A look Into a USNA museum restoration;18th c. model of s Spanish 74gun 3rd rate ship of the line; Battle of Trafalgar, model late18th or early 19th c.

Peter Gutterman said:
Many Thanks to all the above!
HPeterB Looks like you have "Ukraine DNA" Talk about sacrifice in the defense of democracy!
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My grandparents came from Konotop, Sumy Oblast in Ukraine. That’s my father’s family, my mother’s came from Kreva, Belarus. For most of my life my parents repeated what their parents told them but my mother’s family had it wrong. They repeated their origin as being from Lithuania because if you spoke Yiddish as they did, Kreva is close to Vilna and the area was called “Vilna Geberdna”. The confusion was a misunderstanding of the word “Geberdna” which they mistook the meaning as “born in.” It took me decades of searching maps to find Kreva because of the idea that the family was from a shtetl in Lithuania. I finally did a deeper dive through Google maps and was rewarded with finding Kreva in Belarus about 60 or so miles from Vilna, Lithuania. By the time of the German invasion during Operation Barbarossa most of my mother’s family had emigrated to the New York area before the Holocaust. Unfortunately, there were an entire family of my cousins who were murdered by the Nazis. I’m so grateful that both families came here, that my parents met and gave birth to me and my sister…all because my grandparents had the foresight to join the migration and settle here. Their legacy is going to produce within the next couple of weeks, days… a 4th generation, a baby girl whose parents will be my son and his wife…also a child of immigrants. That might be more than you bargained for but…ask me about the legacy… One other point of information… for decades our friends and acquaintances have asked me to write the story of my life and my life with my wife whom I had an Indiana Jones Holy Grail type adventurous life for the 5 years that we worked together at ABC Tv news. I put off writing it down but… I’m not getting any younger and with the next generation about to join our family I’d like her to take away how there’s opportunities if you’re aware and willing to take calculated risks.
Thanks for the opportunity to share this.
 
Peter Gutterman said:
These are not all necessarily in order, but you get the idea. In the officer's stern cabin you can see a little door to the left. This door was functional, behind which was contained the little "Seat of Ease" housed in the side Quarter Gallery for the Captain (or Admiral's personal use).
The stern transom Gallery had to be completely restored because it was missing most of the balusters, the railing they support and at least four of the inner and outer pilasters (upright flat fluted columns) which were recreated by a laser cutter, after first making a drawing of the parts, which was then recreated in a zip file for the laser. The same process was used in recreating the poop deck bulk head, front and back as pictured, which was entirely missing, as was the deck itself. Several of the windows in the Quarter galleries were missing and had to be recreated. The entire finish had to cleaned, conserved and restored. The whole model was blackened by several ancient coats of desiccated shellac, oxidized to a shade of charcoal ( which, in fact it was a form of). All upward facing surfaces were covered with caustic layers of dust as thick as felt. The drawing of the bow , bowsprit and all the rigging that I made one to one scale, was typical in order to have a record of the rigging before the entire model was disassembled. This process cannot be done with photographs because they are too confusing to discern the detail accurately. The Masting and rigging process is now in the hands of a specialist in that discipline to whom I have surrendered first chair. All this (so far) has been achieved in several hours a couple of days a week at the Naval academy model workshop (visible in the background) starting in 2016 and interrupted for a year or more by Covid.
This is model# 62 in the Rogers collection at the USNA museum, Sadly not all the models were stored or cared for in the manner they deserved but were squirreled away in the attic of Preble Hall and randomly in empty rooms (like boiler rooms) around Campus in the fifties. And only begun to be recovered in recent years. Some were so far gone as to be unrestorable. We got to this one just in time. these were in un-climate controlled conditions for more than 60 years.
This model appears earlier during the restoration process in chapter ten of " The Rogers Collection of Dockyard Models At the U.S. Naval Academy Museum
Third Rates Vol. II, by Grant H. Walker, SeaWatch Books

By the way That thread title I got wrong. She's a third rate.

