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Round about 1995 ish

What sticks with me after all these years? 1) The way Peter listened.

He fully attended when you spoke. As a teen / college kid, it was pretty intimidating. To get full attention from a "grown up" (yes, I know now that these are imaginary creatures. I didn't then.) Because you are so new to these thoughts and likely a fraud or getting it "wrong" (or at least too simplistically). And he is wise, knows so much, lived through it all and yet is right there with you for your process. Willing to give you so much more than tolerant listening/waiting for you to be done. His eyes held you in such a way that you knew you were receiving this gift. I didn't know then why I was scared of it. This gift of full attention - true engagement with and thought about what you are saying means you have to think a little harder, be a little better, than in an average conversation. It's challenging. 2) The SPLC. I'm sure I was given other gifts when I graduated college, but the only one I remember was Peter's donation in my name to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Since then, the SPLC and Peter have been inexorably connected in my mind. This gift said to me: "Welcome to being a contributing member of this world. Go forth and do good." In the past I have been concerned I wasn't doing this challenge justice. I hope I am today.

3) His stories. About Laura and Aaron as little kids (The emotion was so tangible when those tales were told), about growing up in (was it Brooklyn??) running around with a wagon collecting scrap metal. How old could he have been? Little scallywag!

His stories were full of love - clearly cherishing the images in his mind's eye, those snippets of the past. I hope someone else remembers one of those city tales in detail and can share. I'd love to read it. I am confident he continued as your family grew, and babies were born, and time has passed. What a gift his heart and soul were to this world. All my best. Brooke

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I first met Peter at my first PenTrans event; high speed rail. My impression was that he was a kind of "older hippy". You know, an older man with longish hair, a beard and an advocate for transit; setting him apart from my colleagues in the highway industry! He was immediately warm, friendly and approachable, leaving me a tad suspicious.  After we spoke for a few minutes, it was clear to me that Peter was different, and I liked just being around him. Soon after, I joined Peter on the Board at PenTrans where we discovered a common view of transportation as a system, requiring considerations for all modes. This view fosters smart growth, urban revitalization and a design approach that moves people rather than cars.

Beyond PenTrans, my favorite times with Peter were the conversations about everything: travel, history, music, food, films and even beer. Peter could talk intelligently about many topics, and was always interested in what others had to say. I was invited to spend time with his friends and family at a remote lakeside camp in New York State but regrettably I never made the trip.  Peter and I had lunch occasionally. There was always so much to talk about, the time flew by. Peter enjoyed craft brews, but not the hoppy IPAs I introduced him to. At a PenTrans event on millennials and mobility Peter met my daughter Amanda who was working as a baker They had a long discussion about how to bake good bread with the best crust. Peter was a good listener and could connect with people from different backgrounds.

Like many folks working in transportation, Peter was well read and informed. But his interest in the welfare of people and his warmth and kindness set him apart. I'm so glad to have known him and to call him my friend. 

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Always part of our Mexican family

The Williams family and school send a lot of love from Cuernavaca. We have been reminiscing about Peter, his family, and his legacy.

We all remember his tender, kind and gracious personality. He was such a charismatic person! One started to care for him immediately after meeting him.

He was a great listener, who seemed always genuinely interested in whatever one had to say. His reply was mindful, soft, and clever. He understood different cultures and perspectives and was always proud of his family. 

Maggie and Alex remember how much the Javsicas family cared for them on their camping trip to the Adirondacks a couple of summers ago. Peter always made sure everyone felt welcomed, leading the trips on the boat to go shopping or exploring and sharing great stories. He was also a masterful cook of delicious sandwiches. We feel blessed to have shared this experience with Peter and his family.

Please know that when we all think of Peter, happy thoughts come to mind. His memory will remain in our hearts.

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The Day the Raccoon Fell

Peter was an enthusiastic community theater actor and once, in a show at a Chestnut Hill theater, was upstaged by a stray raccoon that fell from the ceiling. I was told Peter trapped it under a waste basket and the show went on.

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Growing up, Aaron was one of my best friends, and friends, especially in the late 80s/early 90s, in high school, call each other. But it was different when you called Aaron's house.

Aaron never answered the phone, like ever. If you were lucky you got Laura or Anne, and it was brief. But if Peter answered the phone, I knew I was in for a 5, 10, or 20 minute chat. Because he cared, he remembered details, and he asked questions, and he made you feel important. So now I'm grateful for all those times Peter answered the phone, because I will always hear his voice.

