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The summer I graduated from college, I had been taking a lot of photos and was trying to make it professionally by getting on with the Associated Press (AP) and/or United Press International (UPI). One day, the photo editor for Sports Northwest Magazine called (I’d been shooting for them that summer as well), and said that UPI had called. He said I should give them a call back, because they had an assignment for me. I’d been so used to hunting for photo assignments that I couldn’t believe that someone was actually calling me out of the blue. I wondered if we were heading into ‘lucky break’ territory.
Well, it turned out it wasn’t UPI, though. It was some little newspaper out of Boston called the Christian Science Monitor, which I soon learned wasn’t so little after all, and getting a call from them wasn’t a bad feather in the cap of a 24-year-old.
Turns out they were doing a story about Puget Sound, and all the wonderful things that the Sound (a rather large body of saltwater) was good for. They wanted to illustrate three aspects: industrial, military, and recreational.
Okay, I thought. That shouldn’t be too hard.
To start with, I went to Gasworks Park on Lake Union (freshwater, but connected to Puget Sound via canals and locks), and got photos of people with sea kayaks. Then, I called a sailboat place out at Shilshole Bay Marina and talked them into letting me borrow a couple of sailboats, (yes, a couple of sailboats) complete with crews.
We went out, sailed the two, and got some nice images under full sail and wispy clouds. It was nice. I was absolutely ecstatic until I found out later that there was a problem. A water drop had dried on the negative in the middle of that wonderful wispy sky, resulting in a dark outline that covered about a quarter of the sky in the image. Retouching the negative was out of the question, and though I tried to retouch the print, it was no good. The only way to use the shot would be so small that it would rival a postage stamp, and the folks I’d borrowed the boats from wouldn’t be available again until after the deadline was past. So, I had to move on to plan B.
My ultimate goal became to try to tell the story (industrial, military, and recreational) of Puget Sound in one photo, and I kept my eyes peeled for that kind of situation. I just needed two ships and a boat.
Thing is, as much fun as I had with that sailboat shot, and really wanted to roll with it, I couldn’t because of that water drop on the negative. That bad thing is what ended up making the entire shoot special. Plan B entailed getting industrial, military, and recreational vessels together, and involved finding out who would be in charge of those three types of ships. After some research, I ended up calling the Port of Seattle, talked to the harbormaster, and explained that I was doing a photo shoot for the Christian Science Monitor, and would it be okay if…
…actually, that’s just about how I started every introduction. It’s unbelievable how many doors that sentence or one like it opened up over the following years. I asked the harbormaster if I could get onto one of the ships, or the cranes, or something that would enable me to get some photos to tell that story.
He said, sure, not a problem, all I had to do was tell anyone on the ship that the harbormaster said it was okay, and I should be set.
It felt like I was talking to a man with the authority of God himself. He had no questions about what I’d be doing, and no questions about whether anyone on any ship in his harbor would obey him. “If anyone asks questions, tell them the harbormaster said it was okay, and they should let you go anywhere you need to go.”
“Anywhere?”
“Anywhere.”
Wow – this was the greenest of green lights I’d ever seen.
His word, clearly, was law.
He expected no questions.
From anyone.
I was cool with that.
So, I made it out to the first dock in the harbor, found a rather large container ship called the Manu Lani, and climbed on board, and like a kid in a candy store, started exploring. It was in the process of being unloaded, so I carefully wandered around the containers, trying to get into a position that would produce a decent shot. The image I had in my head was one that would have me at almost eye level to the top of the containers the cranes were unloading, looking over the top of them, with the Seattle skyline in the background, but that meant climbing up somewhere to get to that height. Eventually, just in front of the superstructure at the back of the ship, the one with the smokestack, I found a huge mast that I could climb, so I slung the camera bag as far over my shoulder as I could, flung the cameras over that, and started climbing.
This was a little easier said than done, because the mast was welded to multiple levels of deck, which were vibrating ever-so-slightly. You know how you can swing a baseball bat, and the tip of the bat moves way farther and way faster than the part in your hand? Same idea with this mast, only it started about 30 feet from the deck, and I was climbing about 20 feet higher than that.
