My uncle sent this to me. A GM retiree, he still lives in the Rochester NY area, which has seen the presence of Eastman Kodak shrink from the cornerstone of
the area economy to a much smaller company struggling to stay afloat. George Eastman's mansion on East Avenue is still a wonderful museum dedicated to photographic history as well as a literal snapshot of his era, and
the Dryden Theater still thrives as a wonderful venue for acting, directing & film history series. This author portrays Kodak as dead; it
isn't quite...but it seems to be on the verge. Like many Rochesterians and George Eastman fans, I wish it could recover from its suicide spiral. - Editor
Those words were some of the
last penned by George Eastman. He included them in his suicide note.
They mark an ignoble end to a noble life, the
leave taking of a truly great man.
The same words could now be said for the company he left behind.
My work
is done.
For all intents and purposes, the Eastman Kodak Company is through. It has been mismanaged financially, technologically
and competitively. For 20 years, its leaders have foolishly spent down the patrimony of a century's prosperity. One of America's
bedrock brands is about to disappear, the Kodak moment has passed.
It is as wrong as suicide, and, like suicide, is
the result of horrifically poor decisions, a fatal wound of self-infliction.
But George Eastman is not how he died,
and the Eastman Kodak Company is not how it is being killed. Though the ends be needless and premature, they must not be allowed
to overshadow the greatness that came before.
History testifies of the greatness of George Eastman.
It must
also bear witness of the greatness of Kodak.
Few companies have done so much good for so many people, or defined and
lifted so profoundly the spirit of a nation and perhaps the world. It is impossible to understand the 20th Century without
recognizing the role of the Eastman Kodak Company.
Kodak served mankind through entertainment, science, national defense
and the stockpiling of family memories..
Kodak took us to the top of Mount Suribachi and to the Sea of Tranquility.
It introduced us to the merry old Land of Oz and to stars from Charlie Chaplin to John Wayne, and Elizabeth Taylor to Tom
Hanks.
It showed us the shot that killed President Kennedy, and his brother bleeding out on a kitchen floor, and a
fallen Martin Luther King Jr. on the hard balcony of a Memphis motel.
When that sailor kissed the nurse, and when the
spy planes saw missiles in Cuba, Kodak was the eyes of a nation. From the deck of the Missouri to the grandeur of Monument
Valley, Kodak took us there. Virtually every significant image of the 20th Century is a gift to posterity from the Eastman
Kodak Company.
In an era of easy digital photography, when we can take a picture of anything at any time, we cannot
imagine what life was like before George Eastman brought photography to people. Yes, there were photographers, and for relatively
large sums of money they would take stilted pictures in studios and formal settings.
But most people couldn't afford
photographs, and so all they had to remember distant loved ones, or earlier times of their lives, was memory. Children
could not know what their parents had looked like as young people, grandparents far away might never learn what their grandchildren
looked like.
Eastman Kodak allowed memory to move from the uncertainty of recollection, to the permanence of a photograph.
But
it wasn't just people whose features were savable; it was events, the sacred and precious times that families cherish. The
Kodak moment, was humanity's moment. It was that place in time where there is joy, where life has its ultimate purpose..
From
the earliest round Brownie pictures, to the squares of 126 and the rectangles of 35mm, Kodak let the fleeting moments of birthdays
and weddings, picnics and parties, be preserved and saved. It allowed for the creation of the most egalitarian art form. Lovers
could take one another's pictures, children were photographed walking out the door on the first day of school, the person
releasing the shutter decided what was worth recording, and hundreds of millions of such decisions were made.
And for
centuries to come, those long dead will smile and dance and communicate to their unborn progeny. Family history will be not
only names on paper, but smiles on faces.
Thanks to Kodak.
The same Kodak that served is in space and on countless
battlefields. This company went to war for the United States and played an important part in surveillance and reconnaissance.
It also went to the moon and everywhere in between.
All while generating a cash flow that employed countless thousands
of salt-of-the-earth people, and which allowed the company's founder to engage in some of the most generous philanthropy in
America's history. Not just in Kodak's home city of Rochester, New York, but in Tuskegee and London, and at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. He bankrolled two historically black colleges, fixed the teeth of Europe's poor, and quietly did
good wherever he could.
And Kodak made that possible.
While doing good, Kodak did very well.
And all
the Kodakers over all the years are essential parts of that monumental legacy. They prospered a great company, but they -
with that company - blessed the world.
That is what we should remember about the Eastman Kodak Company.
Like
its founder, we should remember how it lived, not how it died.
My work is done.
Perhaps that is true of Kodak.
If
it is, we should be grateful that such a company ever existed. We should rejoice in and show respect for that existence.
History
will forget the small men who have scuttled this company.
