2010 ANNUAL LUCIE AWARDS

The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography, and this year the award take place in New York on October 27.  The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to the most outstanding photography achievements presented at the Gala Awards ceremony. Each year, the Advisory Board nominates deserving individuals across a variety of categories who will be honored during the Lucie Awards ceremony. Once the nominations have been received, the votes are tallied and an honoree in each category is identified. The honorees are pre-announced months before the Lucie Awards. See the honorees here.

This year, the Eddie Adams Workshop will receive the Visionary Award.


The following awards are given during the Lucie Awards:

Lifetime Achievement (an individual who has dedicated his/her entire life to the photographic craft).

Humanitarian (an individual whose works in the photographic field has advanced the well-being of humanity, and/or provided substantial awareness and assistance to causes and communities).

Visionary (an individual who has made a unique contribution to photography and the preservation of the art form either through education or the creation of a viable photography-related platform or institution).

Spotlight (an individual, organization or corporation whose endeavors have significantly changed the landscape of photography).

Outstanding Achievement Awards are given to individuals who have made a significant contribution in the following areas:

Advertising

Documentary

Fashion

Fine Art

Photojournalism

Portraiture

Sports

Support Category Awards are also given to individuals and organizations who are an integral part of crafting an image. These nominees are submitted by members and voted on by the Photography Advisory Board. The six awards are:
Print Advertising Campaign of the Year - Awarded to Advertising Agencies
Fashion Layout of the Year - Awarded to Magazine Publishers
Curator/Exhibition of the Year - Awarded to Curators
Book Publisher of the Year - Awarded to Book Publishers
Picture Editor of the Year - Awarded to Picture Editors
Photography Magazine of the Year - Awarded to Magazine Publishers

19 Lucie Awards are given out during the ceremony. The Visionary Award and Humanitarian Award are given out every other year.

INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS COMPETITION WINNERS

The top three winners of the IPA competition are announced during the Lucie Awards. Those top three awards are:

International Photographer of the Year awarded to a professional photographer.

Discovery of the Year awarded to a non-professional, amateur or student photographer.

Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year awarded to either a professional or non-professional photographer. This award is given to the photographer whose story behind the images are as compelling as the images themselves.
For more information about IPA, please click here.


Monroe Gallery of Photography is proud to attend this year's ceremonies and congratulates all of the 2010 Lucie Awards nominees and winners.

Related: Eddie Adams photographs at Monroe Gallery.

CARL MYDANS: KOREA

Carl Mydans: Korean mother carries her baby and worldly goods while fleeing fighting, Seoul, Korea, 1951



In 1947, Carl Mydans and his reporter-wife Shelly became Time-Life's bureau chiefs in Tokyo, and they remained in the Pacific area for the next several years. Carl Mydans was present during a 1948 earthquake in Fukui, Japan, and also covered conflicts leading up to the Korean War, and the war itself in 1950 and 1951.

We came across an excellent article by Brian in Jeollanam-do describing the recent anniversary of the Yŏsu Rebellion.

"Tuesday, October 19th, marked the anniversary of the "Yŏsu Rebellion," written in English also as the "Yŏsu-Sunchŏn Incident" or the "Yŏsu-Sunchŏn Rebellion," one of several bloody exchanges in Jeollanam-do last century, and one whose background serves to foreshadow the violence of the Korean War two years later. The 여순반란사건 was a crackdown against suspected communists in South Jeolla province, specifically the cities written now as Yeosu and Suncheon, that resulted in hundreds or thousands of deaths, depending on the source.

Here's an excerpt from a 1948 report by Carl Mydans---the man who took some of those photographs for Life---that appeared in Time magazine:

"When darkness came, Communist execution squads went from house to house, shooting "rightists" in their beds or marching them to collection points where they were mowed down. In 2-3-days, 500 civilians were slaughtered. U.S. Lieuts. Stewart M. Greenbaum and Gordon Mohr, Army observers in Sunchon, narrowly escaped death. The rebel sergeant assigned to kill them was an old friend, who had drunk beer with them in their billet many times. He took the two officers into a field, fired into the ground and then led them to the Presbyterian Mission of Dr. John Curtis Crane, who was barricaded in with his wife and four other missionaries.

