Rev. Henry Theodore Dako (1911–1972) — Presbyterian minister and educator. The photographs, papers, books and objects of his life, slowly digitised in remembrance.
I grew up surrounded by old photographs — black-and-white prints, the soft grain of film, edges gone soft with handling. They lived in albums and drawers around the house, and I spent hours with them long before I understood who half the faces belonged to.
It was through those prints that my father told me about his own father. A photograph would surface and a story would come with it — where it was taken, who stood just outside the frame, what kind of man my grandfather was. He became real to me one picture at a time.
The more I looked, the more I wanted to know. The photographs raised questions they could not answer, and that curiosity is what set me searching — through the rest of what he left behind.
I have come to know him through the things he kept and the words he wrote. Through photographs, letters, documents, diaries, sermon notes and objects — piece by piece, the Archive returns him to me.