Not to say that Anne or Laura didn't care, they did. They just didn't keep me on the phone as long as Peter did.

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Aperture: Art and Ideas - issue on Man Ray, 1970s another cover from the magazine Pete subscribed me to when I was a teen interested in photography.

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This is Hope Enterprises - memories of Pete

Pete's sudden passing has me remembering back not just his own work in photograohy and film that I encountered as a kid and teen but the entire history of photography and film over the last 50 years, during which everything has changed. The fact that we can communicate any audio visual materials we want on a web site, along with all the changes in film and photography per se, is nothing short of revolutionary.

And I am also thinking of that time - the 1960s and 1970s - in my formative years as a young lad and teen, when I thankfully spent the most time with my uncle Pete. In the 60s and 70s I recall as a kid feeling that social and political liberation seemed to be moving forward at some level. Never enough, not without tragedies, but moving forward, despite many many setbacks. This was before Reagan and all that has been wrought since then. Pete and Anne were committed to making the world a better place and had chosen to work and live in ways intended to further the common good and create community. In Pete's case, the choice of documentary and educational form, whether in film or other audivisual media, and the kinds of projects he chose (or which chose him) gave expression to these intentions.

In 1975 Peter directed and produced a documentary called This is Hope Enterprises, featuring the non-profit organization based in Williamsport, PA providing rehabilitation for developmentally challenged children and adults. Anne was production manager on this film, which was released by Peter and Anne's film and visual communications company, Looking Glass Films. This 25 minute film is in 16mm color and can be viewed in its entirety here:

I have just viewed the film for the second time in my life, 42 years after it was created. I am again impressed that it is really well done as a documentary, and as a communications piece for this non-profit. And I am incredibly glad and thankful to see that Hope Enterprises is still going, indeed seems thriving, judging from their web site and Facebook site. I never inquired what role the film played in attracting funding and support to this organization in the immediate years after its release. 

The first time I saw the film was during a long 3 week visit to Peter and Anne's farm in Unityville, PA when Peter was either finishing its editing or had just released it. I think I was 14 or 15. Mom and Dad sent me to hang out at the Farm with Pete and Anne over winter vacation, at a time when I was probably not having a happy time being in school. The screening of the film and discussing it with Pete is just one of several memories from my handful of visits to the Farm in the 1970s.

Pete explained that documentaries communicate at multiple levels. Not just the interviews with people, but everything about how you go about such a project is a composition and a decision. The problem is rarely too little material the problem is too much, and what do you use and how do you put the story together in as short and concise a form as possible. It is the essential problem of storytelling. The art is in the editing as much as directing. So in making and then editing a documentary film there are thousands of decisions. 

When he showed me the film I recall we discussed his decision to use one of the thematic images in the film, which I think was also used in its publicity trailer - the image of a palsied man making his way on crutches slowly down an exterior hallway towards the Hope Enterprises entrance. I remember Peter feeling that this image and sequence was poignant, just for what it communicated, apart from the voice-over narration. The camera held sposition as the man made his way using his abilities. The man is alone, not being helped, when the entire rest of the film showed people being helped by others, 1 on 1 and in groups. Of course the goal of the non-profit is to help people become independently able to help themselves as much as possible. Which is what the man on crutches was doing. Pete decided to hold this scene in just long enough that the viewer actually starts to feel the man's difficulty of movement, sympathetically. For Pete this was just one of hundreds of decisions bearing on editing the opening minutes of the film.

At a mechnical and technical level I recall Pete telling me how it took many hours of film to get the material to edit down into 25 good minutes. In those days, making a 16mm color film was a huge expense and involved the now incredibly intricate-seeming process of editing and splicing physical acetate film together and attempting to render the cuts in audio and film seamless using analog tools. That was what filmmaking was, before everything went first to analog video and then to digital video. 

As I think back to what the costs of color 16mm were at the time I think it is some kind of miracle this documentary film was made. Today, anyone with $2,500 can purchase a digital HD video camera and a Mac and have the ability to produce and edit unlimited hours of high resolution high fidelity documentaries for essentially zero hard-dollar expense out of pocket. The material costs of filmmaking cost essentially zero today, and editing can be nearly perfect, from a technical perspective. In some sense Peter got out of photography and filmmaking just before it became incredibly cheap and easy, before the digital revolution. I think anyone with a filmic eye or photographic sense plus a historical understanding of how difficult it is, whatever the technology, to tell a compelling story and transmit the sense of a complex organization and mission in 25 minutes will appreciate a lot of Pete's achievements as a filmmaker and photographer in this documentary. 

