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Photo restoration. How it helps others and me.
STORY TOOLS 
More from Conejo ValleyShortly after retiring in 2000 my wife, Margaret O'Brien, a film actress since childhood, mentioned to me that many of her older pictures had faded or had gotten damaged. I told her that there were computer programs that could restore photos to their original or even better condition.
"That's wonderful," she replied. "Why don't you learn how to do that?"
"Okay," I said. "I don't have anything to do tomorrow."
Well, tomorrow turned out to be several weeks and months of studying manuals, attending seminars, and practice, practice, practice.
My wife's childhood photos have now all been restored and even preserved on CD or DVD. In addition, I have been restoring photographs for many motion picture and television stars. One of them is a dear friend, Rose Marie, of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Hollywood Squares".
During the late 1920's and early 1930's Rose Marie was known as "Baby Rose Marie", a recording star and popular radio personality with her own weekly show. She also headlined a number of vaudeville shows during the summer hiatus.
At one theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about 1930, she had a photo taken of her while sitting at her dressing table looking into the mirror in front of her. Behind her was the emcee of the show who was also a popular singer. The photo was 11x14 inches and had been crammed into smaller containers causing it to be cracked all around. In addition, the once black and white image was now closer to sepia.
When I returned the restored photo to Rose Marie she broke out in tears and said, "I thought I had lost it forever."
The emcee in the photo shortly thereafter went to Hollywood and joined the super-star ranks as actor, singer, and later Director, Dick Powell.
The photo restoration work that I do brings great joy to others, but it's even more meaningful to me because I restored something that might have been lost and I made someone so happy. Perhaps that's "the selfishness of giving."
If you'd like to see some of my work you can log onto www.roystorations.com. Or you can also contact me at rttoca@roadrunner.com
Roy T. Thorsen
Thousand Oaks, CA
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