Pete
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HPeterB,
As a remnant of such tales of persecution, survival and migration largely from eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement, whose ancestors and history vanished, consumed by the horrors of pogroms and holocaust, I am deeply moved by your post regarding your family history. Thanks for sharing that. Congratulations on your new baby grand daughter! Go ahead and write the book, or pass along the outline. Who knows? Perhaps your new grand daughter will pick up the thread.
Pete
 
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Peter Gutterman said:
HPeterB,
As a remnant of such tales of persecution, survival and migration largely from eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement, whose ancestors and history vanished, consumed by the horrors of pogroms and holocaust, I am deeply moved by your post regarding your family history. Thanks for sharing that. Congratulations on your new baby grand daughter! Go ahead and write the book, or pass along the outline. Who knows? Perhaps your new grand daughter will pick up the thread.
Pete
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My granddaughter will be an amalgam of many cultures and ethnicities. My hope for her is that, as you so poignantly pointed out, she will pick up that thread and keep the tapestry evolving. I’m confident that my son and daughter in law will help her.
 
HpeterB, shota70 and Jimsky, Something to which we evidently can all relate. I'm a fan of "Finding Your Roots" on PBS.
I venture to guess that that is a motivating factor for all of us interested in our histories, national and personal, and building our models, which is our form of story telling, and passing on our passion for the legacy of our histories, as evidenced by the many rich and fascinating posts on this forum, just this weekend, from around the world. We are all connected in that evolving tapestry of which you so eloquently speak.
 
Peter Gutterman said:
HpeterB, shota70 and Jimsky, Something to which we evidently can all relate. I'm a fan of "Finding Your Roots" on PBS.
I venture to guess that that is a motivating factor for all of us interested in our histories, national and personal, and building our models, which is our form of story telling, and passing on our passion for the legacy of our histories, as evidenced by the many rich and fascinating posts on this forum, just this weekend, from around the world. We are all connected in that evolving tapestry of which you so eloquently speak.
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Story telling has been a staple of my adult life. My first exposure was working on a film on a European study tour in 1968. Came home after 6 weeks of travel, exposure to 7 countries, 7 different cultures and a new found passion to become a cinematographer. (I was 19 at the time) Eventually I realized that I could blend two passions together and become a tv news cameraman/storyteller. I was off and running. My parents, children of the Depression, couldn’t imagine how I would make money at it. Their idea of success was to become a teacher with a civil service job. My idea…. My own path. Eventually I would have the job that I wanted at the company I wanted to work for. (Lots of guardian angels helping me to get there). Working for a news organization like ABC in New York gives one access to people, places, opportunities to do good while being compensated pretty well. My future granddaughter is a direct descendant of two people who met at work and told stories. Still telling stories after 42 years. Btw… I used the cachet of the job to help people in need. One particular episode was doing a freezing weather/no heat story in the Bronx where I met an elderly woman living in an apartment without heat. She was a Holocaust survivor who spoke very little English. When I realized that all she had was a cloth coat, I went back to my truck and grabbed my spare down vest and brought it back to her. Next day I called a person I knew at Jewish Family Services and asked her to check in on the woman.
It all comes down to being able to tell a good story. I didn’t do anything special I just made a match between the haves and the have nots.
 
Wow. Lots to tell! Just celebrated my 44th Anniversary! Once, when asked "How does a crafts man make a living?" by a journalist in the Washingtonian Magazine, a custom furniture maker replied: "Marry well!" Proved to be good advice.;)
Glad to make a new friend. I'll catch up with you on the mail option.
Pete
 
Peter Gutterman said:
Wow. Lots to tell! Just celebrated my 44th Anniversary! Once, when asked "How does a crafts man make a living?" by a journalist in the Washingtonian Magazine, a custom furniture maker replied: "Marry well!" Proved to be good advice.;)
Glad to make a new friend. I'll catch up with you on the mail option.
Pete
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A mantra that I live by: “Make friends, not enemies!”
 
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