The images are grainy and slightly out of focus, but four digitized reels of old 8mm film from the late 1950 and early 1960s are like priceless time in a bottle. The films were shot on the 8mm film camera owned by Earl J. Mulqueen Sr., my maternal grandfather. They were loaned by my Aunt Joanie so we could get them scanned and made into digital video for all to enjoy.

Seeing these silent moving images reminded me of the 1970 hit song Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce, although the video predates the song by at least seven years. It also made me think of the wonderful Kodak commercial song The Times of Your Life by Paul Anka:

“Look back at the joys and the sorrow.
Put them away in your mind.
Memories are time that we borrow.
To spend when we get to tomorrow.”

Even with the technical flaws, the video is amazing. I had never seen moving pictures of my Grandpa Earl, and I had just a few seconds of video showing my Grandma Mulqueen. This batch of 8mm film fixed all of that, giving us a peek back more than 50 years at a Christmas morning, a visit to the folks house in Cudahy and times at my parents house in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It also provides the first video I’ve seen of my Aunt Evelyn (Deutsch) Mulqueen, who died of brain cancer at age 33. That was more than a year before I was born. There are shots of Earl J. Mulqueen Jr., Evelyn and their six children. As you can read elsewhere on this blog, Earl was a war hero U.S. Marine who fought at Guadalcanal and Tarawa. He lost his leg in the West Loch Disaster in May 1944 at Pearl Harbor.

I found myself choking back tears to see video of my late father holding my older brother, David C. Hanneman, in the summer or fall of 1963. For the loved ones of all the dear souls who appear in the video, the images are like spun gold. You can enjoy the full 11 minutes 47 seconds below. [We’ve also added a second volume in the viewer at the bottom of the page.]