Local News

The Picture Man

Norsworthy: ‘Every photograph has a story behind it’

By Elizabeth Barrett

September 08, 2007

Pictures Wynne Norsworthy used to take of Norsworthy Feed Store customers have come back to haunt them and their families.

But in a good way.

For the last several months, Norsworthy has enlarged the photographs he first started snapping in 1966 and has given them to his subjects or their families.

“Many of them are dead now but I’ve known them all and there’s a story with every one of them,” he said.

Take for example, John McKenna of Arnold who used to take his daughter dancing.

Norsworthy recently took that daughter—now Joyce Lydic of Brady—a photograph he had of her father and she was overwhelmed.

“It’s moments like that are touching,” he said. “And it’s given me a lot of good feelings too.”

Some other photographic subjects and their stories Norsworthy mentioned included Milford Carlson who “was as good a lineman from Gothenburg High School that you ever saw,” Jack Dodd who went on to play football for the Huskers and Harold “Goog” Barnes who was a tremendous track and football athlete.

Then there was Red Adney who Norsworthy said didn’t quite fit in while growing up in Gothenburg.

“He went to Alaska and inside the Artic Circle where he built a cabin that had a little lake in front of it,” he said.

Alfred McDermott was Norworthy’s first picture. The calendar behind McDermott shows it was January 1966.

Those efforts paid off in a hunting and fishing lodge frequented by doctors and lawyers, Norsworthy said. Adney also guided expeditions.

Norsworthy figures he took more than 1,000 pictures from January 1966 into the 1970s when the store wall where he stapled his works of art became too full.

The hobby started, he said, after the feed store won an instamatic camera with a roll of film that was sent in the mail.

Alfred McDermott, who walked into the store that day, was Norsworthy’s first subject.

Most of the photographs were taken outside in front of the store.

Norsworthy remembers customers who wanted their picture taken.

“One guy came into the store and said his picture wasn’t on the wall,” Norsworthy recalled. “I told my dad I’d take one when he parked in front of the store, not on the other side of the street which was gravel.”

Norworthy has several photo albums where his photographic subjects are in alphabetical order.

The day the man parked in front of the store which made it easier for Norsworthy to carry and load the feed the man bought, he photographed the customer.

“I remember he posed like King Farouk,” Norsworthy said with a laugh about the legendary Egyptian ruler.

When the feed store moved from Highway 30 and Avenue G to south of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in 1985, he took the 4 x 3 1/2-inch pictures off the wall and placed them in albums.

The best thing about enlarging the pictures into 8 1/2 x 11-inch copies is realizing “all the fine quality of people we’ve had in this territory,” Norsworthy said.

“The quality of people here is unheralded—the best,” he said.

A native of Gothenburg, Norsworthy said his grandfather J.H. Norsworthy was the first homesteader north of town. J.H settled there in 1879 to raise cattle and buy hogs.

J.H. started the flour and feed store when he moved to town in 1908.

Norsworthy said he still has about 75 enlarged photographs to give away which can be challenging.

“A lot of the people aren’t home and I like to give them face to face,” he said.

Now retired, Norsworthy finds himself with time on his hands.

Finding new keepers of his portrait shots fills time and is rewarding.

“It’s a way to give back to them and people love it,” he said.