As long as I kept moving, I was fine. I was facing the back of the ship, so all I saw in front of me was the smoke stack, and as I got to the top of it, I could suddenly hear the “foof, foof, foof” of the exhaust coming out of the stack and filling my ears. I took a quick look around to get my bearings, and realized things were going to get a little interesting. Though I’d stopped moving, it was obvious that the mast hadn’t. In fact, the mast, at that height, was actually moving more. The “foof, foof, foof” was being produced by an engine many feet below decks. Tons of spinning steel caused a surprising amount of ultra-low-frequency vibration, transmitting and amplifying all the way up the mast that I was hanging onto for dear life.
The camera bag and the cameras were swinging uncomfortably around at a frequency that was a bit off from that of the mast, which made them a little hard to hang on.
I’m glad I didn’t have to open and dig through the camera bag for a camera and lens – that would have made things a little more exciting than I’d planned on. I used the lens that I’d put on the Nikon F-3 (the 24/2.8) and the lens I had on the FM-2 (the 180/2.8) and got a couple of photos of the cranes and their operators from almost their level. It was an interesting view, but didn’t really tell much of the story I was trying to tell, so I did the best I could, trying to get shots of the cranes that very few people would have the opportunity to get and, if nothing else, at least proved I’d been there.
By this time, my movements and the shaking of the mast had swung the camera bag back and forth enough to tangle it up on the rungs a bit, so I decided to get down to deck level before things got a little more complicated. I untangled the camera from the rung and got down the mast to the superstructure as carefully and quickly as I could.
I stood there, leaning on the rail for a little bit, realizing and appreciating how much less it was moving, and realized that getting a little lower might actually help steady me bit more. So, I went down to the deck where the containers were. Now, being below the ones I’d been above before, it looked more like a canyon than anything else, and if you’ve ever been in a canyon, you’d imagine it to be fairly quiet. But it wasn’t. It seems a huge number of the containers were loaded with pineapples and needed refrigeration, so each had a small diesel-powered refrigeration unit mounted in one end.
Not only was it loud in those canyons, it was quite warm that morning, even in the shade.
I got a few photos, but again, none that helped me tell the story I was trying to tell. So, I headed forward through the maze, timing my dashes between the swinging containers above, which the crane operators deftly lifted off and settled onto waiting trucks below. With each dash, I worked my way a little closer to the front of the ship.
Eventually, I came to the back of another superstructure and turned right, getting into sunlight and air that smelled more like the tide and less like diesel exhaust. I was still looking for something that would tell the story I was being asked to illustrate, so I kept my eyes out for anything, and as I turned the various corners and walked around the superstructure, I found what was apparently the first mate’s cabin, tucked away behind some heavy sheet metal, out of the wind. There was a surprisingly big window into it, and as I walked by, my eyes were drawn away from the industrial white painted exterior of the ship and into the warm embrace of the first mate’s little cabin.
I made it one step further to discover, in the blink of an eye that, oh my.
He had company.
Who was wearing a necklace.
And a hairbrush.
She’d clearly just gotten out of the shower and saw me in the mirror. Her eyes got so wide that I figured right then might be a good time to head toward the back of the ship. I blinked and was gone, but not fast enough to avoid the first mate striding righteously out in his full white uniform.
“Can I help you, sir?”
(Now, where had I heard those words before?)
“Hi,” I said, sticking my hand out, figuring that acting more confident than I felt would be a good idea. “My name’s Tom Roush, I’m on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, illustrating a story on shipping in Puget Sound. I was getting some photos of your ship, here, and was told that if anyone had any questions to have them talk to the harbormaster. He said I could be here.”
“Hmmm. Okay, well, okay then, as long as you’re not with the insurance company. If you have any questions, let me know,” he said as he wiped a stray bit of shaving cream off his cheek.
I said I would, but I had no idea how I’d find him if I did have questions – and was completely willing to let that go.
