By Dee Elwin and Clark Winsor
2023 is a special year for Poly, as our club is now 75 years old! A small committee has been working on ways to celebrate this event. We thought it would be of interest to share pieces of historical information about Poly and of some of its “Long-Timers” to post on our web page throughout the year. Many thanks to Clark Winsor for sharing his memories for this month’s posting.
Who was Bob Rittenhouse?
On January 28th, Poly’s Year-End Awards were revealed at our annual banquet. One of those awards is the Bob Rittenhouse Most Creative Award. Every year I’ve wondered who Bob Rittenhouse was and why we have an award in his name.
Bob Rittenhouse joined Poly in 1978 and became a very important member. He was club president three times and loved workshops, especially the ones that featured black-lighting, creating soap-bubbles, and portrait photography.
Whether he was president or not he always represented Poly at all the SCACC meetings. He also wrote a newsletter and mailed it to each member. The newsletter included competition scores of each meeting, along with a profile of new members. At year-end he took all accepted images and arranged for a camera club out of the state to judge the year-end slides. When the slides were returned he arranged Kodak slide trays for the year-end show, adding both music and voice to the show.
Bob, 84, passed away on August 9, 2012, after a courageous battle with cancer. In 2012, to honor his dedication to Poly, the Rittenhouse Award was created. Rick Wiley was the first recipient of this award.
A full list of all awards, currently maintained by Dan Palermo, can be found under Members Only, Competition Scores. The oldest entry is from 1992.