I don't know much about the other projects in film and audio-visual communications that Pete worked on during that period, but I think a main theme in Pete's life as a photographer and filmmaker (and for Anne as his partner) has been the commitment to socially conscious and progressive projects and goals, aimed at improving the world, and the public interest. 

Aaron recently gave me a brief overview of how Pete transitioned from filmmaking and photography to non-profit fundraising and thence to founding PennTrans, to work on transportation planning and solutions to improve liveability and quality of life for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. And more recently  working to create in-community living solutions for the elderly. 

So I see all of these transitions simply as an evolution in how my Uncle Pete was all along manifesting his essential desire to serve socially progressive programs for the common good of the community, for human liberation and quality of life. Today more than ever we need more people thinking and acting and manifesting this way, with Pete's consistency and tenacity and determination.

--In loving memory from nephew "Little Pete"

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Another Aperture cover from the subscription Pete gave me back in the 1970s.

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Aperture #77 (1976). Photograph by Josef Koudelka.

My uncle Pete was the early role model and mentor for my lifelong interest in photography. The aesthetic training that an early and successfully encouraged interest in photography provides likely helped to generally develop my eye for composition and aesthetic quality in all the arts and crafts. I was always a maker, and my uncle Pete was all about making things.

In my teen years Pete must have seen my photography interest become more serious, doing significant things in the darkroom, and our conversations on very occasional visits. So one year as a birthday gift he gave me a subscription to the most high-end artistic photography publication then in existence, Aperture: Art and Ideas

With Aperture, you never knew what you would get. Issues of Aperture arrived very sporadically but when they did they were a real treat. Each was a different format, depending on focus or theme of the issue. Each was published as a beautiful art book. In the early years it was all black and white photography and later some color, but one constant was very little excess verbiage and no advertising. Aperture editors mostly let the photography speak for itself, even when much of the work was filled with social and moral significance.

--In loving memory from nephew "Little Pete"

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This is Hope Enterprises - a film by Peter Javsicas

Photography: Tom Spain, David Anderson Music: Susan Rudnick Musicians: Erik Ohberg, Michael Larson Sound: Mark Irwin Production Assistant: Frank Spain Production Manager: Anne Javsicas Director and Editor: Peter Javsicas

Producer: Looking Glass Films, Unityville PA

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I met Laura Javsicas in 1990 when we were 12, and we got married in 2004.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2002, Peter and I were talking about marriage in general.  It is worth pointing out that this means I was having a conversation with my girlfriend’s father about marriage in a way that didn’t make me feel the least bit uncomfortable.  We were discussing the engagement that a friend had executed involving permission of father and some sort of elaborate choreographed event.  Peter laughed his particular wonderful laugh that came out when he thought something was absurd.  He pointed out that his engagement with Anne had consisted of lying in bed one day and one of them saying, “You know, we should probably get married.”  (Clearly an elaborate engagement isn’t necessary for a long and loving marriage.)  And then he said something to the effect of, “I’ve never really understood asking permission of the father.  If someone asked (about Laura), I would say, ‘Why are you asking ME?’”  It was clear he was not saying this to give me instructions, but I thought of him when Laura and I were lying in bed on a Saturday morning in 2003 and—without having consulted with him—I asked Laura what she would think of the idea of having a “graduwedding.” A lot of father-in-law-elects would have been horrified, but I was pretty sure Peter would be pleased.

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There is a photo album of images going through my head as I think of Peter, Anne and the full Javsicas family.  Trying to extract a single conversation from the mix is proving impossible.  My memories are a conglomerate of pictures held together by a strong sense of love and well-being.  This is particularly true of my childhood where Peter, and Anne, were significant influences as part of my extended family. It is hard to be able to place one trait in my personality back to one person or event. Instead, I think of the time where our families co-owned the farm, Plowshare, in Pennsylvania as a place where my love of the outdoors was fostered, nourished and encouraged.  The conversations around the dinner table where different ideas, and disagreements, were worked out probably helped shape my ‘mediator’ personality and interest in finding common ground to accomplish more together than apart.  The decades of strong friendship between my parents and Anne and Peter are always role models of how durable, and important, friends are in our lives. 