I headed toward the back of the ship as casually as I could and wandered into a partially enclosed walkway in the back superstructure, looking out over the water toward the city and the Kingdome. I was down to my last roll of film, wondering if I had a story to tell yet, and then, the sound of an outboard motor drew my attention. I saw the picture I was looking for develop before my eyes. I already had the pleasure craft the Monitor was looking for, but there, with Seattle in the background, were the two ships I was missing: an industrial one, a Navy cruiser, and that little boat with the outboard, all coming together into one perfect image. I brought the F-3 with the 24/2.8 up and squeezed off five shots as it went through the scene, and of the five shots, the third is below.
I sent the Christian Science Monitor the copies they wanted. They made me smile. In fact, they made them smile.
The photos told them the story they wanted told.
They just didn’t tell them the whole story.
And – strangely – it got me thinking. Since then, many times in life I’ve had situations where whatever Plan A was suddenly came crashing down – and a Plan B had to be pulled out of thin air and made to work. Understand, that doesn’t make it easy, or simple or anything like that – in fact, I still get frustrated like anyone else does. But then I remember this photo shoot, and the other adventures that have happened over the years and get really curious to see what’s in store.
A Japan Lines freighter on the left, the USS Bunker Hill on the right if my research is correct, and a small pleasure craft, taken from the Matson container ship, the Manu Lani, at the Port of Seattle with the Kingdome in the background
—
I’d occasionally see the Manu Lani in port as she ran the Seattle-Honolulu-Pacific route for a number of years after that – eventually, as I was able to research, she ran into engine trouble and a fire a bit over 400 miles southeast of Tokyo.
She was later sent to China where she was scrapped, and another ship was built to take her place, but with her name.
You can click here for more details and a larger view of the ship. There, you’ll see on the left, the superstructure that contained the first mate and his guest, and on the right, the mast I was on, just left of the smoke stack.
A chortling water buffalo pulled up beside us as we waited for the stop light at 15th and Market.
I looked left.
Hmmm… No water buffalo.
Especially in Ballard. However, there was a Harley, making all the gorgeous sounds idling Harleys make.
“The driver’s too skinny,” said Michael from the passenger’s seat after giving him a once-over.
“And a bit young…” I said as my eyes moved up from the bike to the rider.
Sure enough… a too skinny kid in his 20’s… straddling a burbling Harley.
We watched, and listened, as we waited for the light to turn green, and as it did, the Harley roared off, blasting open the doors of the time machine and leaving me ricocheting off long forgotten memories for the rest of the trip home.
Those memories spanned well over a quarter of a century, and I bounced between lessons from Grad school, a famous photograph, my first internship, and lessons learned many, many years later.
And as the sound faded away, it got me thinking about Harley Davidson.
The real one.
But to tell you that story – I’ll need to tell you a couple of other stories to fill in some gaps.
I got my Master’s degree in photojournalism from Ohio University, and one of the things Terry Eiler drilled into us there was to go out and take risks. Go out and try new things. Do the thing no one else is doing. Do the assignment you were sent to do to be safe, but then go do a little bit more.
I learned from that. I’ve been inside the boiler of a steam locomotive (it was pretty dark). I’ve talked my way onto airplanes (it was loud), and I’ve gotten images of normal things from abnormal locations just because I asked if I could. (it was amazing).
What Terry didn’t tell us at the time is what kinds of stories we’d get on the way to taking these pictures… There’s the “running over the skunk” story, and the oh-so-memorable “the car broke down” story, things that seemed to “just happen” – and yet, took on a life of their own. Lessons to be learned, stories to be lived.
But all that was in the future still. While in class, he told us about a guy named Rob Goebel, who’d worked at this small town paper, and one hot day had gone out to see if he could find some images that could tell a story, and eventually, he found himself in a bar…
With a biker.
Named Bones.
He knew the shot he wanted, and after as much chatting as you could do, set up the lights, got the shot he’d had in mind, and then left.
Fast forward 15 years. I’d gotten my first internship out of Grad School, for the same newspaper Rob had been working for at the time. Mike Grone was the chief photographer, and one day as we were going over assignments, he got this twinkle in his eye that I didn’t recognize until later, smiled, and said, “Hey, you ought to go see Bones.”
“Bones?”
“Yeah, Bones and Harley – Rob Goebel took a picture of him a few years back… Won the POY (Pictures of the Year) award for it after he left.”
