(erielack) Re: John Willever

[ronrice <ronrice_@_optonline.net>]

Thanks. Sad news.Will Get you Ken Miller's email when I get home.Mac apparently called and left a message on my home phone also so he probably called Ken 
Sent from my smartphone w not so smart spell-check. Pls forgive errors. RR
- -------- Original message --------From: Robert Bahrs <rrbahrs_@_gmail.com> Date: 8/29/17  9:53 AM  (GMT-05:00) To: A new EL list <erielack@lists.railfan.net> Subject: John Willever 
The Lackawanna Railroad lost its most honored and knowledgeable
historians last night.  John Willever
came home from the assisted living facility he had been in for three weeks to
die in the house he had lived in his whole life.  With johns passing goes more knowledge of the
Lackawanna than anyone can possible image. 



John and Alvin Smith are the two individuals that brought the Lackawanna glass
plate negative collection to the attention of the world, with their many trips
to Syracuse University, and their sharing of the prints they purchases, with
the world. When I visited John last week I brought a lap top with a thumb drive
of the Glass Plates.  We looked at more
images in two hours than John could on a weeks stay at Syracuse. His mind was
sharp, and he picked out some places in NJ that I had no idea where they were. 


John grew up and
lived his whole life in Washington, NJ. He and Alvin would spend evenings in
the old tower there,  hang around the
station, and polish the brass on steam engine 988 as it laid over in the yard
at night. Both were die hard steam fans, who never took to diesels. At 98 John
certainly has done all he could do to every group and individual that ever
asked for his assistance. He was my mentor, and a cherished friend, who now leaves
a void in my heart and an absence in my brain when I will need a Lackawanna
question answered.
Bob Bahrs

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