Summer 1998

Thomas Archibald Stewart died on March 11, 1998, at home in Newburgh, New York. He was born in 1902. His local paper called him a man who gave with "amazing foresight, leadership, fairness, generosity, devotion and love to the community."

This describes his relationship with film preservation, too. His life work on 16mm film and video, which he and his family donated to Northeast Historic Film, is one of the outstanding moving-image records in the archives. His foresight in helping see these materials preserved sets a standard for service to future generations.

Archie Stewart was delightful to work with. Answering the phone, he would say, "Old Man Stewart here." His enthusiasms, for aviation, for automobiles, and for Maine, are evident in the moving images. It is said that Stewart and his father had the oldest Buick agency in the world. He kept an astonishing record of his Broadway Garage, and of the family cars and their voyages, beginning in the 1920s.

In 1937 Stewart wrote an article for Amateur Movie Makers, the magazine of the Amateur Cinema League, titled "A talkie movie maker speaks." In it he recounts his experiments with amateur sound. "I have a friend, a Maine guide, who is, in his part of the country, as celebrated a story teller, humorist and droll character as was Will Rogers to the rest of the world. I made a four hundred foot sound reel of some of this friend's tales and jokes, that our group loves so much."

Stewart's film of the guide's stories is invaluable. But so too are his film and sound experiments at home with members of his family. He filmed everyday things like a children's tea party and a toddler dancing with the television's Romper Room. In such scenes there is magic and real life.