Persona’s: Kathy Henson calls it a career

STERLING — It’s not every business that opens its doors just so it can see what develops.

But that’s exactly what a Sterling business did nearly a hundred years ago, and it’s been part of the local business picture ever since, developing into a photo studio that’s captured more milestones and memories than a person could count. Father and son, father and daughters, sister and sister … Persona Studio — and later, The New Persona Studio — has been putting the “family” in “family photos” for generations.

They’ve clicked countless class photos, coaxed smiles from kids’ faces, kept their eyes on the prized moments in people’s lives, and helped tell the story of their community by chronicling local events. Chances are, if you’ve got a scrapbook, yearbook or family photo album lying around, a Persona’s work is in it.

Now, it’s time for a new chapter in their own family’s story.

Kathy Henson has been one of the Personas to carry on the family business, being part of the photo studio for almost 50 years and running it since 1989, supervising a staff that also includes her husband, Ron, and sister, Kris Austin. But on Aug. 1, the focus will be on someone else.

Ed Geskus, owner of Photographic Arts in Moline, will be taking over The New Persona Studio — but just because Henson is stepping back doesn’t mean she’s stepping away. She plans to stay on staff after the sale, along with the rest of the seven-member team.

The Persona name isn’t going anywhere either, and neither will the picturesque flora surrounding the studio.

“It’s been 47 years, and I’m just ready to have a little time to myself and my husband,” Kathy said, “but I’m not going to totally disappear.”

As long as Kathy is willing to stick around with the new owner, there’ll be a Persona behind the camera, as there has been for as long as most locals can remember, but she’ll be the last, as the couple doesn’t have any Personas-in-waiting to take over the way she did when she followed in her father’s footsteps 33 years ago.

Henson’s grandfather and father, both named John Persona, documented previous generations of Twin City locals and happenings for decades before Henson clicked her first camera. John Sr. was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia who “came with nothing,” Kathy said, and began taking pictures for a studio in Dubuque, Iowa, before coming to Sterling in 1934 to be closer to his wife, Isabelle’s, family.

Like Kathy and Ron, John Sr. and Isabelle worked together in the business: He was behind the camera and she created light-tone color oil paintings out of browntone images, the closest method to color stock images before World War II.

Kathy said her grandpa won several state and national awards in photo competitions while in business, and wasn’t afraid to tap into his creative side.

“He was super cool,” Kathy said. “He would invent stuff, but they never went over at the time. He used to make the heads stick out in 3D and stuff, but back then people thought it was weird. He was very, very talented. He was a master of photography. He was an awesome person and very creative.”

The first studio was downtown, next to the former Randolph Hotel (razed in 1984) near West Third Street and Avenue A. By the time Kathy was in grade school, her father, John Jr. took over the business, and moved it across West Third Street, where its neighbors included Emil’s Toy Store and Eberley’s Drug Store. He would eventually sell the business to Kathy, and she moved it to its present location at 602 First Ave. 3 years later, adding “The New” to the business name.

“Dad stepped in the business because Grandpa and Grandma wanted him to,” Kathy said. “Dad had other plans, but I enjoyed it. I started working for him when I was 16, and I enjoy taking pictures and meeting people.”

The full-service studio offers a full line of photo work. Its staff, many of whom have worked for Kathy for more than 20 years, share ideas with clients during consultations, and discuss location, poses, props and the variety of printing options available. Once a plan is set in motion, they work with their clients to help make sure each detail is taken care of.

The team is heavily involved with shooting school photos — portraits, proms, homecoming and other dances. They’ve covered about 15 schools per year recently, including as far away as Dakota, 10 miles northeast of Freeport. They’ve shot sporting events for yearbooks at no charge to the schools. Weddings were once part of Persona’s offerings, but they no longer shoot weddings due to increased commitments in other areas.

