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Mike Allen
If Rankin is our rock, well then Mike Allen has to be our Smokey Bear. This connection isn’t as silly as it might sound. First of all, our scanner is a fully bearded bear of a man. And he just happens to live in neighboring Capitan – famous the world over as the home (and gravesite) of the Smokey Bear. Then there’s the fact that he’s in charge of putting out all the fires that seem almost daily to threaten our smooth transition to digital.
As a youth growing up in West Texas and New Mexico, he loved nothing more than hunting and fishing (he still enjoys both) and enrolled in West Texas State to study wildlife biology. Then came a draft notice and in 1970 Mike hastily joined the Navy. As is often the case, it was a life-changing experience. Mike became a Navy photographer. Following his discharge, Mike joined Nova Manufacturing, a Roswell, NM, bus factory as company photographer/media specialist. After 20 years, what was looking to be a career suddenly collapsed as a failed merger forced the closing of the Nova plant.
So now, Mike has the unenviable task of converting the best of a library of half a million trannies to digital scans. It’s a bear of a job (pun fully intended), but we’re betting he’ll get his arms around it.
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