You want the long version of the story, or short?

Years of blogging experience have taught me just about everybody wants the short version. Those years have also taught me that brevity is not a personal strong suit. So I’ll try to be brief, but…

I was reading the always wonderful Downtown Albuquerque News last Friday morning and came across its update on work being done at the Albuquerque Museum to compile and upload hundreds of photos taken back in 1925 by local resident William Steele Dean. Here’s what the DAN wrote about Dean:

He moved to Albuquerque in 1911 as a 12-year-old tuberculosis patient and later went on to work as an organist at the KiMo. But in his spare time (and he seemed to have quite a bit of it), William Steele Dean took photos. Lots of photos.

Much of the collection – what survives in public hands, at least – points the camera at celebrities on train layovers at the station adjacent to the former Alvarado Hotel, the now-demolished icon on which Alvarado Transit Center was patterned.

Some of that portfolio was featured in this DAN from March 23. But since then, Albuquerque Museum has been busy uploading many more photos from the Dean collection onto this website. Besides the celebrities, the images include Downtown landmarks like the Occidental Life Building and the Alvarado Hotel itself, as well as the results of what seems to have been field trips to Bandelier National Monument and Chaco Canyon. 

As of last week, a few photos at the top of the site were showing an “image not available” error message, but there were also 253 others to check out.

Always keen to see old stuff online, particularly from that time period, I hightailed it to the Museum’s website and spent way too much time this past weekend gazing through the photos and hunting information on those photographed that I’d never heard of before. One such “sitter” for a photograph was Paavo Nurmi.

(here where’s the most difficult attempt to shorten the story will inadquately occur)

Mr. Nurmi was a Finnish distance runner who won a bunch of Olympic medals in the 1920s and kicked off a distance running craze here in the States to the point that he went around the U.S. racing locals at various distances. He won most of these exhibitions, lost one or two, and was supposed to go against a number of Zuni and other tribal runners after much local entreaty and promotion, but never actually made it here.

My research on his scheduled visit and its cancellation only came about because I was telling a local long-time long-distance runner that I ran across a photo of Nurmi running in ABQ. He was astounded, actually knowing about the man and his worldwide fame, so I sent the photo above to him.

He responded quickly: “I don’t think that’s Paavo Nurmi.”

I hadn’t checked before sending local long-distance runner the photo, and the subsequent skepticism led to a delightful Friday-long dive leading, eventually, to the two news stories above. I don’t know who is in the photo atop this post. I’d guess it’s one of the many (note bib number) folks scheduled to run against Nurmi here. I just pretty much know it ain’t Paavo Nurmi.

This morning I called the Museum to go about setting the record straight and look forward to hearing facts/speculation on how photographer W. S. Dean might have labeled the photo orginally and other details. I love this stuff. Love it.

Update 12/5/23: Albuquerque Museum staff called me back this mornig and is just as overjoyed and full of fun about the mystery/correction as I am. Both staffer and I considered the further question: Who is it in the photo? More gleeful diving ahead…