The Bill Lewis & Schmidt Family Collection

CONSERVATION & CAPTURE

Grant year: 2023

Grant category: Al Larvick Regional Grant

Grant recipient: Kayla Schmidt

Collection title: The Bill Lewis & Schmidt Family Collection

Primary maker(s):  William L. Schmidt

Original format: Regular 8mm film, VHS videotape, audio recordings

Circa: 1949 - c. 1990s

Collection size: 6 reels 8mm film; 3 VHS videotapes; 5 open reel 1/4” magnetic tapes; 4 audio cassette tapes

Grant support: Cleaning and repair and digital capture of approximately half of the overall film collection

Digital capture format: Films scanned to 10bit Uncompressed .MOV; VHS digitized to SD definition at 10bit Uncompressed .MOV ; audio to 24bit/96kHz Broadcast WAV & MP3 @ 192kbps

Lab: The MediaPreserve

Status:  In-progress

Online Access: Coming soon

Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International: Coming soon

GRANTEE

Kayla Schmidt is a writer, collector, roller skater, rabble-rouser, and amateur archivist. She grew up in Minot, North Dakota, in the house built by her grandparents--William “Bill” and Margaret “Proxie” Schmidt. It’s the same house her dad grew up in--a midcentury ranch style home with a large Midwestern basement full of the treasures left behind by preceding generations. It was well into the 2000s before the rotary phone in the basement was finally disconnected. Surrounded by these artifacts and wood paneling, it’s no coincidence that Kayla possesses some of her grandmother’s traits: a love of independence, a cold beer, and costume jewelry. She hopes that the digitization of the materials from this collection will help her identify how she would have connected with her grandfather, Bill.

Kayla and her twin sister, Kristin were born in 1990 (fraternal; Kayla older by one minute). They are the daughters of Proxie and Bill’s son James “Jim” Schmidt. While Bill was still alive long enough to meet the twins and Ryan (son of Proxie and Bill’s first daughter, Karen), he passed while they were all still infants. He never met his four additional grandchildren. All the kids of this generation grew up hearing stories about their “Grandpa Bill'' and gathered that he must have been a loving figure with a habit for correcting grammar and pronunciation; a penchant for playing pranks; and a dynamic personality for someone married to Grandma Proxie (who has always been a firecracker).

Kayla has always loved a good story. She earned her MA in Creative Nonfiction and Biography at the University of East Anglia in 2015. She enjoys writing about the mundane things that are universal, making use of puns and pop culture, and using excessive commas, because she can. She’s found herself working for humanities and arts councils, for human and reproductive rights organizations, for nonprofits and libraries and odd freelancing jobs. She is currently located in Bismarck, the middle of everywhere. She continues to dig through family boxes in the basement, always looking for a new treasure or another story.

FILMMAKER

Bill Lewis was known as a “prominent newscaster and radio personality” and an “announcer, philosopher, and good cheer man” with a “rich, mellow voice” in newspaper articles and letters from colleagues. From personal family photos and accessible home videos, he was quick-witted, a tinkerer, and a bit of a jokester.

William Louis Schmidt was born into a family of wordsmiths. His grandfather, William “Wilhelm” Schmidt was a theologian, professor, Lutheran pastor, and the author of several books. His father, Carl Rudolph “Rudy” Schmidt, worked in the Ramsey County district court as a clerk and was known as the “Bard of the Courthouse” whose poetry was often published in local papers. William “Bill” Schmidt was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 16,1924. His tall, lanky frame is easy to spot in school photos of the Johnson High School rowing team. He graduated high school in 1942 where his school paper, The Courier, noted that Bill resembled “a second Clark Gable.” Bill immediately joined the Army Air Corps and served in Italy and Africa in the 416th Squadron, 99th Bombardment Group during World War II. Upon his return, Bill attended the University of Minnesota and the Brown School of Radio. In 1946 he took a job in Minot, North Dakota to work as an announcer for the radio station, KLPM, where he adopted the moniker “Bill Lewis.”

In 1957, Bill married Margaret “Proxie” Rudbeck (“Proxie” was derived from the joke that her bright blonde hair must have been the result of bleaching with peroxide). Bill and Proxie had their first child, James “Jim” in 1958, followed by daughter, Karen, in 1960 and daughter, Karla, in 1961. In 1967, Bill became KLPM’s program director and assistant manager. In 1976, KLPM was sold and became KKOA. Bill continued working as the news director for KKOA. In 1981, Bill Lewis retired from his decades in broadcasting. A plaque from the radio station staff celebrated Bill’s many skills including: “how to choke down a peanut butter sandwich at 7:41:30 every day for thirty years” and “how to shame a fake fireplace with a 10 pound Northern.”