“Oh really?” I said as he dug through a file cabinet for a faded tearsheet of the original.
He found it, and gave me the address, and I tossed my camera bag into the back seat of my old Ford and headed on over to the little house on Wilkinson, hoping to maybe reproduce a photo of him and Harley 15 years later, kind of an “after” shot to Rob’s ”before” photo. I found the house, parked the car, and as I shut it off, looked up to see Bones himself sitting in an overstuffed recliner on what would soon be a dilapidated old front porch, idly sharpening a knife. He’d aged since the photo, but even so, there was still a presence about him that could be sensed, was almost palpable.
As I walked up and got my bearings, I realized that the thing about Bones was he wasn’t just skin and…
It was not hard imagining him riding a large motorcycle. He filled up the generously sized chair he was in, his overalls, and that presence extended out well past the porch. I took the initiative and introduced myself, not really sure of what kind of a reaction I’d get.
He sized me up, understanding pretty clearly that I wanted to take some pictures (a camera bag and two Nikons likely gave that away). He tucked his sharpening stone between his belly and his left leg, and we talked for a bit…
I don’t remember much of the conversation until he asked if I had a knife. Of course I had a knife. I’d had a Swiss Army Knife of one kind or another for years. It was as much a part of me as a watch might have been, or today, a cellphone.
“Let me see it.” he said. It wasn’t a request, more a statement of a fact that just hadn’t happened yet.
I handed it over. He grunted a combination of acknowledgement and disgust as he pulled the bits of packing tape off the blade that were still stuck there from the last time I’d opened a cardboard box with it. He shifted in his chair and pulled the well-rounded sharpening stone I’d seen earlier out from under his paunch and talked me through the finer points of knife sharpening.
Harley came out about then, and I tried to make something of a picture of the two of them on the porch, but things, weren’t clicking, so to speak. Bones wanted to finish the knife, and I couldn’t make any of it really work photographically, so we just chatted a little more.
That’s when I heard another screen door tentatively creak open, and I looked over to see a young lady, who I learned later was Harley’s sister, come out. I watched as she came out, and remember thinking that she looked a lot like – well, like she just didn’t seem to belong in that place… Kind of a rose among thorns, if you will. I was still trying to reconcile that when I looked back to Bones and noticed something had changed, as if a wall had suddenly fallen between us. Totally unspoken, there was a sense that I had unwittingly crossed a pretty significant line, and I could feel the temperature drop as he handed me back my knife, folded closed. I opened it, and realized that in the couple of minutes he’d had it, he’d taken it from a bits-of-tape encrusted piece of metal to a finely honed instrument that would do far more than cut through the tape of cardboard boxes. He’d left his mark on that knife, and was not so subtly letting me know what he was capable of, and even though he was showing his age at the time, still not a man to be trifled with.
So, I didn’t trifle, and realized that the picture I had gone there to recreate might not be possible, but I’d tried. I remember going back a time or two more, but that wall was still there, and over time, Bones and his family faded off the back burner of my mind.
Many years later, I got back in touch with Mike as I was writing this story about a fellow named Harry Frilling who’d lived there in Sidney. We started talking about how it had been almost a lifetime since we’d talked, and he told me about how things had changed there… We talked about Harry, and me climbing on top of the courthouse, and running over the skunk. We talked, and laughed, about me blowing through the annual film budget during my few months there.
And somehow, the subject of Bones came up.
I found that the knowledge I gained about not trifling with him was not limited to just me. In fact, Mike mentioned that had actually been a concern when President Reagan had visited Sidney on his Whistlestop Tour. He found in his files a quote from the Sidney Daily News that day:
“The neighborhood has never looked better. Citizens living near the North Street Chessie crossing have been out cleaning up in preparation for President Reagan’s visit. Much work remains to be done, but most of it is in the area of security. Just where will Bones Kah sit?“
Bones, whose political views weren’t quite in the same ballpark as President Reagan’s, was nowhere to be found. It turned out he had been taken into what they called “Protective Custody”.
Mike didn’t find it necessary to mention who was being protected from whom, or why.