Posing for a portrait can be a daunting experience for a child — sitting still, being quite, smiling on command — and quelling those fears is another skill photographers learn with experience, and Kathy’s had her fair share of that: “We just talk to them like they’re a human being,” she said.

One time, not too long ago, Kathy shot a dance recital and one student just couldn’t stand to have a picture taken. She then found out the child’s mother also had her picture taken by Kathy years ago.

“She was like, ‘Now you know how I felt,’” Kathy said. “We’ve watched a lot of people grow up. It’s nice to know that people appreciate you. It’s a very rewarding job.”

Keeping up with the times and technology has been an exciting challenge for Kathy and her staff over the years, especially the conversion from film to digital, relegating the days spent in a darkroom to little more than a photographic memory. Some things haven’t changed, though, like making sure that every customer’s order is picture-perfect, something made easier by having an experienced staff like the one at Persona.

The business, though, almost went the way of the darkroom, when Kathy decided it was time to step back. She considered closing it, but then Geskus came along.

Geskus is a second-generation photographer who ran a family photography business for nearly 50 years before selling it. Today, he owns Photographic Arts in Moline and lives in Michigan. His current business, a much larger company, was looking for photographers, and since Persona’s unofficial territory of schools is next to his, Geskus believed having a committed group of photographers at Persona could also help out with whatever Photographic Arts needed in or around Whiteside County.

Although the two companies are separate, having them under one owner will help them tap into each other’s resources.

“It’s too bad that there’s no heir to continue the company,” Geskus said. “That’s sad because it’s been around for almost 90 years and you’d like to see them hit 100, but at least someone else can get them there. We want to keep the name going and keep the studio operation going.”

Geskus has served on national photography boards and enjoys being a hands-on owner behind a camera. His plans for Persona will bring together the business’ longtime legacy with new ways of doing things — creating efficiencies while creating memories. Embracing technology and establishing a more robust internet presence are part of his plans.

“We have a program that we’ve been doing for more than 10 years where we just come to the schools, take the kids’ pictures, give the kids a card that gives them a website where they put in these two codes and they can see their pictures,” Geskus said. “We then just mail them home. That’s better than taking the pictures, bringing them back to the school, the secretary has to hand them out to the teachers and the teachers have to hand them out to the kids, and the kids take them home in their backpacks. We’ve cut down on all of that and just streamlined the operation.”

Kathy said she welcomes being able to step aside and let Geskus take the reins, and she looks forward to seeing what he’ll bring to the table. So does Austin, who works mostly on the sales side of the business. Like her sister, Austin also worked with her father in the downtown studio and has enjoyed working alongside her sister.

“I’ve enjoyed it immensely,” she said. “We’ve got to spend time together, and sometimes we fight and bicker, but she’s my boss. We get to do a lot of things, get to go to a lot of places and get to see a lot of people. It’s been awesome. It’ll be hard for her not to be here all of the time because we’ve done a lot of weddings and a lot of families, and a lot of everything.”

Another thrill for Austin is seeing what some younger clients have been up to since roaming the halls of high school. On some occasions, when they think they’ve taken a picture of a future star, she and Kathy have set aside a couple of wallet photos and asked for autographs, like they did with actor and Rock Falls High School graduate, Frank Harts (a story on him appears on page XX of this magazine).

“It’s fun to watch people grow up and see all of the different families that stay around here,” Austin said. “It’s also nice to hear when the kids go away and become famous.”

Come August, The New Persona Studio may feel like the “The New New Persona Studio,” but Geskus enjoys preserving the history of smaller studios like Persona’s — and there aren’t as many around as there used to be — and keeping the same familiar faces in place to help ease the transition.

“Hopefully we can grow the business,” Geskus said. “The cool thing is that the people that are there all plan on staying through the fall, which makes me very happy.”

The New Persona Studio is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

Go to thenewpersonastudio.com or call 815-625-0801 for more information.

To learn more about Photographic Arts by GPI, owned by Geskus, go to pa-gpi.com or email info@pa-gpi.com.