Bill’s many interests had woven their way through his professional career; he’d periodically leave broadcasting to try his hand at other industries: working for Singer Sewing Machine Co., operating as an independent oil and gas lease broker, and (the likely source of the many photos and film reels) managing a local photo shop in downtown Minot. Bill incorporated his family members into his work. Whether that was bringing home new camera models and capturing family moments; having his daughters narrate local radio commercials; playing his son’s “rock” records on air to spark conversation for his daily call-in show segment; or having Proxie’s mother, Ida Rudbeck, translate her Norwegian newspapers into English to source news stories for the region’s listeners--most of whom are of Scandinavian descent.

A passionate member of his congregation, fraternal societies, and community organizations; a meticulous keeper of his lawn; and an avid fisherman, Bill Lewis’ voice was easily recognizable and his contributions as a news broadcaster was well respected for those in Minot who listened to his programs for decades. On April 13, 1991, Bill passed away as the result of pancreatic cancer. Bill’s family has now grown to include seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren (the eldest of which, Lewis, is named in his honor and is already showing signs of chatterbox tendencies). While these next generations did not get the chance to get to know Bill, the preservation of his many photographs, film reels, and audio tapes, will serve to give them--and the general public--a better idea of how he saw the world and how the nature of radio broadcasting, reporting, and capturing footage has changed. This collection is derived from duality: Bill Lewis the radio persona and just Bill--a man who wasn’t afraid to act a little silly for the camera’s intended audience--his own family. It was noted that Bill had come down with “show business fever” in 1949 once he began his radio career and never recovered. Let’s hope his fever is catching.

COLLECTION

This collection encompasses the personal and professional life of “Bill Lewis” and the Schmidt family. It is the family joke that Schmidts are collectors and savers--but not the most apt organizers or record keepers. The family has always been vaguely aware their old family film reels, most often captured by Bill, existed in a box “somewhere.” When the family matriarch, Margaret “Proxie” made the decision to downsize from her condo, her and Bill’s children--James “Jim”, Karen, and Karla-- and eldest granddaughter, Kayla Schmidt, gathered to help clear out her storage. Bill was a diligent photographer and videographer. His work on the radio as “Bill Lewis” allowed him to capture sound as well. Proxie’s family had been in the Minot, North Dakota area for several generations. Photo albums were located with pictures dating back a century. The reels discovered in her basement aren't as clear as to what they contain.

Proxie is in her 90s and Bill would have turned 100 this year. Proxie is as sharp as ever, but sentimentality was never her style, thus, the items in this collection are all “best guesses.” The film reels most likely contain footage of their family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Proxie and her mother, Ida Rudbeck, both worked as telephone operators and lived in downtown Minot. Ida, Proxie, and Bill lived together in a house on Minot’s Beacon Street which overlooked the building of the Town & Country Shopping Mall, which was considered the state’s biggest mall at the time ( late 1960s). Bill and Proxie later built their family home on a hill overlooking the whole of the “Magic City.” Their children recall Bill being a big ham for the camera, so while the footage hopefully contains imagery of a midwestern city in midcentury America, we also suspect a few hijinks.  

Other items are believed to be radio recordings (commercials, news segments, interviews) from Bill’s work as a broadcaster. One tape is labeled “Bill Lewis 1949” which coincides with Bill’s taking on his radio moniker and moving to Minot from St. Paul, Minnesota to work for the station KLPM. Other tapes contain mentions of either KLPM or KKOA, the two stations he worked for. Other items include cassette tapes that also most likely contain his work for the radio, one that contains the recording of his final broadcast in 1981, and the recording of Bill’s funeral service in 1991. While audio recordings aren’t as striking as historical footage, Bill’s voice was highly recognizable in Minot during his decades on the radio, and the Schmidt family hopes to preserve his voice and his work. The nature of news broadcasting, the role of radio stations, and the concept of a “local personality” have significantly shifted in a digital, global world. These recordings--whatever may have been captured and has survived multiple moves and damp basements--have the potential to showcase a distinct snapshot of a community, a family, and one man’s work from a very different moment in time.