From one of the doctor's shirts and a few colored rags the ladies made a 16-star, eleven-stripe U.S. flag and put it up. The rebels began pounding at the compound gate, yelling: "Let's kill the Americans!" Suddenly one shouted: "No, no, not them; they are my friends." It was the lieutenants' friend, the sergeant. The rebels went away.

For the first few hours the loyal troops who retook Sunchon were as savage as the Communists had been. On the big compound of the Sunchon Agricultural and Forestry School we found what was left of the entire population of Sunchon. Women with babies on their backs watched without expression as their husbands and sons were beaten with clubs, rifle butts and steel helmets. They saw 22 of them marched away to the primary school nearby, and heard the volley of rifles which killed them.'"

Read the full Blog here.

Carl Mydans: Exhausted Marine catching a nap while sitting on a cart full of ammunition, Korea, 1951

American corpsman carrying a wounded GI from Jeep to a medical station, Kwan-Ni, Korea, 1950

Related: Carl Mydans: The Early Years Oct. 1 - Nov. 21
 
Previously posted: October 20 is the anniversary of the day General Douglas MacArthur set foot in The Philippines
 
Remembering Carl Mydans

THE ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL: REMEMBERING LENNON

By Kate Mcgraw


(C)The Albuquerque Journal
Friday, October 22, 2010


Remembering Lennon
Hamill’s works with the iconic star are shown at Monroe Gallery

Brian Hamill: John Lennon, The Dakota, New York, 1975

John Lennon would have been 70 years old on Oct. 9. For those whose college days came alive to the Beatles' music, that's an almost unbelievable statistic. One advantage of dying young — Lennon was only 40 when he was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980 — is that the victim remains forever young in memory.

Brian Hamill, for instance, is a longtime celebrity photographer who's aging, like the rest of us, but who has indelible memories of the three intimate sessions he had with Lennon in the '70s. Fortunately, his memories are on film. Many of the photographs from those sessions are being shown in an exhibit opening today at Monroe Gallery of Photography on Don Gaspar.

Brian Hamill: John Lennon, The Dakota, 1975

Hamill has written movingly abut his memories of Lennon in a blog on the Monroe website.

"... I will always remember John Lennon as a quick-witted, vulnerable, stand-up, soft-spoken but unafraid guy," Hamill wrote. "In my short time hanging with him, he spoke only the truth. I only spent time with him twice. I photographed him three times. They were all as memorable in my brain and in my heart as the awful day when he got murdered by a two-bit swine. On Dec. 8, 1980, I was sitting in a rocking chair of my living room at my country house in Rhinecliff, N.Y., holding my 3-week-old infant daughter Cara in my arms. Just the two of us were there, listening to music together on the radio, me with the goofy faces and smiles and the baby talk, when suddenly the music was interrupted by a bulletin stating that John Lennon had been murdered. Projectile tears instantly shot out of my eyes onto my beautiful daughter. I had never cried like that. They were such immediate, forceful tears. I will never forget the combination, a one-two punch on the chin, of celebrating the wonderful joy of fatherhood one moment that was completely shattered in a split-second moment by that painful, horrible news bulletin. John Lennon, dead!? Nooooooooooo!... for my generation, for many generations, he was a major musical force and a phenomenal creative icon of the 20th century who influenced the world. No doubt about that. Everybody knows."

Brian Hamill: John Lennon, Madison Square Garden, New York, 1972

Brian Hamill has moved among the famous for most of his career, and this exhibit shows that, according to Sid Monroe, gallery director. Monroe Gallery specializes in classic black and white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. The gallery features work by more than 50 renowned photographers and also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers.

Hamill was born in Brooklyn, NY and studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the late 1960s, he began a career as a photojournalist covering the rock 'n' roll scene as well as the boxing world. He also worked as an assistant to several top fashion photographers. In the early 1970s he traveled to Northern Ireland to photograph the troubles there, and widened his scope into unit still photographer jobs on movie sets. Since then, he has worked as a unit still photographer on more than 75 movies, including 26 Woody Allen films, resulting in a coffee table photo book titled "Woody Allen At Work: The Photographs of Brian Hamill" (Harry N. Abrams, 1995).

The redoubtable director is in fact quoted marveling at Hamill's ubiquitousness: "His currency is knowledge, information, connections, street smarts. There's not a person he doesn't know or he doesn't have the skinny on or know about, not a restaurant, not a broad — it's really quite astonishing."

