Unpacking boxes of stuff and organizing the contents is something we have all done or will do.

Doing the same for almost everything writer, photographer, musical composer Gordon Parks has done is a whole different chore.

On top of that, the challenge of preparing and inventorying thousands of documents for researchers is something else.

Wichita State Vice President and General Counsel Ted Ayres said it’s no small feat.

“The material arrived in an Allied moving van in 2008,” he said.

WSU archivists Lorraine Madway and Lucy Waldrop have taken on the task for Special Collections and University Archives at Ablah Library.

“Our progress is not good, it is excellent,” Madway, assistant professor, curator of Special Collections and University Archivist said. “It will be ready for public viewing by some point in the fall.”

More than a physical exercise, Madway responded emotionally to the 18-wheel truck’s arrival.

“It was a feeling that history was in the making,” she said.

She said the documents chronicle more than biographical history. They will provide a narrative of Parks’ creativity and thinking process, which is too important to keep private.

Ayres said “to actually touch these boxes makes it real.”

He said WSU’s Special Collections becoming the place for Parks’ records to be archived took a lot of effort. WSU competed with Harvard University, the Library of Congress and other institutions.

“It was a situation of David and Goliath,” Ayres said.

Madway said “for the underdogs to win is a sweet victory indeed.”

She said Parks became well known for many reasons.

“People found something magical about him,” she said. “The general public wants to know about him. This is one of the people whose appeal transcends just researchers who might be more scholarly. This will be a real high profile collection.”

Parks’ son David summed up the public’s opinion about his father when he overheard a New York City doorman say “the icon has left the building.”

Waldrop is the Project Archivist for the Gordon Parks Papers. She said the Special Collections department is sorting through more than 100 boxes of Parks’ papers and documents. She said he kept sales receipts of the piano his mother bought, the manuscripts of the music he wrote with notes, correspondence and letters he wrote to people in prison, Malcolm X, U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, friends and other associates.

“There is an interconnectedness, a lot of intersections, between his different forms of creative expression,” Waldrop said. “He had a kind of artistic sensibility with the way he organized his records.”

Madway said Parks had a strong personal interest in people.

“The power of his persona and his person artistically and professionally and personally reached so many people and that really comes through in these materials,” she said.

Waldrop said the difficulty is finding common threads in and between all the available data.

“There’s been a complexity when it comes to trying to parse out and find out the connections with the people he worked with,” Waldrop said.

She said an idea might have started with a book, which became part of or all of a movie with the addition of the music.

Madway said that is the challenge and the reward of being an archivist.

“As an archivist, you need to provide context,” she said. “We are dealing with an artist who was truly a Renaissance man in so many fields. That’s a complex intellectual challenge. As archivists, we love that challenge.”

Ayres met Parks in 2000 during a reception for his “Half Past Autumn” exhibit at the Ulrich Museum.

“(He was) a wonderfully unique and talented and a wonderful man,” he said. “Being with him, you could get the sense he was unique and larger than life.”

Ayres was serving as interim director of the Ulrich Museum at the time.

Madway said WSU got it out of desire, staff and the expertise to manage the collection.

“WSU got it because Gordon Parks had a special connection to Kansas,” Madway said. “WSU valued that relationship.”

Ayres said other entities including Harvard University, the Smithsonian and the New York Public Library wanted Parks’ collection.

Parks was born in Fort Scott in 1912, which may have been why WSU’s proposal won over the others. He died in 2006.

“His heartbeat was in Kansas,” Ayres said.

Madway said this part of collection is valued at about $300,000 with other parts of the Parks’ collection being stored at other location including the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

Ayres said it cost WSU about $500,000 in in-kind contributions, hiring a graduate assistant to help with the collection and monetary donations.

He said the fourth part of the Gordon Parks lecture series is scheduled for October. An expert from the Smithsonian Museum will speak about Parks’ role in social justice and equal rights.

Parks is known for his photography work for Life Magazine; 20 books including the semi-biographical The Learning Tree and a book about photography; he wrote poetry, ballet and musical scores; and was involved in 10 movies including Shaft (1971) and Shaft’s Big Score (1972). He directed nine of the films and wrote the music for two of them. He played jazz piano.

Some of the collection is available for viewing through the collections’ Web site. An Internet search of Wichita State University Special Collections will get you there.

Some of the quotes and comments in this article were taken from “Roots and Branches: Preserving the Legacy of Gordon Parks,” A DVD made by Wichita State University.