Alvin Oskar Schwarze (1908 - 1982)

Greenwood, Clark Co., Wisconsin

Contributed by Janet (Fauser) Schwarze.

Al was born here in Greenwood and attended a small country school—The Decker School—which is now nonexistent. I suppose almost everyone in Greenwood has seen or at least heard of Al Schwarze. It seems to be the natural thing if you have some photography or developing to be done, to ask Al to do It. I sometimes wonder if he really considers his work as a job or a hobby. He seems to take such pride and interest in it. is the type of person that en- joys working with things—I suppose that is one reason he 1kes dev- eloping and printing pictures. The other lines of work that he endeavored seem to require work with the hands also. They include such things as mechanic and electrical work Electric work is now more or less a hobby, but mechanics was one of his previous occupations. He attended the Motor School in Milwaukee for this sole purpose. Between the years 1942 arid 1945, he was employed at Buick Motors at Meirose Park, Ill. He then returned to his home- town and worked at Jackson’s Garage which has since been closed down. He says he considers this as the most important job he ever held because it was during the depress- ion and gave him a chance to help farmers who were “hard-up” - for money. Like most people I wanted to know how he decided to be a photographer and his reply was, ‘I started doing it evenings at Jack Al son’s and then I took a correspondence course. I found I liked it be- cause its a challenge and it’s interesting.” He says picture taking can be a nice hobby and a lot of fun if you learn to do your own developing. That’s what I like about Al Schwarze.  He’s not Interested in ‘getting you merely for a customer, he wants you for a friend. He wants you to enjoy the activity he loves so much!

Source: By Janet Fauser, Greenwood Gleaner "Meet The Folks" columnist, July 16, 1964.

The Photo was taken by Peggy (Rossow) Friske, who worked as the student photographer for the paper during 1964.

*An interesting side note to this article is that when I wrote it, I had no idea I'd be marrying into the Schwarze family and recording Alvin Oskar Schwarze in our family tree.  Alvin's grandfather (Henry) and Stan's great grandfather (Herman) were half brothers who came to the United States in 1867 and were some of the first settlers in Warner township.  As you might have already guessed, Al took the pictures of our wedding which took place in the Greenwood, WI Zion Reformed (Congregational) Church.