Utah Westerners

January Announcement for the Utah Westerners

January 10, 2014 at 11:17 am kenttschanz Leave a comment

HISTORICAL VIGNETTES

  FROM THE JOE HATCH FILM LIBRARY

                       DR. JOSEPH L. HATCH               

Joseph Hatch has had a life-long fascination with still and movie photography; he even filmed and co-directed an 8mm color silent western melodrama when he was only 17 years old. He also made several Super-8 color sound movies and has put together an impressive photographic archive. Joe will lead off the new year at our January meeting with historical vignettes from his film library that he will narrate. They include Ab Jenkins’s record-breaking last race on the Salt Flats in the “Mormon Meteor III,” a footrace with Henry Eyring and other University of Utah faculty (with entertaining, perhaps surprising results), the floods of 1983 in the Salt Lake Valley and the brilliant way firefighters coped with them, the horse head figure on the north flank of the east side of Mt. Timpanogos, and the implosion of the Newhouse Hotel in 1983. Joe will show us fascinating snippets of local history not likely to be seen anywhere else.

Utah Westerner, Joseph Hatch, comes from early Utah pioneer stock; all eight of his great- and some of his great-great-grandparents came to the Salt Lake Valley prior to the Pony Express and the completion of the railroad here in  the 1860s. He was born and raised in Salt Lake City, but there was always a horse for him in Heber City where his father was born. He spent many summers of his youth there riding his horse almost everywhere. Over the years he participated in horse club activities and even calf-roping while he was in the army. To this day he enjoys cattle roundups, trail rides, and horse pack trips in the Uinta Mountains and Yellowstone.

Some years ago Joe became interested in and involved with the National Pony Express Association and is currently a Re-ride Captain in the organization’s Utah Division. In 2012, the book he did with fellow Utah Westerner, Patrick Hearty, The Pony Express Stations of Utah, was published.

Dr. Hatch has an impressive resume in his chosen professional field of medicine, chiefly, ophthalmology. He has done extensive research and writing in that field and has won numerous awards and received scholastic honors as well. He has extensive professional and administrative experience, serving on and often leading dozens of medical and other boards and committees over the years. He has been an active participant in various community activities and has frequently served as a consultant and teacher in his field. Joe is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the Moran Eye Center of the University of Utah where he serves as senior consultant to the ophthalmology residents in some of the general and corneal eye clinics at the VA Hospital

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