“It’s kind of ragged, but I’ve still got the picture,” he said of the photo of 2nd Avenue looking at downtown Alpena.

Now 95, Kujawa has amassed a meticulously organized collection of historical photos, some his own, and others all labeled with the source of each photo, documenting Early Alpena’s history.

Kujawa recently donated his binders, filled with 220 pages each, to the George R. and Edith Angell Cook Special Collections Department at the Alpena County George N. Fletcher Public Library.

The collection comes in seven volumes, dated from 1850 to around 1940.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Bob Kujawa flips through historical photos in Volume One of his historical binder set he recently donated to the special collections department at Alpena County Library.

Kujawa retired from Besser Company in 1989, and really got into collecting and documenting the historic photos after retirement.

“I started quite a while ago,” he said in an interview on July 20 at the library. “If I’d see something different, I’d take a picture.”

He decided he wanted to share his collection with the community so they could enjoy the photos and learn some historical information about the city he grew up in.

Special Collections Librarian Don La Barre is grateful for Kujawa’s donation.

“It’s a great collection because Bob’s not only gone into different organizations and scanned the photos from all around the state, but also, he’s taken his own photos, so it’s a really great compilation,” La Barre said, adding that the photos have descriptions and historical details that enhance the collection’s value. “It’s a really great resource for anyone that’s trying to get an understanding of Alpena’s history.”

News Photo by Darby Hinkley

La Barre added that it is organized by year, which makes it easier to navigate for research purposes.

“It’s a really great collection that really accentuates what we already have,” La Barre said. “People can come in, any time of day, as long as we’re open, and be able to access it.”

The special collections department is located upstairs in the library, and is open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday.

“He’s done all the hard work, and really made this great resource of seven volumes to really help people understand the pictorial history,” La Barre added. “People have always told us how much they like the volumes, and so it’s really quite the honor to have them here, because it does show the hard work that Bob’s put into it. Not only the hard work, but also it gives a great pictorial understanding of the community’s history and how it has developed over the years.”

Kujawa explained why he wanted to donate his collection to the library.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Bob Kujawa has been featured for his photography of one-room schoolhouses in the “Alpena County Michigan Sesquicentennial ­— History and Families 1857-2007” book, available to peruse in the special collections department at Alpena County Library.

“I figured it would be better for the City of Alpena,” Kujawa said, adding that he wanted to share his collection so more people could learn about the city’s history.

“You want a picture, I’ve got it,” Kujawa said.

Kujawa was born and raised in Alpena. He worked at the Besser Company, where he earned an award for going to work for 25 years, without missing a day.

This isn’t the first historical donation Kujawa has made to an Alpena organization.

“He did the one-room schoolhouse at the museum,”Kelly Kujawa, Bob’s daughter, said of Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan. “He did pictures of 15 counties of one-room schools.”

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Mason Lumber Company workers are shown in this photograph from 1886, which is one of the historical photos included in Volume One of Kujawa’s binder collection.

Kujawa has been featured for his photography of one-room schoolhouses in the “Alpena County Michigan Sesquicentennial ­– History and Families 1857-2007” book, available to peruse in the special collections department at Alpena County Library.

Kujawa went down to Clarke Historical Library and took photos of the Fred Trelfa Collection that are now in these binders, that Alpenans would not otherwise have access to without traveling to Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant.

“Dad took pictures of the Fred Trelfa Collection, and brought them back,” Kelly Kujawa said.

“Fred Trelfa passed away in the ’70s,” La Barre said. “His collection was … negatives, prints of those negatives, and these newspaper binders, so when he died, they got donated to the library, to the museum, and to Clarke Historical Library.”

La Barre said Kujawa’s work is a valuable asset to the community.

“What he was able to do was make those photos accessible to the community by making scans of them and making them available through the binders.”