Hamill's work also has appeared in other books, publications and exhibitions, including a one-man show at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1995. In 2005 he had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles and Austin with his images of John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, Mick Jagger, Robert DeNiro from "Raging Bull" and Woody Allen from "Manhattan." In addition to his movie work, Hamill has an extensive file of photographs that includes the "Troubles In Northern Ireland — 1972," rock 'n' roll, boxing, travel photographs from around the world, and a collection of nudes from the 1970s to the present that he plans to include in a forthcoming book.

He still mourns the gentle music man he met in those Lennon sessions not long before the singer-songwriter's tragic death. "John Lennon never got to fully mature as a man," Hamill writes. "The dude was only 40 years old! He never really got to bring his full genius to all of us, although he certainly brought us some real genius. He never got to share more of that fun and laughter and wackiness with Yoko that we all were lucky enough to glimpse in a small way, and you certainly know a lot more of that was on their horizon. He never got to spend a lot of quality time with his nice sons. Yet he gave us all so much. Those John Lennon tears of mine will never fully dry. He will be missed forever."

Brian Hamill: John Lennon, The Dakota, New York, 1975

Opening Reception and Special Film Festival Exhibit For Brian Hamill
Friday, Oct. 22  5 - 7 PM
Exhibit continues through Nov. 21.


Related: LENNONYC at The Santa Fe Film Festival Saturday, Oct. 23. Ticket info here.
Brian Hamill will introduce the film and take part in a panel discussion afterwards.

MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
112 Don Gaspar
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.992.0800
505.992.0810 (fax)
info@monroegallery.com
http://www.monroegallery.com/

SANTA FE FILM FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND

Fewer titles, but much to love for film fest fans
Santa Fe Film Festival scales back annual event



Robert Nott
The New Mexican
October 21, 2010

Film buffs will have their pick of movie fests this week as the Santa Fe Film Festival kicks off its 11th (some say 12th) year Friday while the relative newcomer, Santa Fe Independent Film Festival (which started Tuesday evening), continues its second year through the weekend.


Both fests promise film screenings, informal panel discussions and social events, but in terms of quantity, the Independent Film Festival is offering some 60 titles this year — mostly indie titles. The Santa Fe Film Festival, by contrast, has contracted its schedule considerably, cutting back from the usual 100 to 200 titles to eight feature films, 15 short movies, four panel talks and one party.

Yet organizers of both fests say the buzz is high and ticket sales are brisk. Michael Hare, co-artistic director of the Santa Fe Film Festival, said Wednesday that seven of the festival's eight major titles are selling very well and may be sold out by Friday.

Those films, which include The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte), an Italian spiritual fable that was just selected for the Directors' Fortnight showcase at the Cannes Film Festival, and French film director Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier, are all playing at the Center for Contemporary Arts Cinematheque on Old Pecos Trail, which only seats about 140 patrons.

The eighth big title, the 1970 Mike Nichols' film Catch-22, runs at the much larger Lensic Performing Arts Center on San Francisco Street on Sunday afternoon. That screening will be followed by a discussion with Catch-22 actors Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss (and maybe star Alan Arkin, a Santa Fean who is currently filming a movie on the East Coast).

Hare acknowledged this year's festival is smaller as the organization attempts to rein in the spending and refocus its mission.

"We are just reducing the scale," he said. "There are smaller, more intimate and relaxing festivals around the country, and we want to be at that end of the spectrum." He and co-artistic director Rose Kuo are laying out a three-year plan for the festival, which was founded in the late 1990s by film buffs Jon Bowman, David Koh, Michelle Kiley and others. (Accounts differ as to whether it was officially founded in 1999 or 2000.)

Meanwhile, the upstart Santa Fe Independent Film Festival is trying to make a name for itself as "the premiere exhibition platform for independent film here," according to David Moore, who co-directs the event with Jacques Paisner.

On Tuesday, 120 people attended a free screening of Salt of the Earth (the 1954 labor drama shot in New Mexico), Moore said. "To get that many people in one room on a Tuesday night I consider quite an accomplishment. I'm surprised at how people responded and applauded at the end; if that's a harbinger of things to come, we're very pleased," he said.

