TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 15

 

The celebration on October 5, 1989, was memorable, when we arrived with a ton of treasure at the dock in Norfolk (See Treasure Talk Episode 1.) The throng of onlookers included investment partners, relatives (my wife Jane, my parents, and brother Bill were there,) reporters, and curious locals who had seen the morning TV news as we were coming into port.

The Herndon High School Band (a very excellent award-winning marching band) was playing rousing music and attracting the attention of anyone within several city blocks. The whole scene was heavily guarded by three separate but coordinated armed entities: the Norfolk Police Department, the United States Marshals Service, and the Brinks guards. My crewmates and I each carried at least one box of treasure off the ship and to the back of the armored truck.

Procedures needed to be followed and papers signed. The US Marshals, under the direction of the admiralty court, took official custody of what we brought ashore. Then they turned it around with another document that assigned our company as the "Substitute Custodian" for the US Marshals Service. That meant that the Brinks trucks were for us, although the Marshals watched as we loaded it in.

It was not practical to show very much of the gold to the public or the cameras. I arranged a bench-top display of ingots, coins, and one of the silicone rubber blocks with coins still imbedded (a recovery technique.) The network TV line producer wanted "more gold!" which I explained was impractical.

At least one newspaper complained that the treasure failed to measure up to expectations, at least visually. There was a remark that it looked like we were delivering cases of auto parts to a local business via armored car.

But, working under the jurisdiction of the court, and given all the necessary procedure and accounting detail, we didn't find a chance to stage a grand, studio "group portrait" of the treasure. There was no "Class Photo."

In October of 1991, shortly after our at-sea season concluded, Tommy Thompson excitedly told me that "LIFE Magazine wants to shoot all the gold. It could be the cover, or the centerfold." He meant the center spread, but his mind kind of ran that way. The full two-page image that sat opposite the covers in the large staple-bound issues of LIFE would be quite a prize for the treasure, and for the magazine. The excellent photography from the Project's own photographer, Milt Butterworth, would illustrate most of the article. But they wanted to send one of their own senior photographers to shoot a formal portrait of "all the gold." He asked me, "Can we make that happen?"

I thought about it for a minute. "Well, if by "all the gold" you mean a great big bunch of it, that means we have to do it at the Norfolk Brinks, the only place with a massive amount of gold and a mountain of security. I will get in touch with them and see if it's possible."

The reader should understand that Brinks usually doesn't allow anyone, ANYONE!, other than their own personnel into certain areas. I had unusual access over the years, and I truly appreciate that. I always obeyed the rules, and I never touched anything that was not related to our deposit. Of course, I was fingerprinted, as were other visitors.

I called Johnny Williams and told him what we had in mind. We needed to pose a large amount of the treasure for a photographer from LIFE Magazine. I figured that it might take two or three days of work, given whatever the preparations would be, the number of sealed containers that would need to be opened, and the amount of procedure and paperwork needed to track it all. Understanding that this was a very unusual request, (turning the inside of a Brinks facility into a photography studio ?!) I told Johnny to think about it and let me know if it was possible. He called back a couple hours later.

The Norfolk facility had an office for the Regional Manager at one end of their string of connected structures, on the other side of the vaults and interior loading docks from their day-to-day offices. That senior official's name was Leo, and I had met him a couple times during previous visits. He usually worked out of Richmond, but Johnny Williams had full operational control of the Norfolk branch. So, Johnny called Leo about our strange proposal. It must have been an interesting conversation. Johnny reported that Leo was initially flabbergasted, but then became intrigued, and he had offered his desk as a sturdy structure that might support many hundreds of pounds, if properly distributed. Leo wasn't planning to work there the second week of November, so he wouldn't be needing his office or desk. If we did this in his office, we wouldn't be in the way of any other Brinks traffic and business.

We scheduled the operations for November 12 – 14, 1991.

Two of my young crewmates, were there to assist me; Mike Kornmiller and Scott Shade. They had assisted me at sea during the 1991 season. Since we ran 24/7 operations whenever possible, they would fill in for me on the graveyard shift in the control room while I slept, service which I truly appreciated. For this operation, they drove a company van from Columbus, bringing some tools. Saws and drills might be handy if we had to build a set. I expected that we would have to improvise, maybe even build a sturdy workbench if Leo's desk didn't work out. We could buy lumber and fasteners locally as needed. While they were driving from Ohio to Virginia, I gathered "highlight pieces" I had previously removed from Brinks for public show. I flew into Norfolk, alert and a little nervous, in the role of courier for my valuable carryon bag and backpack. I rented a car and arrived at Brinks just as Mike and Scott pulled up in the company van, perfect timing, in the age before cellphones. We greeted each other with high fives. The photographer was due an hour later, so we had time to discuss logistics among ourselves and with our hosts.

We signed in as "visitors" to the facility, with Mike and Scott providing fingerprints. Johnny Williams and Walker Pryor both showed us to Leo's office to see if it would be suitable. The desk was indeed very sturdy, as strong as one of those old schoolteachers' desks from back in the 60s, but a little fancier. Nice wood and finish. I figured it might hold a thousand pounds if necessary, but we would have to protect it.