The thing is, Bones, being the leader of a motorcycle gang (or club), (The Vikings) – had developed, and cultivated a reputation. There are some motorcycle clubs that cultivate a reputation of working for charity, and others that work hard at cultivating another image. I understand that there is a culture of respect, and there are rules, which, now that I think of it, are not to be trifled with.
But the reputation that goes along with being the leader of a Motorcycle Club is a bit different than the reputation one develops in being a dad who might work in an office somewhere. No matter what, it’s hard to keep work and home life separate. It’s like – well, you’ve heard of dads being late to their son’s ball game because of a meeting at work. Bones’ situation was a little different, in that the qualities that made him effective when leading a motorcycle club didn’t translate very well to having kids and being a dad.
A single example: There’s a story told by Rob (the photojournalist mentioned above) that when Bones visited the newborn Harley and mom shortly before he took the picture, Bones visited the hospital with a dead rat tied to his leg.
There was no mention of how old the rat was or how long it had been there, but the story attained almost urban legend status, and Bones wasn’t about to dissuade anyone from believing it.
The stories Rob told were told of a very few moments with Bones, and the thing is, as a photojournalist, you come into a situation, you do your best to capture or create a lasting image that tells the best story you can, and then, most often, you leave and never see the people or hear from them again.
Rob did a stunning job of capturing that image. He took a situation, a dark bar with the smell of years of spilled beer and cigarette smoke, the smell of countless Saturday night closings where many people had had too many drinks and ended the evening bowed down before or curled up around the porcelain throne in the restrooms, and invited us in with him, to share Bones’ “office.”
In doing that – that simple thing, he showed Bones in all his – well, ‘glory’ isn’t the word I’d use – but the persona of Bones that I saw on his front porch the day I was there was the same one I see in Rob’s picture.
Bones and Harley – in a bar someplace in Sidney, Ohio. Photo (c) Rob Goebel. Used with Permission
That’s what Harley grew up with.
That’s who Harley grew up with.
Extrapolate on that.
Just a little.
Imagine what it’s like, growing up like that. I can’t. It turns out Harley left Sidney shortly after I did. I talked with him recently, and he said, and I quote, “After I left Ohio in 1987 we never looked back.”
While he has spared me the details, just that comment, and what I’d experienced myself and heard from Mike, gave me a hint of the life that had gone on long before, and well after that memorable image was taken.
Harley grew up.
Mike left the paper to pursue new things, and in one of his last assignments for the paper he was to get some photos of Bones and his two houses. In Mike’s words, “His spare house was condemned. Both houses, by all accounts, were of hoarder status. My assignment was photographing the exteriors of the side-by-side structures. Bones took great exception and offered to place the camera where there wasn’t enough ambient light to make an image. Since I finished the assignment before his offer, I bid him a fond adieu.”
And in 2008, Bones died.
I don’t have the few pictures I took of him when I was there, but given what I saw, I would understand why Harley had wanted to leave. He continued in that conversation we were having, “…but I was man enough to go see my father on his death bed and look him right in the eyes and forgive him for the abuse that he put us through. Things happen for a reason I believe and I am stronger for it.”
And, as you can imagine, it got me thinking.
Over time I realized that we learn how to be a parent from three separate but distinctly different things:
- Because of who you grew up with…
Seriously – how many times has someone said, “You’re just like your dad…”?
How many times have you heard your parents words coming out of your mouth, the very words you promised yourself you’d never say.
And yet you did.
And sometimes, those words came borne out of hard experience, and you realized, as hard as they were to hear when you were a kid, they were the right ones when you found yourself on the other side of the parental fence.
Then again, sometimes, as parents, we’ve find ourselves victims of our own past, and the world has changed faster than we’ve been able to adapt. Things that used to be acceptable aren’t anymore, and things that were totally unacceptable now have gone through a sea change of – well – change, and now they are. It brings challenges to parenting that take the most important job in the world, being a consistent role model for the next generation, and makes it even harder.
- In spite of who you grew up with…
You realized that your father was, for all intents and purposes, simply broken in ways you couldn’t fix. Over time, you realized it went back generations, and there was nothing you could do to fix that. Everyone grew up and did what they did because, well, that’s how it was done, right or wrong.
