college.

At one time Charleston, WV was the glass capital of the entire world. Both plants were the largest of their kind – sheet glass for LOF and bottles for OI. Thanks to the genius of WV-born Michael Owens, the people of Kanawha County, WV had good jobs for decades.

A recent New York Times story talked about the desire by contemporary architects to design entire buildings out of nothing but glass. Glass technology is still developing. Unfortunately, the factories that make it no longer exist in Charleston, WV.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.