Until we could confer with the photographer, our plans were all speculation. We had started clearing off Leo's desk when a guard came and informed Johnny that the photographer was talking to the front desk, where his camera bag was being searched. His name was Henry Groskinsky. Walker stayed with us while Johnny went to usher Henry through the garage and past the loading docks to Leo's office. There were cameras everywhere, but no outsiders were ever left alone inside Brinks. Henry had only a general idea of the task at hand. He was a career LIFE photographer, then in his mid-fifties, and he had experience with the unusual and the grand. He had been told to go shoot a huge treasure, a big pile of gold. He seemed a little startled as he came through the door into Leo's office. His bag had been searched; no big deal, standard operating procedure. But then he had been fingerprinted, and then led to a remote, seemingly "secret" room on the other side of a big, enclosed garage with an armored car in one corner. This was no palace. But he was smiling as we met, clearly anticipating something wonderful.

Nobody, not even I, had seen "all the gold" or a very large amount of it in one place since our cameras saw it on the shipwreck. So, we had to figure it out, one step at a time.

After initial introductions, I explained the situation "Well, we have over a ton of gold stored here, so security is obviously tight. We have it in dozens of sealed containers, and we will have to bring sufficient gold out of the vault and into this room, to pose it for your camera. While we handle it, we must keep track of each piece, each bar, each coin. We are substitute custodians for the US Marshals, under the jurisdiction of Federal Court."

Henry's brow furrowed with interest as I asked, "How do you think we should pose the gold? What kind of arrangement do you want?"

He thought about it for a few moments. "You say you have a lot of gold bars?"

"Yes. Hundreds if necessary. And they're all different sizes, from tiny chunks the size of ice-cubes up to big bricks weighing hundreds of ounces."

The scope of this opportunity surprised and intrigued Henry the Artist-Photographer, and he joined in the creation. "Can you build an amphitheater of gold bars, then display some coins in front of it?"

An amphitheater of gold bars? What an interesting idea! Now, it was my turn to contemplate the process. "Yes. I think we can do that. What we will do is build the "amphitheater" out of two-by-fours, then cover it with gold bars." Then, pondering what I had just offered, I added, "It may take us the rest of the day to get ready. We planned this as a three-day operation for us, with you shooting on the second day, with set-up for the rest of today, and dismantling in a couple days after you leave."

Henry went to gather his camera, tripod, lights and equipment and bring them into Leo's office, quickly transforming it into a photography studio. A guard escorted him to and from his vehicle for a few trips. He planned to spend the afternoon arranging his equipment and watching us work with the gold, as his subject was built, piece by piece.

As he assembled his kit, I huddled with Mike and Scott. "OK, I need you guys to go buy a couple two-by-four studs, maybe three, and cut them into six-inch and one-foot-long blocks. A bunch of each. That should be more than enough. We're going to build bleachers for the gold." (It's funny how the things we did as kids, like building with blocks, can come back in weird ways as professional adult activities.) "We also need a sheet of 3/4" plywood, a nice thick blanket, and 4 yards of black felt. You can find that at a fabric store. There must be one around here somewhere." They consulted the Yellow Pages and asked questions of the Brinks staff so they could find the nearest stores for the supplies. No Internet in ‘91.

While they were gone, I worked with Walker to clear off the rest of Leo's desk. My plan was to cover the nice walnut of the desk with a blanket, before covering it with the plywood, cut to fit. Then we could arrange the two-by-four blocks like bleachers, or the risers for a choir or orchestra. Cover it with black felt, and… Voila!

As you might imagine, building with gold blocks is a unique, delightful experience. Once we had enough of a foundation of large ingots, we started to get creative. It was fun to pile the little ones on top of the bricks, to stand elongate bars up like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Henry, looking through his camera, our objective was to create an unbroken field of gold bars with no gaps.

We took a lot of notes while we unpacked the ingots. Of course, we had an itemized account of what pieces were stored in which containers, and we would rely heavily on those inventories when we re-packed after the shoot. Many of these pieces had not been seen since their recovery and packing in my lab at sea.

In the final photo, the foreground features what looks like a random pile of coins. But it was not disorderly. We carefully tracked the pieces as we arranged them into this deliberate jumble.

None of the coins touches another, despite appearances. Each coin is separated from all others by thin foam pads. Obviously, bag marks would be a serious offense.

An impressive pile of gold sat on Leo's desk when we concluded our preparations and left for the day. That office had a standard office door, and it would lock, but there was no hasp for a seal and padlock. So, we sealed it with a few of my signatures across overlapping layers of packing tape, a crude but perfectly valid method for making a closed container, in this case a room, tamper evident.

It was a strange feeling to set all that gold on that desk, and then to walk away. I had been working with the gold for over three years, but I had never had so much out of their sealed containers before. I felt nervous, but I realized this was the best we could do, and in fact we had done very well. All was secure, awaiting the photo-shoot the next day.

This was the image ultimately used.

 

Everything went as expected. Henry Groskinsky declared that he was delighted with the results. He would take the images back to LIFE, and they would decide how to use them.

For the cover of the March 1992 issue, they opted for a "Life After Death" story. But the article about the treasure and the project ran 10 pages, unusually long for a LIFE feature, and it featured not only the full-page portrait posed at Brinks, but also many other excellent photos from our in-house photographers.

The bulk of the treasure went back under wraps as the legal and business complications of the 1990s played out. It would not be seen again in greater abundance, until the Ship of Gold Exhibit debuted at Long Beach in February of 2000.

To read the complete article, see:
Treasure Talk 15: The Iconic Treasure Portrait (https://finestknown.com/treasure-talk-15-the-iconic-treasure-portrait/)

For the complete series, see:
Category Archives: Treasure Talk with Bob Evans (https://finestknown.com/treasure-talk-with-bob-evans/)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 14.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n22a16.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 14.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n23a17.html)

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