Life is what happens while you're waiting for something else

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Dorothy Gale, seeker of truth | slayer of witches

PHOTO ADJACENT: My life in pictures

They say life is what happens while you’re waiting for something else to take place. History is generally made in tiny, undetected doses that silently slip through our collective consciousness without a sound. However, there are moments like 9/11 and the pandemic when you can literally feel the world surging forward spurred on by the catastrophic events that are significant enough to live on in history. But for the most part, time simply grinds on while we’re waiting for something else.

My world view changed dramatically after leaving Hutch in 1989 for graduate school at the University of Missouri where I was able to explore the early days of digital photography. Then, after seven years as a photography editor at The Columbus Dispatch, I felt like it was my time to take the lead of my own department, and I landed a gig as the director of photography at The State Newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina.

The State had a reputation as a photo-friendly newspaper in recent years and as South Carolina’s largest daily it was one of those mid-sized newspapers that were big enough to afford the resources to do your job right while paying a livable wage yet small enough to remain sufficiently nimble to turn on a dime and when the news of the day required. Big newspaper were like ocean liners – great when you’re going in a straight line but difficult to turn. And small papers were under-resourced and thus easily scuttled.

While I enjoyed living in the South, part of coming to terms with living in that part of the country is the realization that not a day goes by when somebody somewhere does something because their great, great granddaddy was wronged by somebody else’s great, great grandaddy during the Civil War. Whether it was Senator Strom Thurmon approaching 100 years of age or the discovery of the Confederate submarine, the H.L. Hunley in Charleston Harbor, history was always on our minds, and there were plenty of ghosts looming about to keep things interesting.

Say what you will about race relations and the South, there are at a few things you can always count on never changing – iced tea is always served sweet, people want to know what church you are from, and they wear their opinions are on their sleeves so their is little doubt about where they are coming from. The drumbeat for removing the Confederate Flag from the State Capital dome had been tapping for a good long while when we arrived in 1998, and it would reach a crescendo in 2000 – a year marked by protests, rallies, marches and finally a compromise.

The Confederate Flag began flying at the Capital in 1961 as part of the centennial celebration of the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and the state legislature confirmed its spot atop the dome a year later. In 1957, Thurmond, who was still the state’s senior senator at nearly 100 years old when we moved to Columbia, had waged a 24-hour filibuster of the Civil Right Act. Historians have speculated that the flag’s presence was a means to symbolize Southern defiance in the wake of the rising tide supporting the burgeoning Civil Rights movement nationally.

But the South was changing. More Northerners were moving in and younger generations favored inclusion. After years of debate – public and private – a compromise was reached in 2000 that would move the Confederate Flag off the dome and onto a 30-foot flagpole in the Confederate Soldiers Monument in front of the Capital. A Ku Klux Klan rally at the Capital drew fewer than 10,000 people. However, a short time later a rally in support of moving the flag drew roughly 50,000 people as the crowd spilled out along Main Street. The moving of the tectonic plates of history shifting under your feet was undeniable as a new day was dawning in South Carolina. History was not silent, and we were there to document everything.

Every year, there seems to be a smallish newspaper from some obscure backwater that does something so incredible or so unexpected that it draws the attention of the Pulitzer Prize folks. I’ve worked with a few people who intentionally set out to win a Pulitzer each year, but that seldom bears any fruit. Much of it is good work on a good story, whether it’s a dramatic news event or a public scandal. Selfishly I thought maybe The State might be that paper in 2001. As we gathered newspaper clippings to prepare our contest entry it looked like we had all the pieces to have a shot – editorials, letters to the editor, photographs, stories, think pieces and more all reflecting the passion people had experienced throughout the campaign.

During my four years at The State, we received multiple state, national and international honors, so I knew this was the longest of long shots, and as a result I steeled myself for the disappointment. Every so often in your career, just as in life, you have to remind yourself that the journey is, in fact, the destination. Prize or no prize, covering history of this magnitude that actually touched people’s lives was important. The people you toiled in the trenches with and the friendships you share are the prize. It’s an experience I’m proud to have been a part of and an adventure I never would have had if I didn’t take a leap of faith in 1989 leaving the familiar trappings of my hometown fading away in my rearview mirror like distant memories.

In more than 30-plus years in journalism, I’ve worked at seven newspapers from Wyoming to South Carolina, spent time as an AP stringer and staffed multiple television news websites from coast to coast. The vagabond life of a career journalist hasn’t always been easy, but the juice has definitely been worth the squeeze. My days in journalism have afforded me the opportunity to meet a lot of people and do many interesting things I never would have begun to dream of way back when I first snapped a picture in high school.

I’m living proof that life really is what happens while you’re waiting for something else. You just need to keep your eyes open and be ready when opportunities knock. In fact, just as the pandemic was about to break out, the subject of a feature article I had written reached out with a fantastic story and wanted help writing a book. I balked at first thinking I didn’t have it in me but the little voice inside my head begged to differ. It took the better part of two years, but we finally got the book to press. In the meantime, my cousin in London kept sending out family emails about his father who had a storied life in many aspects. One day it just hit me, this is your next book. Emails went back and forth and before long I was knee deep in researching and writing “The Galloping Goose from Goessel.”

Change isn’t the right choice for everyone. I can honestly say I find taking a good picture as thrilling today as ever, even if they are just for my Facebook friends and random bird lovers.

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