Throughout all of this, there are pictures and snippets of conversations.  Walking through a field at the edge of woods; Peter, hand-in-hand with Anne at Plowshare; lessons in photography (he taught me the rule of thirds); Peter and my father drinking beer on the deck and talking about how to improve the lives of others; Peter in the kitchen making omelets or salad dressing; the wedding in the barn where Anne looked like a princess. Peter in full bee keeping regalia after a swarm landed nearly in reach at the farm; I was terrified of bees and being stung, but was fascinated by the process and Peter’s bravery.  The laughter that ensued after Peter and my father, Ed, tried to cut a fallen tree at the farm only to have it ‘stand back up’ from the weight of the root wad.  Anne and Peter with so much love for toddler Aaron and baby Laura, and that love staying steady as the kids morphed into the teenagers and adults. Grandfather Peter playing on the couch with J.D.  Conversations about Vietnam, politics, social issues, public transportation, aging in place, and finding ways that we, as individuals, can make a difference.  I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with Peter and to have the honor of having the Javsicas family be part of my extended family.  I look forward to more time together with Anne, and the families of Aaron and Laura, and know that Peter will always be with us in spirit.   With love, Karen Murphy

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My uncle Peter Javsicas as a young photographer and filmmaker. As I remember him from when I was a kid. He would visit us in Chicago or we would visit New York, and I would spend an afternoon with him in his apartment.

On these brief visits he showed me how cameras worked, both 35mm and polaroid cameras, which were very new. He encouraged my interest, answered all my questions and taught me quite a bit about photography and what makes a good photograph.

Partially as a result of his mentoring and encouragement, I pursued photography as a fairly serious hobby in middle school and high school. I set up a darkroom in the basement. I actually became pretty good. I had other influences and supporters in photography during these years, and even worked summer jobs in a technical photographic studio, doing medical and technical photography.

But it was my Uncle "Big Pete" who first sparked this interest and knowledge.

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Peter and Jo in the kitchen at Wellspring:

Peter:  "Do you have onion goggles?"…..Jo:  "No, never heard of them."     Three days later, onions goggles arrive in the mail.

Jo:  "I can’t find a decent spatula to use on teflon; they are all too flimsy"…..Later that afternoon, Peter comes in with a rubber-rimmed metal spatula.

Peter:  "Do you have a better omelet pan than this?"….Jo:  "No."     The next day Peter brings in an iron skillet

Peter loved to shop in kitchen outlets, always on the search for the perfect cast iron skillet.  And the list goes on…..   I loved cooking with Peter—the omelets, his salad dressing (just a touch of Dijon mustard), corned beef hash...his offers to help, his willingness to do dishes.... The memories will remain to warm our hearts.

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Peter    

Peter:  A creative, visionary activist and extended-family partner in many of our life’s journeys over almost 50 years.  We crossed many boundaries together in New York City with Riverside Community, that was dedicated to creating a caring community across cultures  in NYC and into New Jersey.  When Peter met Anne, we were blessed by their relationship.  With a small group of Riversiders, we worked together to open up Lifwynn Camp on Lake Chateaugay, which had not been used for several years; the camp was once used to help people become more whole by being in nature.  We referred to the camp and our small group as Riverside North.  Peter and Anne were great workers in this collective endeavor.  This opened the door for use by Riversiders to spend some time each summer at this camp ever since.  which had not been used for several years. Following that experience, together we formed a communal living venture called “Plowshare”,  close to Unityville Pa.   We celebrated their wedding in the barn!  Our lives have been greatly enriched by Peter’s life and our collective ventures together.  He helped to make these ventures succeed with creative ingenuity.

Our relationship with Peter grew over the years; as his family and ours grew, we engaged in many wonderful times uplifting times together.  What follows is one indication of how Peter and I embraced and enriched each other’s lives.  At one point I, as an organization development consultant discussed with Peter a global conference that I helped to conduct for the construction industry,   opening up visions of how the industry could and needed to become more ecologically conscientious.   At the same time Peter started looking at and discussing the social, ecological and economic hazards of transportation contaminating the well-being of life.  This started a long journey of creative dialogue between us, all aimed at  forming a better life on earth.

I will greatly miss our ongoing dialogues and Peter’s wonderful creative way of making a positive difference in our lives.  His spirit will continue to speak to us!                    .......Ed Klinge