The Independent Film Festival's screening venue is Warehouse 21 on Paseo de Peralta, though it hosts informal coffee chats about the film business at the Aztec Cafe on Aztec Street.

Hare said he thinks the two events will complement one another. "I'm kind of a 'the more the merrier' guy," he said. "We know we are creating a relatively small footprint, so we encourage people to do their own thing and make it a good weekend."

Moore and Paisner have said they think it's a smart idea to hold their festival at the same time as the more mainstream Santa Fe Film Festival — as they did last year when both fests took place in December.

Both festivals are expecting participation from filmmakers who have products playing here; Hare said each of the feature films in the Santa Fe Film Festival will be followed by a question-and-answer session with either film artists associated with the movie or film historians and critics familiar with the work.

He said this is a year for the changing festival to "test-pilot some ideas. We want to make sure we do it well.

"Hopefully people will be patient, and next year it will be a little bit bigger — we may have 16 titles next year and by year three get into the low 20s."

Moore said he wants the Independent Film Festival to be "the best fest that it can be to bring independent film to people."

Visit http://www.santafefilmfestival.com/ and/or http://www.santafeindependentfilmfestival.com/ for a schedule of events and details on both festivals.



Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.
Copyright The Santa Fe New Mexican

Related: Secial Film Festival Exhibition for Brian Hamill

On October 20, 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence and infiltration in the U.S. motion picture industry.



Martha Holmes: Actors standing (L-R) Danny Kaye, June Havoc and Humphrey Bogart, with his wife actress Lauren Bacall sitting beside him, listening intently amid seated crowd at House Un-American Activities Commission Hearings on communists in the film industry. Washington, DC, US, October 31, 1947
Gelatin silver print

SPECIAL FILM FESTIVAL EXHIBIT FOR BRIAN HAMILL

Brian Hamill: Diane Keaton and Woody Allen, 59th Street Bridge, New York, 1978, "Manhattan"

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to welcome Brian Hamill for a very special exhibit in conjunction with the Santa Fe Film Festival, which takes place October 22 - 24. There will be a public reception with Brian Hamill on Friday, October 22, 5-7 PM at Monroe Gallery of Photography.

On exhibit will be a selection of Hamill's photographs from the sets of  movies, including Raging Bull, Annie Hall, and Manhattan. Additionally, an exclusive series of intimate photographs of John Lennon will be on exhibit, coinciding with the anniversary of what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday and the screening of LENNONNYC at the Santa Fe Film Festival October 23. (Brian Hamill will introduce the film.)

Brian Hamill: Robert DiNiro,"Raging Bull", 1979

Additionally, Monroe Gallery has curated an exclusive exhibit of photographs from the sets of classic movies for the festival venue, Center for Contemporary Arts.

Steve Shapiro: Homage, The Godfather

Brian Hamill was born in Brooklyn, NY and studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the late 1960s, Hamill began a career as a photojournalist covering the Rock & Roll scene as well as the boxing world. He also worked as an assistant to several top fashion photographers. In the early 1970s he traveled to Northern Ireland to photograph the troubles there, and widened his scope into unit still photographer jobs on movie sets. Since then he has worked as a unit still photographer on over seventy-five movies including twenty-six Woody Allen films, resulting in the much acclaimed coffee table photo book entitled “Woody Allen At Work: The Photographs of Brian Hamill". Hamill’s work has also appeared in numerous other books, publications and exhibitions including a one-man show at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1995.

Steve Schapiro: Robert DiNiro, Taxi Driver, 1975 (Enlarged Contact Sheet)

More about the Santa Fe Film Festival here.

SANTA FE FILM FESTIVAL AND MONROE GALLERY ON RADIO STATION KBAC

This week radio station KBAC ("Radio Free Santa Fe")  is broadcasting information and interviews relating to the Santa Fe Film Festival.

Tune in Tuesday at 1 PM to listen as Sid and Michelle Monroe discuss the Monroe Gallery's collection of film-related photography, including stills and publicity photography from Hollywood's classic movies; and Brian Hamill's photographs of Raging Bull, Annie Hall, and Manhattan, and John Lennon.

Listen live here.

The much-talked about  film "LENNONYC" will be shown on Saturday, October 23 at the festival.

