A Madison man was stunned to find boxes of old engraving plates in his shed, one of which might include a rare portrait of John F. Kennedy while he was campaigning for president.
Mike Rodgers has an enthusiasm that can only be described as chipper. He greets you with a big smile and a handshake and his enthusiasm extends to the story he has to tell.
Shortly after moving his mother, Louise, from Lubbock in west Texas where the family is from after the death of his father, Rodgers looked in a box that had been damaged by water.
“I don’t think any of us knew what was in the box. It had basically been moved from one shed to another shed,” Rodgers said with a smile.
Inside, Rodgers found a piece of history, a well-preserved portrait of JFK taken when he was campaigning to become president that was taken by his father. Rodgers said it is significant, not only because of the subject matter, but because it is, as far as he knows, the only existing portrait of JFK shot west of the Mississippi.
“I’ll never forget my dad got a phone call form the editor and he said he had to go take pictures of guy named John F. Kennedy the next Monday,” Rodgers said.
The discovery led him to several heavy boxes filled with an estimated 450 zinc photo engravings, many slathered in dried newspaper, from his fathers business.
Swain Rodgers was a master engraver and professional photographer in west Texas. He operated the Art Craft Engraving Company in Lubbock from 1948-1972. His biggest client was the Avalanche Journal, a local newspaper at the time. His father’s company made engravings from photographs so that they could be printed onto broadsheet newspaper.
450 is a large number to sift through and many of the engravings need the dried newspaper to be cleaned off of their surface, but Rodgers is hopeful that the engraving of the JFK portrait is in this collection.
“But underneath all this there are perfectly intact pictures,” Rodgers said pointing at the crud on one of his plates.
Rodgers said he is not prepared to go through the process of cleaning until he can find a working printing press he could use to make use of these engravings.
“I just need something like a Vandercook proof press that I can use to see what is on these,” Rodgers said.
With prints of the pictures Rodgers can match the engravings to specific events and possibly specific newspaper articles. From there he wants to get his collection appraised and see if he can sell or donate them to a museum, archive or university in Texas.
These probably wont be that interesting to anybody around here, but I think these would be very valuable to someone in Texas,” Rodgers said. “I would like to sell them but even if I end up donating them I need to know how much they are worth.”
Rodger’s boxes of engravings are “full of firsts.” Based on notes written on the back by his father, he knows some include pictures of the first irrigation system in west Texas from 1920, pictures of new theaters and new government officials.
His collection also includes rare photographs of the Nicollet Hotel, a historic building in Lubbock that has long since been demolished.
Rodgers learned his father’s trade and familiarized himself with the business. Since he was young he would accompany his father on his shoots. He had to miss JFK, but says he got to see Elvis Presley play on a trailer in front of a car dealership before the King was famous when he was 14.
“I don’t think dad kept those pictures but they may be in this collection,” Rodgers said.
1972 was the year his father’s work became obsolete when the local paper was sold to the Morris Communications in Georgia and the newspaper world switched to “cold type” done by a computer. Rodgers moved on to another career but the interest never left him. In his possession, in addition to his father’s engravings, he has two incredibly old newspapers including a New York Times from the Civil War.
Rodgers lives in Madison with his wife Sherron Rodgers.
