In early 2009 a records management group was cleaning out the Pfizer records retention warehouse in Building 248 on Kilgore Road, Kalamazoo, MIchigan. The manager of the group mentioned to me they had found a dozen boxes containing the last remnants of the Upjohn corporate history files and two boxes of 16mm movies. Wow! This was an opportunity not to be missed. I took all the history files and movies before they were lost.

 

I obtained a 16mm projector and we started watching the movies. Some were from the 1940's, the earliest one being in black and white. We were amazed at what had survived. The movies all ended up being digitized and are now available on YouTube via links on this web site.

 

I started sending out scanned history photos and documents to fellow Pfizer employees. This rapidly turned into an internal web site within Kalamazoo Pfizer. Everyone loved the history. In July 2013 I decided the time had come to create an external website so previous employees and retirees could also enjoy all the history. This is meant to be a fun site where you can see a lot of interesting history you wouldn't otherwise get the chance to enjoy. As of July 2024 there were over 1000 web pages and 20,000 images on upjohn.net.

 

Even before I started, Dave Gleason had been collecting history information from the Downtown Kalamazoo operations and had been handing out CDs with thousands of scanned photos.

 

In February 2021, local magazine Encore interviewed me about the Upjohn Memories website. Here is the article resulting from that interview. In May 2022, local newspaper South County News interviewed me about the Upjohn collection. Here is the article resulting from that interview.

 

A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS FORWARDED UPJOHN MATERIAL TO ME. 

 

If you have Upjohn history you think others would enjoy please email me and we can figure out how to get it online. If you see your photo or name online and that's a problem, let me know so I can remove you.

 

Jeremy Winkworth, May 2024

 

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