Living history is a way of life for Charles Sullivan, Natchez native and a Mississippi Gulf Coast historian for nearly four decades.

Administrator of a recently acquired treasure trove of about 13,000 historical images, Sullivan in May retired from teaching but remains as archivist at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

The college won a $30,000 post-Katrina emergency grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve the images. Sullivan looks at the project through a long lens, his objective to prepare the images for optimum use by historians in the future.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed whole towns on the coast, as well as numerous museums, libraries and archives where historic treasures were stored.

Katrina weaves through Sullivan&8217;s story, but with a happy ending &8212; the saving of photographic collections from Dixie Press in Gulfport and from the C.C. &8220;Tex&8221; Hamill Down South magazine collection in Biloxi.

With each collection, Sullivan acquired half of the images before Katrina struck the coast.

&8220;I saw something that had been published by Dixie Press in 1927, and I called down there and asked if they still had the pictures from 1927,&8221; Sullivan said. &8220;They said, &8216;of course we do.&8217;&8221;

He went to the press office and found file cabinets packed with photographs that had never been thrown out.