craig_whitworth

Jack...

this came up recently.. LONG after you talked to dad.

But thanks for your phone calls to him and me...

He was happy to hear from you!

I know your post is VERY OLD now but I hope you get this and clowns like Steve Levine that posted directly after your post has to eat his words one day. My name is Craig Whitworth my father is Ron Whitworth and he worked at Kelly Color Labs since 1968 and was there at the closing in 2004. Carl Webb that founded Kelly I think he had in mind a place to do his own processing. When Mr. Webb moved his processing from the upstairs of his studio (Webb's Studio main street in Morgantion, NC) he moved it to a/the house that just sits to the left of this picture of the lab today :http://www.stockproperties.com/listings/res/2262/print.html?no_tp=1&no_bc=1

Yup, that's it for sale, see the trees to the left? There's a small white house that sits there that they used for a bit until kelly color was built on the property you see now. While the outside went thru a few changes over the years my father was the "right-hand" man of.. or the person in charge of this ship at it's launch. Even when it changed ownership's hands a few times the owner's would always keep my father as Manager of this plant because his hard work and strives in keeping Kelly Color Labs a well organized, profitable company. Even at the end it was clearly making money even though the parent owner at the time plundered it's assets and used Kelly Color as a tax write off.

With Digital Photography coming of age it was just a matter of time. But never for one moment did the quality falter. My father would spend days and nights at the lab installing new paper processors, or a half million dollar film processor or even printers himself. You heard the old cliché` ?you can?t please everyone??? Well my DAD sure as hell tried his very best to please them all. My father was a professional photographer as well and started out in the Navy taking Aerials and later on working for Arial Photography Int. (so it says on my birth certificate) and soon becoming a great portraits and landscape photographer in his own right. How? By asking questions... trial and error until he felt he had the best picture that his hasselblad (and those professional camera?s

all of his friend?s) Kelly Color?s equipment could provide. I remember weeks at a time reps and machinists from Kodak and Paco (pako?) doing endless testing until my father felt it was the best quality that he could get with the equipment he had at hand. No ONE has ever given more of themselves to their profession than my father tried to put forth. I know because I was there! I?m not just standing up for my father? but my brother and I both worked at Kelly Color, and more than half of his employees were there well over 20 years. My father said to me recently? On the closing of Kelly Color ?You should happy for me?I am, I got to spend more than half my adult life doing something I love; now how many people do you know that can say that?? I am glad you were happy with the work of Kelly Color Labs and I rest at night that ALL the people at Kelly Color Labs always tried their very best to make people happy...esp my Dad.

Craig Whitworth