Ed, Were the fellows you mentioned allowed access because they were nice guys or because they presented themselves under the auspices of the PGCA? Makes a big diff.
The
Parker Story crew went into Remington's archives before the PGCA was founded in 1993. A second group was part of a research team who gathered around Ron Kirby after I went to Meriden in 1995 and wrote about it. Ron (NC) and, as I recall, Charlie Herzog (MO), Richard Hoover (AL), Sam Tomlin (VA), and Ed Kapelski (MO), flew or drove to Meriden in June 1996 on a research expedition. They got into the attic of the old Parker office building and dug over 1,000 work tags out of the century-old coal dust.
Meanwhile
TPS authors had computerized their Stock Book copies to do the number-crunching for their two-volume book, which was released in 1998 and 2000. At some point they donated the photocopies to the PGCA and Ron started doing Research Letters. As I stated above, Ron and others went to Ilion in 1998 to photocopy the Order Books. The group consisted of the PGCA volunteers (named above), and the intent was to complete the documentation to the fullest extent in order to enhance the Research Letters, which had become popular.
The PGCA is not a public utility; it is a group of people bound by a mutual interest in owning and knowing about Parker guns. There were at least 20 different people from a dozen states, many of whom had not met the others prior to the year's researching. The idea that these people somehow formed a conspiracy do befuddle all the people who didn't participate in the painstaking and expensive work is really over the top.
TPS authors presented themselves under the "auspices" of using the information to write a book. Other casual Parker people who just wanted to satisfy personal curiosity were respectfully declined. Key to
TPS's entree were CDR. Gunther's articles in the
Gun Report.I should mention that when I was at Remington in spring 1996, having just finished the M/S for
The "Old Reliable," I was offered access to the Parker records, but declined because others were using the records for their book and I didn't want to be accused of circumventing them. To this day I have never seen the originals or photocopies. And in fact, I never even looked at a page of TPS until the M/S for my most recent book,
Shooting Flying, was complete in April 2006. I did not want to be influenced by other people's work.
Ron and his team were invited to Ilion in 1998 under the "auspices" of the PGCA; Remington does not allow walk-ins to search the records. The Remington Society, the PGCA, and certain accredited authors can apply...
As to the fear on the part of Remington that allowing access and publishing the records would lead to litigation...well, it just hasn't happened. In theory, any authentication disputes that could be helped along by original business records could conceivably lead to discovery subpoenas, Remington employees and lawyers spending time...and time is money, etc. But it just didn't happen. Thankfully non-legal minds prevailed.
In the final analysis, it does not make "..a big diff." how the various researchers got in; the result is that the PGCA has all the available photocopy records for safe-keeping and with which Research Letters are crafted. The idea that the 20 or more persons involved, from all walks of life and from all over the country, during the span of about 7 years, conspired to keep information from some unnamed person(s) about unspecified guns takes a tremendous imagination helped along by being totally unacquainted with the facts,, some of which fill in gaps in the missing record books.
Oh! As to the "nice guys" part, some are and some are not; but as we used to say in my boat racing days, "Nice guys finish last." EDM
