January 6, 2006
Dear Cousin and Descendant of Charles Henry Wheelright Foster:
Greetings! We are your cousins Derry Allen, Adam Foster, Reg Foster, Nancy Morris, Roger Warner, and are reaching out to you with exciting news. We are also appealing to you for your participation and support.
About 75 minutes of original, uncut 16mm silent home movies dated 1928-1945 havv surfaced. They were filmed by Hilda and Reginald Foster (offspring of CHWF) at various family gatherings at Charles River, Ship's Cabin and other locations. The celleloid is still well preserved and the scenes/images contained therein are priceless. The various characters, your relatives -- although small children and young adults at the time -- are instantly recognizable by present-day family members who have seen excerpts from the films.
Like anyone's home movies, the material can be a bit challenging:
• The scenes, though marvelous, need editing (many repetitive scenes, bad lighting, etc.),
• Except for one's own immediate family, it is hard to identify other people in the films as well as locations.
The Hilda Foster Film Project
The group of undersigned cousins banded together last Fall to make this wonderful treasure available to everyone in the family, and to preserve the images from the original film for generations to come. Working together, we have developed a proposal with seven overall goals:
1. Create a high quality, digital master copy of the original celluloid film.
2. Create an edited version which cuts out all the bad quality, repetitious material and adds captions that identify people and locations.
3. Conduct "oral history" interviews with senior family members as they watch the film and add their reflections to the sound track.
4. Tie all of the above together with excerpts from the CHWF diaries, Nancy Morris's book of Aunt Hilda memoirs and family tree information.
5. Provide DVD copies of both the uncut original and the edited versions to all interested family members.
6. Donate the 16mm original film to the Massachusetts Historical Society to be stored in their climate controlled film vault.
7. Use all of the above to develop new, future projects including the possibility of another reunion (the last one was held in 1978: "Mabel and Charlies' Chickens".
To get a glimpse of our vision, we've created a prototype of the edited version. You can view it by going to the following web site: www.chwfoster.com
The Budget & Massachusetts Historical Society Matching Grant
We have costed out the project and have established a budget of $10,000. With the help of Henry Foster (CHWF II), we proposed the project to Peter Drummey, manager of the Foster Fund of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Peter is the MHS Librarian who supported the effort to transcibe the CHWF diaries into MS-Word and record them on a CD-rom.
we amaredelighted to report that our proposal was accepted and the project has received the endorsement of the MHS. We were successful in obtaining a $5,000 matching grant to fund half of the budget.
The Appeal!
We need to raise another $5,000 from family members to match the MHS grant and complete the project. Any amount, small or large, would be much appreciated. In return, we'll send you two DVDs, one with the original, unedited film and the second edited version with the soundtrack, captions, etc. Send your contribution to:
Hilda Foster Film Project
c/o Reginald C. Foster
168 Allens Point Road
Marion, MA 02738
Finally, although we have the eMail addresses of a great number of the clan, if you think we might have overlooked someone, please forward it to other family members who might be interested. We'd also appreciate it if you could forward us any eMail address changes so we may keep the Foster family directory up-to-date.
Best Regards,
Derry Allen
Adam Foster
Reg Foster
Nancy Morris
Roger Warner
January 4, 2006
P. S. Also, if you have any additional reels of film from the era gathering dust in your attic, could you let us know. Thanks!