Eventually you also realized – consciously or unconsciously, that no matter what your dad did, you wouldn’t repeat it. You would find the courage he didn’t have, or the strength he didn’t have, the wisdom he didn’t have, and you would do the honorable and right thing for your family and children.
Eventually, you would come to that same decision point Harley hit while standing next to his father’s deathbed, and you forgive him for – in the case of Harley and many others, abuse. “For they knew not what they were doing.” Because that’s the way they were brought up and didn’t know any better – or in some cases, they did know what they were doing was wrong, but they did it anyway. And you realize, that while that kind of behavior is inexcusable, it does – no, it did – happen. And eventually, sometimes on a deathbed, you forgive them. Not because what they did was forgivable, but because you can’t change it… It happened. You can let it eat you alive, or you can forgive them, let it go, and allow yourself to leave the prison of those thoughts and learn from them, which takes us to the third item on the list:
- Growing up – and being totally different…
Think about this for a second: How many times do you remember seeing a situation happening in front of your eyes, and realizing you’d lived that before – only this time you had the chance to actually do something different, and break the cycle – so instead of doing things the same broken ways you’d seen them happen in your family over the years, you decided enough was enough.
And so you did something different.
And you did indeed break the cycle.
Ideally, you pick and choose the best in what your dad taught you – either by example of something they did right, or by the anti-example of what they did wrong. I remember when I was a kid, my dad was away at college, and one very rare time, he was at home when I had a band concert. I expected him to come, but he didn’t. The reason doesn’t matter… He wasn’t there. I vowed to never let that happen with my kids, and did my best to be there for them every time I could. I did something different.
…and I kept thinking…
I thought about how inadequate I felt when I held my kids for the first time… I’d forgotten entirely that humans came in such small, fragile, helpless packages. Remember – that’s not just fragile physically, they’re also fragile emotionally and spiritually. They need to be tended, carefully. Disciplined in time, yes… Broken, no. Broken children become broken adults, and the cycle of brokenness continues, doing its damage for generations to come.
I remember praying for and with them when they were little, folding their little hands in my bigger ones as I did, imagining that my hands were folded inside the even bigger Hands of my Father at the same time. It made the prayers feel more complete.
…the thoughts continued…
I remember growing as a father just as much as my kids grew at being kids. I got really, really good at making breakfast in about 90 seconds, a “Papa McMuffin” I called it.
And I made mistakes while my kids were growing up. All fathers I know have. There were times I was too drawn into work, too focused on outside things, too lenient with them in some areas, too strict in others. Times I wish I could go back and fix, but I can’t, so I do my best now, in the only moment I can change.
I went back in my mind to the concert dad missed, and how all the times he’d been away affected me, and while the child in me still wept for those lost times, the adult in me realized that Harley was right, and I came to the same conclusion: Forgiving my father – our fathers, for the mistakes they made was the only option that made sense. That doesn’t mean it has to happen immediately, and it doesn’t mean it was or is easy.
But given the options, learning from him, his successes, his failures, and picking and choosing the right ones, and working with those as my base gave me something greater than zero to start from, but there was one thing more.
I’d repeated a lot of those mistakes that have been made through the years, through the generations. It took some time to realize they were there, and I’m still working on correcting them. Some will take a long time, and in my observations with other dads, it seems that one of the first people we need to be able to forgive is ourselves.
And that’s hard.
But it’s the first step.
So… call your dad – if you can. Wish him Happy Father’s day, if you can, if you’re reading this on Father’s day (as I’m writing it), and then, if you can, take a deep breath and forgive him.
Learn from the mistakes of the past, but don’t repeat them.
===
The story above, as all stories on this blog are, is true.
I have several people to thank for their help in it. Chronologically, they’d be:
Terry Eiler, former director of VisCom, Ohio University – who encouraged me to go out and shoot – and take risks.
Mike Grone – former Chief photographer of the Sidney Daily News, who actually had me take those risks.
