PASCO, Wash. – Sharing stories from decades ago can be difficult without pictures to help remember them. The new archive room in the Columbia Basin College library is giving former students a way to remember and even show their history.
Dallas Barnes went to CBC from 1959 to 1961. He still talks with his teammates from the basketball team to look at some of their own pictures.
“Every year we get together and get out our yearbook and reminisce over what it was like when we were this age,” he said.
Now he has a way to show his granddaughter Ashley Chamba some of his life in the same place 60 years ago.
“There’s quite a few generations between me and my granddaughter,” he said.
Chamba said it’s nice to see what her grandpa was like back when he was her age now, able to see his life and even some of the similarities in how they act by looking at old interviews in newspaper clippings kept on the shelves of the archive.
“I didn’t know that we kind of talk the same or I got this lingo from him, or we have the same mindset,” she said.
Sarah North, Director of Library Services said the scrapbooks and massive amounts of pictures were sitting in a box on campus and might have been thrown away.
North said now they are giving students a primary source for what CBC was like in the past for personal and academic research, including term papers.
“It’s just really wonderful to see people sort of relive their history,” she said.
Barnes said he’s excited to see his granddaughter following his footsteps.
“Reflecting on the past is always a good thing, sort of share some good days especially when you have the present to enjoy as a product of that past,” he said.
