When Savannah Lanza came across the photo slides her grandfather left behind, she sensed they were something special. There were thousands of them, carefully labeled and neatly stored, methodical, just like him. What she didn't know was how much of his life was captured within them.
After her grandfather, Perry, died in 2021, the collection became hers. He had rarely talked about his past. She knew he served overseas during the Vietnam War, stationed in Thailand in the late 1960s, but little else.
“I’ve been learning a lot more about him since he passed that I wish I had asked while he was alive. I would love to talk to him about Thailand,” Lanza said.
Johnson County Library offered her a way to learn more.
The Library recently added Film to Digital Converter Kits to its collection, allowing residents to conver
t slides, film and negatives into digital images they can save, share and preserve. The kits connect directly to a computer and are designed to be simple to use, even for beginners. For many people, they offer a way back into family stories that have been packed away for decades.
For Lanza, the kits opened a door into her grandfather’s life at a time when his family was far away. While he was deployed, her mother was a baby, and her grandmother was raising her alone. From Thailand, he stayed connected however he could. Gold was inexpensive there, so he bought jewelry and tucked it into letters home, small tokens of love sent across an ocean.
When Lanza began scanning the slides, those years came into focus. She saw her grandfather young, smiling, standing near military planes, wandering past ornate buildings, photographing flowers and streets in full color.
“This part of his life was unknown to me,” she said. “Seeing those slides for the first time was really meaningful. I cried a lot. I had never seen pictures of him so young. It's also incredibly interesting to see Thailand from his perspective."
The process itself was easy. After a quick setup, Lanza scanned about 100 slides in 45 minutes. She only slowed down to text photos to relatives as new images appeared on the screen. At one point, several slides showed up completely black, and she worried something was wrong with the scanner. Then she realized.
It was his designated dud box.
Even in what he chose not to keep, he had stayed organized.
Many of the images were new to the family, including to Lanza’s grandmother. When she shared the scans, her phone lit up.
“She kept calling and texting me to tell me what was happening in the picture she was looking at, or a story she remembered him telling her,” Lanza said. “She was excited. It was clear she was reliving those early years of their marriage.”
Seeing him young and happy mattered. Not just as a soldier, but as a person still becoming who he would be.
“I think my grandpa would like for us to remember him that way,” Lanza said.
After his death, neighbors stopped by as the family packed up his home. One by one, they shared stories of how he helped with odd jobs and never asked for anything in return.
“He was the kindest and most influential person in my life,” Lanza said. “My family still feels his loss to this day.”
The Film to Digital Converter Kit saved her from shipping thousands of slides to an outside service and waiting weeks for results. More importantly, it gave her something priceless. Time with a part of her grandfather she never knew, and a way to share those memories with the people who loved him most.
Thanks to the Library’s converter kits, those moments are no longer sealed away in boxes. They are preserved and experienced all over again.
Johnson County Library encourages anyone with boxes of slides, negatives or film to check out the Film to Digital Converter Kits or visit the Memory Lab at Central Resource Library, where staff and genealogy volunteers are available to help. Learn more and reserve a kit at jocolibrary.org and discover the stories waiting in your own family archives.
