Chicago's Midway Airport: The First seventy-five Years by Christopher Lynch Lake Claremont Press Phone: 773/583-7800 www.lakeclaremont.com

When I set off to write a history of Midway, I was faced with the daunting task of gathering photos for this project. I soon discovered that photographs from Midway’s history were surprisingly hard to come by and rarely found in libraries and other institutions.

After more digging, I learned that the story of Midway resides in scrapbooks of the pilots who flew there, or the basements and attics of people who lived and worked around the airport.

Luckily, when word got out about my intentions, I was aided by the kind efforts of Midway enthusiasts, who opened their private collections for use in the book. And by far the greatest collector I’ve ever met is Bob Saraparu.

Bob has spent his life around Midway airport, having lived as a child just a few blocks from the airport. As a boy, he would often go down to the airport to watch the planes take off and land, and wander through the teeming terminal.

In 1957, while visiting the terminal, a man with a camera waved him over, saying “Hey Kid, want to have your picture taken?” United Airlines was shooting photos for a brochure, and Bob agreed to participate. He posed with a pilot and a young girl. Bob was thanked for his participation, and soon forgot all about it.

As an adult, Bob became an employee for US Air, and worked in the very terminal he used to explore as a kid, and his interest in Midway only grew with time. He became a serious collector of Midway memorabilia, collecting post cards, photos, and anything else of interest from Midway’s past. Due to his diligence and expertise, his collection would grow.

In pursuit of his hobby, Bob was going through a collection of photographs he came across when he spotted this photo [below]. To him, it seemed familiar, until it dawned on him that he was staring at a photo of himself as an 11 year old. It was the same photo taken at the session at United Airlines Ticket counter from 1957. That’s what I call serendipity.

The Midway book I have written has over 200 rare photographs, and over 50 of which are from Bob’s collection. Anyone who is interested in Midway in its heyday will enjoy seeing Bob Soraparu’s phenomenal photographs.