[Leica] Forward from LHSA

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

Jim Lager will speak next Tuesday, October 16th at 6 P.M. at Miami of Ohio 
University in Oxford, Ohio. The Miami University Art Museum is the home of 
the Charles M. Messer Leica Camera Collection and Jim will share his 
personal stories about his relationship with Charles M. Messer and the 
advisory role he played in assisting him with his collection of Leica 
cameras.


That's my alma mater and my home town. Charles Messer was the head of a 
construction company whose sign "Frank Messer & Sons" was out front at every 
Miami dorm, dining hall, and academic building I can recall seeing and 
prowling around during its construction as I was a kid growing up in Oxford. 
Having become a Leica enthusiast at a tender age, and Leica user upon 
high-school graduation, I was later dumbfounded to learn that one of the 
most important Leica collections in the world was amassed by an owner of 
Miami's seemingly default general contractor and donated to the Miami 
University Art Museum, where my mother acted as a docent until she was 85 or 
so. Presumably Messer's fortune was well earned and deserved, but it's nice 
to see what goes around comes around.

(And no, I don't know whether Frank Messer & Sons built the Art Museum!)

If I can figure how to get off work at 2:00 Tuesday I'm going to drive down 
to hear this.


?howard