Loss Prevention’s Richard Bartlett works to ensure historic safety posters preserved

Just as the company’s history continues to grow and change over the coming years, the Aramco Archive & Records Center will grow and change with it. In that sense, the current Memorabilia Campaign is just the beginning of a process of creating and capturing the living memory of what is certainly one of the most important companies of our times.

Richard Bartlett, a senior writer in the Safety Communications Group in Loss Prevention (LP), recently arranged the transfer of a number of documents and artifacts to the Aramco Archive and Records Center, including safety posters that were featured in the 2021 book, The Art of Safety.

LP has posters from the early 1960s, and has been printing at least two posters every month for more than 80 years. 

In total, we have thousands of documents stored in less than ideal conditions. Now, they will be presented in better conditions. And the Archive Group is doing digitalization, creating a platform where we all can see them and discuss them.
— Richard Bartlett

After publication of The Art of Safety, LP reached out to the family of the former chief safety engineer, Charles Homewood, who arrived in Dhahran in 1938. His daughter, Katherine Muris, ended up sending two huge boxes full of photos, documents, maps, safety awards, memorabilia, and so much more. 

“She had a sentimentality of having grown up in Saudi Arabia,” Bartlett said. “She reached the point of deciding whether to hold onto these items or share them. We told her, ‘We can share them,’ and she entrusted these items to us.”

(Editor’s Note: Aramco LIFE will feature various donations during the length of the campaign.)