Every once in awhile I’ll go to a site and see a familiar name.

It’s usually in odd places I never expected to see it. Like a DVD Easter Eggs site while looking up a title I own.

In my case it’s George Willeman.
His family and mine lived just blocks apart, and were friends. I used to hang with his sisters. His parents and Mine met during the blizzard of 1976 when they were snowed in and jokingly asked over the CB (which was popular then) someone to bring cheeze-whiz. My dad did. Our families were friends for years. George and his younger sister Liz were even our babysitters at different times. I used to have a crush on George, he was cool, and older than me of course. Older was cooler when you are 12.

As the link above will tell you, George about runs the Library of Congress film library at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (long story why it’s there, go read it and find out… which is extremly local to our hometown. (Ever hd of Ground Zero?) How freaking cool it that? He had a room in the basement and it was full of film stuff even then, it was a really cool place to poke around.

His Dad, Russ, was a local high school art teacher in another local district, and was my biggest influence. Without his help I wouldn’t be a designer. He let me join his after school adult art classes when I was 16 because my local school system was screwing me over and not letting me take art becasue they felt my being from a white trash area of town I somehow needed Home Ec. year round instead. Russ was also a cartoonist, and did some book and junk, and still all around great guy I imagine. He has Parkinson’s now I hear though, so his art days are largely over, sadly.

Here’s some more one George:
George at IMDB - his mom came to grandpa’s funeral said he was also in Fargo, and others in uncredited roles in films made by some old film school friends.