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Winter 2013
Page 2A
LEAP
Continued from page 1A
I grew up in Illinois, the Land
of Lincoln; moved to Europe in my
20s; spent two decades in Minnesota; and moved six years ago to
the nation’s hub of innovation and
entrepreneurship, the Silicon Valley. But as writer and academic
JRR Tolkien put it well: “Not all
those who wander are lost.”
Neither of my parents were
writers or journalists. My dad, a
mechanical engineer and weekend pilot, passed away eight years
ago. I am thankful for his gifts.
He taught me how to take a photo
and to fly an airplane and always
to take leaps of faith.
My mother is here today and
has been a teacher since 1957 —
and still teaches today. That she
still is a teacher at 77 in a career
that has gone for more than half
a century is a wonder. She is the
inspiration, support and template
of much that I do in my classroom
and my life.
And Mom — I hope you’ll help
me enter a stack of quiz grades
back at the hotel after we finish
here.
My path to journalism advising
started with a camera.
I grew up in Rockford, Ill.
In 1976, when I was a seventh
grader, the Rockford government,
facing a budget crisis, proposed a
property tax referendum, much
like Paly’s. It failed. Our K-12
schools were stripped of all sports,
music, orchestras, choirs, bands,
all journalism, all art. Over 400
teachers lost their jobs, including my mom, whose position as a
music teacher was eliminated.
There were two impacts on
my life of that failed referendum.
First, I vowed never ever, ever
to become a teacher; secondly, I
picked up a camera and fell in
love.
My dad, an amateur photographer, built a darkroom in our
basement to give me something
to do. I took to the chemistry,
sequence and magic of photography with joy. I found my voice —
with film.
Although my AP Lit seniors
wouldn’t believe it if they heard
me right now, my heroes are
not Jane Austen (unless it’s my
mom — yes, it’s the family punch
line) and Shakespeare — whose
birthday I share. My heroes were
legendary midcentury photojournalists: Gordon Parks, Margaret
Bourke-White, Robert Capa and
Dorothea Lange. Their lenses
were courageous, creating a dialogue about social issues with
images that leveraged change
that needed to come.
I was 6 months old when JFK
was assassinated, 4 years old
when Dr. Martin Luther King
was killed in Memphis and in
first grade when Neil Armstrong
set foot on the moon. What would
our collective memory be without
the iconic photographs of those
moments?
After finishing at the University of Illinois, including stints
as a photographer on the Daily
Illini campus paper and the “Illio”
yearbook, I spent time living in
Europe teaching English as a
foreign language, then moving to
Minnesota, where I set up a small
photo studio in a warehouse in
St. Paul. Somewhere along the
way, bowing to family pressure, I
also got my teaching certification
—“just in case.”
My camera has traveled into
Kentucky coal country to document the proud but poverty-laden
lives there. I’ve run from mobs in
South Africa when I visited that
nation in the last days of apartheid and turn