Lincoln photographer seeking to wrap up documentary of ‘Sixties Survivors’ before they’re gone

LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) — Bill Ganzel survived the 1960s.

He researched how long it would take Russian missiles to rain down on his family’s home in Waverly, grieved the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and joined demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Now, the 74-year-old photographer and former executive producer with Nebraska Public Television is seeking to wrap up a nearly two-decade-long project to document how other “survivors” of the ’60s fared.

“So much happened in the ’60s,” Ganzel said. “There was so much uproar and upheaval and frankly, violence.”

His project is called “Sixties Survivors,” and so far, Ganzel has tracked down and interviewed more than 50 people across the country, from Seattle to Selma.

Look magazine photos

He identified his subjects after scanning years of editions of L00k magazine, a biweekly publication that emphasized photography in documenting American life from 1937 to 1971.

The list includes the first Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War, an anti-war protester who presented a flower to bayonet-wielding soldiers, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and Native American activist John Trudell.

Before they died, Ganzel interviewed and photographed former Deputy U.S. Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, who was fired by President Richard Nixon amid the Watergate scandal, at his office in Seattle. And he sat down with JFK’s speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, who wrote the phrase “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

He has interviewed the famous, like actress Ali McGraw and comedian/activist Dick Gregory, and regular people who became part of history because of the images in the magazine.

Now he’s seeking to add up to 10 more survivors — including a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy — who he has reached on the East Coast during a trip next month.

‘Re-photograph’ project

The journey will allow him to attend the opening of an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art that features one of his images from a previous “rephotography” project, “Dust Bowl Descent,” which focused on subjects of Dorothea Lange’s famous photo collection. 

But it will also allow him to reach the final subjects for his “Sixties Survivors” project.

“I have to get to them before they die,” Ganzel said.

Why the ’60s?

He said it was a pivotal decade that has molded American society for decades, just like the Depression era of the 1930s and the war-torn years of the 1940s.

‘Culture wars started 50 years ago’

“The culture wars we’re dealing with today started 50 years ago,” Ganzel said. 

President Kennedy was assassinated during the decade, as was his brother, Bobby, and Martin Luther King. Television news provided a front-row seat in front of the Vietnam War. And there were fiery riots on the streets over civil rights and the draft.

Ganzel said it’s no wonder so many young people of his generation decided to “drop out” in a counter-culture revolution of drugs and free spirits.

“They saw it as a brutal society,” he said.

Ganzel, who owns the entire collection of Look magazines, said he scoured the pages of the large-format publication for photos and stories that interested him, then began the sometimes years-long process of trying to reconnect with the subjects of those stories.

A tough one was the civil rights protester who carried the American flag in the famous “Bloody Sunday” march in Alabama from Montgomery to Selma in 1965.

The flag bearer, Lewis Marshall, then 15, was not identified in a photo in Look. But Ganzel said that while he was in Alabama interviewing another subject for his project, he asked about the flag bearer and was given a lead.

Flag bearer discovered sculpture

He said that after he was able to discern that Marshall lived in Montgomery, it took two years of phone calls before Marshall answered a call. Eventually, Ganzel said he had to knock on Marshall’s front door before he got an interview and a photograph.

The story got even better — Ganzel was able to take Marshall to a National Park Service museum near Montgomery where, unbeknownst to Marshall, a sculptor had used his image as inspiration for a bronze statue of a flag bearer.

“This is fantastic … to know it’s me,” a nearly speechless Marshall says when he first views the sculpture in a video shot by Ganzel.

The goal of “Sixties Survivors,” Ganzel said, is to update the history of people who lived through the tumultuous decade.

He said he considered Look the best magazine of its day, and when the publication closed, 3.5 million images were donated to the Library of Congress, creating a rich source of background for his project.

His work is part of the “rephotography” movement, a way to produce “then and now” images of famous places and people.

The “Sixties” project, Ganzel said, seemed like a logical extension of his Dust Bowl project. He said he’s been fortunate to get several grants and donations to finance his latest project, which has required trips across the country, but is soliciting additional donations via GoFundMe.com for this trip east next month.

The photographs, he hopes, will be put into a book. The video interviews he’s done may become a documentary — possibly with his old employer, public television — or a podcast.

All of his work will be donated to the Library of Congress, to add to the texture of its collections about the ’60s.

“I feel a mission to tell all of these people’s stories,” Ganzel said. “They gave me their time, they opened up their lives — about what went on and what’s been going on since.”

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