The Fr. Niemeyer films Arroyo Seco NM

The “Veterans’ School for Carpenters” had been spearheaded by the enlightened Fr. Elmer James Niemeyer, the first parish pastor in Arroyo Seco from 1946-52. He had used his own camera, projector and film.

The Fr. Niemeyer films featured local catechism students, funeral and wedding processions, nuns, visiting priests, and people from Arroyo Seco, Arroyo Hondo, Valdez, Peñasco and Dixon. The films had been donated to the Center for Southwest Research at Zimmerman Library on the UNM campus in Albuquerque, on the condition that the experts there would update them by making them digitally friendly, clean them and make them available to scholars and historians online.