Last week, Battle Ground Councilmember Cherish DesRochers uploaded a 42-minute video from the 1998 Battle Ground Harvest Days Parade.
In a matter of a day, the video gained over 1,000 views.
The response it received from the community inspired DesRochers to continue searching for other old VHS videos. She invites the community to share their videos from public spaces of Battle Ground. The goal, DesRochers said, is to highlight Battle Ground’s history, see old friends and past relatives and try and find yourself in a video.
When DesRochers watched the 1998 video she uploaded to YouTube, she found a would-be future member of her household just feet away from her.
“So at the beginning of the video, I see something that was where my husband used to work when he was in high school, and I’m like, ‘hey, I think that’s you,’” she said. “And then we slowed it down and he’s like, ‘no, no, I don’t remember that.’ Come to find out, I was a few feet away from my husband in 1998. We didn’t know each other, but it was him. He was in the parade.”
After posting her YouTube upload to Facebook, DesRochers received many reactions from Battle Ground community members who loved viewing Battle Ground in the late 1990s, before Fred Meyer even opened its doors to the city. Community members also found past loved ones and old friends in the video.
“It just really got me inspired to think about how many people have videos out there that are filmed in public places where we could see people that we know, ourselves,” she said. “There was a girl that saw her mother who had passed away like in 2014, and then there was a couple of other people that saw people and it’s just really awesome and I’ve received such positive feedback about it.”
When she created the YouTube channel, Battle Ground, WA Home Videos, she thought about opportunities for both new residents and longtimers to view Battle Ground when Wilco was a grocery store, the Margarita Factory building was the NAPA Auto Parts store, and plenty of other memorable businesses from the past.
“I thought, wouldn’t it be cool just to have a YouTube channel where you can go to it and just look at old background stuff, you know, look for people you know and see the landscape,” she said, adding that even her as a Battle Ground High School graduate she forgot about businesses in Old Town being antique malls, old restaurants and more.
Already, DesRochers said other community members have videos that they will provide for the Battle Ground, WA Home Videos YouTube channel.
DesRochers said converting the old video to digital isn’t too difficult for her. She added that anyone can get in contact with her and send their video tapes and DesRochers can process them to digital. And if someone already has digitized video, they can send a Dropbox link via email.
For the video project, DesRochers said the videos must be in a public space, not at a home. She can be reached by emailing BGwahomevideos@gmail.com and her YouTube channel can be found at youtube.com/@battlegroundwahomevideos.