LENNONYC


"In 1971, John Lennon arrived in New York City and felt reborn: at last living in the country that had dominated his artistic imagination, Lennon and his new bride Yoko Ono found in the city the perfect blend of music, politics, culture, and lifestyle. But those heady first years eventually gave way to a dark period in which both Lennon’s musical career and his personal life almost ran aground—until once again New York City came to his rescue. Using remarkable, rarely seen footage and interviews with many who were close to John, filmmaker Michael Epstein has created a moving, revealing portrait of the music legend’s New York years, detailing not only his triumphs but also some hard times over which he so beautifully recovered in the final years of his tragically curtailed life."

Monroe Gallery will welcome Brian Hamill with a special reception and exhibition on Friday, October 22, 5 - 7 PM. On exhibit will be a selection of Hamill's photographs from the sets of movies, including Raging Bull, Annie Hall, and Manhattan. Additionally, an exclusive series of intimate photographs of John Lennon will be on exhibit, coinciding with the anniversary of what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday and the screening of LENNONNYC at the Santa Fe Film Festival October 23. (Brian Hamill will introduce the film.)


Related: Making Movies

Hollywood USA

GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR'S FLIGHT FROM THE PHILIPPINES SYMBOLIZED AMERICA'S DEMORALIZING REVERSES EARLY IN WORLD WAR II. HIS RETURN DRAMATIZED THE DAWN OF VICTORY

October 20 is the anniversary of the day General Douglas MacArthur set foot in The Phillipines, fulfilling his pledge to return after withdrawing from the Japanse army advances.

On December 8, 1941, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor across the International Date Line, the Japanese also attacked the Philippines by air. Despite a nine-hour warning and for reasons never clarified, most of a considerable American air force was destroyed on the ground. The loss of air cover made it necessary to withdraw the U.S. naval forces, essentially dooming the defense of the Islands against the rapidly following Japanese ground invasion.

The American and Filipino forces fought gallantly, retreating to the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island in accordance with a plan. However, the plan also called for holding out until relief forces could be dispatched. Since neither relief nor evacuation was now possible, President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt it was of paramount importance to extract Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general so that his experience and talents could be employed on the difficult road back.

After more than two years of tough fighting over a wide expanse of the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur was authorized to invade the Philippines. Choosing Leyte rather than the principal island of Luzon as the initial landing site, MacArthur waded ashore in October 20, 1944 and proclaimed to waiting newsmen, "I have returned". He waded in with Philippine President Sergio Osmeña, restaging the landing a second time for the newsreel cameras. The words and pictures were flashed around the world and clearly underlined for an anxious American public how far its armed forces had traveled on the road back from the early disasters.

On December 15, 1944, MacArthur waded ashor in Luzon, and Carl Mydans was there with him. Mydans recalled:

“I thought MacArthur was the most brilliant man I had ever known. I had good moments with him and bad moments. I was with him in Manilla during the first Japanese attacks of the war. I rejoined MacArthur in Leyete, and was the only photographer to accompany him on his command ship the USS Boise for the invasion of Luzon. And I was invited to go ashore with him. As our landing craft neared the beach I saw that the SeaBees has laid a pontoon walkway out from the beach. I climbed the boat’s ramp and jumped onto the pontoons to photograph MacArthur. But in the instant of my jumping, I heard the boat’s engines reversing, and I saw the boat swinging away. Judging from what was happening, I raced to the beach and stood waiting for the boat to come to me. It dropped its ramp in knee-deep water and I photographed MacArthur coming ashore. No one I have ever known in public life had a better understanding of the drama and power of a picture”

Less than a year later, the general was standing aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay accepting the Japanese surrender that ended World War II.


Related: Carl Mydans: The Early Years

RICHARD CRUMP MILLER: August 6, 1912 - October 15, 2010

Richard C. Miller James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor take a break from filming "Giant"

It is with profound sadness that we share the news of the passing of Richard C. Miller. Miller was an American photographer best known for his vintage carbro prints, photos of celebrities, and work documenting the building of the Hollywood Freeway.

Photographer Richard C. Miller poses on a shoot with model Norma Jeane Dougherty in 1946. He would later photograph her again more than a decade later, when she was known as Marilyn Monroe, on the set of "Some Like It Hot."

