Tom Koba, who for the past few years had been working on a documentary about the Sultana disaster, passed away Saturday in Norwalk, Ohio.
The Toledo Blade published a fine obituary this morning (click to read), that talks about his lifelong love of filmmaking, and passion for telling stories about the Ohio and the Civil War, producing at least 12 feature documentaries.
His longtime companion, Jennifer Wertz, who had accompanied him to some of the Sultana reunions, provided the Blade with his background:
Ms. Wertz said that at the time of his death, Mr. Koba was working on a
film about an 1865 disaster involving the Mississippi River steamboat
Sultana, whose boiler exploded during a northward voyage carrying 2,400
passengers, mostly freed Union war prisoners.
Mr. Koba swore several times that he would stop making films about the
Civil War, she said, “but then he’d see some memorial plaque and say,
‘That would be a great subject for a film.’ He was intrigued by stories
that had never been told before.”
Mr. Koba’s interest in film-making began during his late-1950s
childhood in Lorain, Ohio, where his parents encouraged his use of the
family home as a movie set. He and high-school friends produced a
feature-length movie about a World War II beachhead battle that
premiered at a Lorain cinema and made enough money to finance his next
project, Ms. Wertz said.
He became Ohio University’s first film student, graduating with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1968, she said.
At a reunion a few years ago, Tom showed some his footage for the Sultana documentary, which included recreations of the tragedy for which he’d built a portion of the ship, brought in Civil War reenactors from three states, and even hired stuntmen to portray soldiers who’d jumped off the ship while on fire.
Behind the scenes photos from the shoot can be found at the website for North Coast Casting (click here to see).
The Blade reports that funeral services will be held Wednesday, 1pm at Toft Funeral Home in Sandusky.
The family requests “tributes” be made to wild animal rescue group Back to the Wild (donation info here).