Herm

You guys heard me talk about Hermene Schwarz last week, and learned a little about her life.  Well, as I was editing me paper, it amazed me how just one individual could impact the history of a community.  While researching Hermene, I looked a lot at her sister's collection, the Josephine Schwarz Collection.  The amount of letters included in this collection makes me wonder how local historians will research in the future.  With so many methods of communication being 'born digital,' I wonder if we will be able to preserve enough information to figure out what meant the most to people.  What I'm referring to is that Hermene wrote to her family almost every day while she was in Chicago and as much as she was able while abroad.  From the tone of her letters, it was evident that family was very much an important part of her life and that she was very close with Josephine.  Additionally, Hermene kept a number of scrapbooks and I wonder how will local historians tackle the interpretation of photographs in the future-especially since so much has been uploaded to social media channels as Facebook, Twitter, and any other site.  Hermene was one of the co-founders of the Schwarz School of Dance and that would later become a driving force in the Dayton Ballet scene.  Through her intertwined narrative with her sister, they helped cement and nurture the arts in Dayton and they should be recognized along with other influential people of Dayton.  I know I would never have been able to realize her lasting impact if it were not for the correspondences, scrapbooks, and other documents that she and her sister left behind.

Source: MS-218, Josephine Schwarz Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University, University Libraries, Dayton, Ohio.