Richard Miller's interest in photography began when he was a child and toyed with his father’s 3¼x4¼ folding roll-film camera.  His passion for photography led to his increase in knowledge about established photographers, and when he found out Edward Weston was moving nearby he went over to introduce himself. The rest was history. (See more of Miller's biography here.)

There was a resurgence of interest in Miller's photography in spring 2009, when a collection of his images was shown alongside the work of Paul Outerbridge at the J. Paul Getty Museum.  (See the Los Angeles Times article about selections for the exhibit here.) Monroe Gallery of Photography began to represent his work that same year, and featured his photographs from the making of "Giant" at Photo LA in January, 2010.


Read the Los Angeles Times obituary here.

Listen to Richard C. Miller in an interview "Breakthrough Photographer" with Patt Morrison on 89.3 KPCC, recorded on April 2009 and aired 3 July 2009, here.

See more of Richard C. Miller's photographs here.

Richard C. Miller: James Dean besides his car during the filming of "Giant"

A Story Told: Miraculous Rescue, Remarkable Reunion

©TheBostonChannel.com

“I believe you took a photo for the Boston Herald American in January 1977 of a little girl and another of her mother that were published in the paper. The fire took place on Jan. 21, 1977, on 173 West Sixth St. in South Boston."

So began the message that photographer Stanley Forman received this July on his Facebook page. The message would lead to both a reunion and a hidden past revealed.

Forman, now a photographer for NewsCenter 5, had won three Pulitzer Prizes while working for the Boston Herald. His forte, then and now, is breaking news and fires.

"I am not sure if you would still have these pictures or more pictures that were not published. I am the little girl in the picture, Tammi,” the Facebook posting went on to say.
 
 

  ©StanleyFormanPhotos.com

 

Forman's compelling photos had captured a tragedy, and the girl in his pictures wanted to know more.


"It was one of the most intense fires I had ever been at. Knowing there were people trapped in the building and watching firefighters' attempts to get to them was very dramatic," said Forman.

Four people died in the fire, including Tammi's 6-year-old brother John.

Her mother, Ella May Kurtz, 30, was rescued, but died a few weeks later from her injuries.

But Forman's pictures also captured Tammi's miraculous rescue.
 
"When I got there the first shot I took was of firefighter George Girvan rushing a 3-year-old to safety after she was passed to him from firefighters who rescued her from the fire," he said.

©StanleyFormanPhotos.com

 
"I did not know at the time it was a girl," Forman said.

Forman had dropped off some of the pictures at the firehouse, including those of Alfred Chase, who the photos show being treated with oxygen after stumbling out of building.

After a few days of coverage in the newspaper, he thought the story had come to end.

Tammi Brownlee spent eight months in the hospital and then moved to Arizona for ten years before returning to South Boston. At first she lived with family and later with two foster families.

Thirty-three years after the fire, she went to the Boston Public Library to search for clues. She found Forman's pictures on the newspaper's front page and contacted him.

"This fire would have been another tragic fire that I have covered over my many years in this business," Forman said. "But then this e-mail came from Tammi and almost immediately I knew exactly which photos Tammi was talking about."

Earlier this summer, Forman joined a crew from for an interview with Tammi. After the interview, they took Tammi to South Boston for a surprise.

"The fire scene is now a vacant fenced in lot owned by the city. As Tammi and I walked up to the scene she was looking at this man coming towards us. She seemed confused as to who this man could be," Forman said.

"When I told her this was Alfred Chase, she knew exactly who he was from the newspaper clippings she had read and was taken aback," he said.

"He remembered locating her in the fire room and dragging her to safety with the help of other firefighters and passing her off to safety. It was a very emotional meeting for all," Forman said.

But Tammi's search did not end there. Fifteen years ago she learned she had two half siblings who had been given up for adoption before she was born.

"I had searched for years on adoption registry websites, hoping that they had put on there that they were looking for their birth mother or birth father," Tammi said. "When I started investigating the fire, everything fell into place."

Last month with help from the state, Brownlee found her sister Eleanor Doherty and just this week her brother David.

"It's a happy ending. It is what I have been waiting for, for a long time. It is family," Tammi said.

Along with her two children, Tammi brought her boyfriend of 10 years to the interview. Chad King is a Cape Cod firefighter.

I guess firefighters are my protectors,” Tammi said.

Copyright 2010 by TheBostonChannel.com

See more photographs from the fire here.