Frank Rollins’ Images Available To All
By JIM KEVLIN • The Freeman’s Journal
Edition of Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014
COOPERSTOWN
Frank Rollins joined Cooperstown High School in 1957 as a vocal teacher. That was his career.
But he also spent the next half-century with a camera around his neck recording village life, sports matches, graduations, school plays, weddings, community life, tens of thousands of images. That is his legacy.
He retired in 1974 from teaching, but continued shooting, with negatives piling up in the rooms of his bachelor’s house at Linden Avenue, a few steps away from the high school driveway.
By the time he passed on, last Dec. 2, at age 96, he had collaborated with NYSHA to ensure the images its historians consider the most significant would be preserved for posterity.
But thousands of photos, portraits, street scenes and just life on the shores of Otsego Lake, remain, certainly of value to individuals depicted and their loved ones, as well as citizens with affection for the cavalcade of life around here.
That was the conclusion of attorney Will Green, who’s handling the estate for the executor, Frank’s sister-in-law Kathleen Rollins in Longview, Wash., and county Treasurer Dan Crowell, the estate’s administrator.
“There are a lot of things of very low financial value, but high sentimental and communal value,” Crowell said the other day. “In some ways, it would have been very convenient and good if these things could have been archived. But archived sometimes means stored away; we can deliver them to the hands of people who value them most.”
So the plan is this: Green and Crowell have obtained permission to use the second-floor ballroom at 22 Main St. This weekend, Nov. 15-16, they, with the help of Janet Erway, Cooperstown Art Association executive director, and Cooperstown Graduate Program volunteers, will organize the thousands of images by year and subject.
“If you graduated in 1986 and you know Frank took your yearbook photo, there will be a column for yearbook photos and a row for 1986,” Crowell explained, taking a break from sorting the images with Erway in the basement of the Green & Green law firm.
The next weekend: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22, and 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23, the public is invited to examine the images and, if someone finds something he or she likes, to buy it for a nominal sum, 25 cents maybe.
Half of the proceeds will go to the sister-in-law, per Frank’s will, and the other half will be split among organizations designated in the will: the Friends of Bassett, the CGP, the Village Library, the fire department, SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music and the Earlville Free Library in Rollins’ native village.
Leaving Earlville, Frank graduated from Potsdam Normal School in 1941, majoring in percussion. He would teach for the next 33 years, first in Oakfield, then Cobleskill before moving here.
Among his other claims to fame was conducting the orchestra in “Oklahoma!”, the inaugural performance in the new high school’s Sterling Auditorium. He also painted, tuned pianos and learned to fly.
Growing up, his mother had instructed him that, in those days, teachers needed a side income.
At age 10, Frank had redeemed a punch-card in Syracuse grocery store for a camera and roll of film, so that got him started. At Cobleskill, he worked for Cliff Van Dervort’s professional photography studio. Locally, he collaborated at various points with other photographers, including Lady Ostapeck and Leila Durkin.
He was living in the Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home at the time of his death.
