Gun Dog Magazine

[Kevin McCormack]

Some things to think about while musing & perusing this and Mike's original thread:

- having copies of ALL the records (in hard copy) would involve a massive logistics consideration in preservation and storage (e.g., attention to temperature, relative humidity, etc.), not to mention a dedicated space for same;

. Consider that the PGCA 'research team' that spent a solid week of 8-10 hr. days M-F at the Remington archives in Ilion in 1999 at final count had Xeroxed a total of 33, 600 and some-odd sheets of 11x17 legal sized paper. And these were only the Order Books that were copied!

-This total did not include the copies made of the existing IBM cards, nor did it include the 17 Order Books that yours truly and the previous Executive Director of the PGCA had copied the summer before on the very first trip to Ilion to copy the records. And of course it did not include the Stock Books, which are physically 2-3 times the size in format of the Order Books.

- the anecdotal destruction of some of the records in a fire stretches to fabrication the concept that such a fire occurred seemingly without any note or historical reference on the part of Remington or the sporting goods press and trade newspapers, who were ever-eager to note such mundane things as a change in the type of primers used in shotshell production; e.g., "FIRE AT THE ARMS!! PRICELESS RECORDS DESTROYED!!!;

- The one confirmed story of destruction of some of the records (Stock Books, according to eyewitnesses) that is universally recognized as true was when the basement of the Ilion works was flooded due to a leaky roof (?), and some of the custodial staff laid the large-format Stock Books in stepping-stone fashion on the floor of the basement so people wouldn't get their feet wet. (At that time all the Parker record books were stored in the basement in large wooden crates that formerly held trap and skeet machines, drill presses, and other medium-sized shop equipment used in the Arms;

-the personage of "Tom Haas" should be easily verifiable through birth, death, shooting, and/or other public records. He may in fact be a real person instead of a fictitious character, but on the other hand may fall in to the ephemeral category similar to Simeon Udar, "Cat -faced boy of the Umatillas";

- similarly, "the woman in charge of the library" (Tom's wife) is probably a real person, but her tenure as keeper of the Remington Archives should also be quite easy to verify: Remington maintains an employee list of all such persons. To my knowledge, the only woman I ever heard of having been connected with the archives was a graduate student in Library Science that Dennis Sanita, who maintained the library at the time (late 1990s) , had hired to organize and catalog the Parker and early Remington records, photos, etc. Unfortunately for us all, funding for her grant tenure was not extended beyond her initial tour of duty, which I believe was less than 6 months.;

- Remington Arms has been bought and resold a number of times since we were fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to copy the records in the late 1990s. Nowadays, legalese is the language of communication and 'potential liability' is the linchpin of negotiations involving ANY request or interrogatory involving historical documents under their possession.

- Most of the 'old timers' who worked their way up in Remington corporate management are gone now. In place of their historical perspectives and firsthand accounts of what really went on there, we are lately offered tales of the "fourth Invincible", 4-gauge guns, the "Amish A-1 Special", and other 'possible' but outlandishly improbable scenarios, given what meager institutional memory is left.

Just some things to think about..........