Rob Goebel, now of the Indy Star newspaper, who graciously allowed me the use of the photo, and
Harley himself, who in his simple words, taught me so much, and who allowed and encouraged me to write the story about his famous, award winning baby picture that had been taken in a bar, with a biker (Bones), by a guy (Rob) whose photos I’d admired and skills I was trying to emulate, all because my instructor (Terry) in grad school told a story and sent me out there so that my boss (Mike) could grin and send me off on a lesson I’d suddenly find myself remembering when sitting at a traffic light in Seattle, with my son, next to the Harley that sent me ricocheting back through my time machine to tell you this story…
Take care out there, folks.
Know that out there – every image you see -whether it’s an award winning photo, or a glimpse into someone’s life, has a story behind it.
This was one of them.
Every now and then I get this urge – no, not just an urge, almost a command, to write a story – a post, if you will, about something specific… What’s strange sometimes is that this one you’re reading now kind of popped up last night – and while I’m not sure why it’s important to post it now – it feels like I should. So come with me as I take another trip into my time machine – the one that looks like an old yellow Kodak photo paper box, and learn a lesson or two in a photo I took once, a long time ago.
First the photo:
I was in college, and was trying to photograph one of the parts of the Homecoming celebration for Seattle Pacific University, which included the men’s heavyweight eight man alumni crew racing each other down the Lake Washington Ship Canal right near the campus. I’d developed a friendship with the coach for the crew team, and because of that, I was the only photographer allowed to get on the boat he was coaching from. This gave me the chance to get into a position to get a much better shot than any other photographer out there as they were finishing the race. We talked (well, shouted to each other over the motor on the coach’s boat), and I was able to get him to position his boat to show how close the race was by crossing the finish line at the same time the lead boat was crossing it, the goal being to show the difference between first place, the winner, and second, the, well, the loser. However, it wasn’t the closest race in the world – the other boat is cropped just out of the frame at the bottom right, but something magical happened as I was setting up for that shot, something I wasn’t expecting at all.
As I was looking right to gauge where the second place boat was to try to figure out what to do next, I saw this duck, barreling down the canal as fast as it could. I checked the settings on the the camera – (a Nikon FM2 with a 100 mm Nikkor lens on it that I’d borrowed from a friend) I saw I was on frame 36 (yes, film, and yes, the last frame) that I was shooting at f/8 and 1/250th of a second – the film was Tri-X black and white film, pushed two stops to be shot at ASA 1600 because everything I was shooting that day was going to be either moving fast or in low light, or both. I realized I had precisely one chance to make this right, and focused on the far boat, wanting to get the expressions of the guys in the crew shell in focus more than the duck, I’d just let the depth of field cover that. As I was looking, I realized that with as much planning as had gone into getting the shot I wanted (the two boats finishing the race) – that wasn’t the shot I needed. In fact, the shot I needed was far better than the one I wanted, and I had to make a decision, instantly: Either take the shot of the boats and tell the story of the race, or take the shot of the duck, and tell the story of another race, that no one had planned for, that had been a surprise, a chance that would be there and gone in the blink of an eye. I chose the duck, and decided that as soon as I saw it appear in the right side of the viewfinder, I’d push the button, with the knowledge from experience that it would take about 1/10th of a second for all the mechanical things in the camera to actually do their thing to expose the film. In the meantime, the duck would be moving across the frame at about 30 mph. If I waited until the duck was where I wanted it to be before I took the picture, it would be gone by the time the camera had actually exposed the film, so I had to think on my feet, on a moving boat, and make decisions fast.
All the other sports I’d shot, there would often be a second chance, another basket, another goal, another… whatever.
This time, I had one duck, one boat, one shot.
I’d brought the camera to my eye, focused on the sharp point of the boat, and as I saw the duck enter the frame from the right, hit the shutter release, felt and heard the camera take the shot, then heard the motor drive whine and jam, telling me it was at the end of the roll. I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten the shot or not, but I’d done everything I could to get it. I automatically rewound the film, popping it out and putting it in a separate pocket from all the other exposed film, and loaded another roll, but the duck was gone.
I could hardly wait to get back to the darkroom to see what had happened and sure enough, when I got the film developed, I found the image, and it was indeed, the 36th and last shot of the roll.
And so what’s the big deal about the image?
Well – it’s a duck.
And a boat.
And the guys?
They look like they’re racing the duck which makes it fun, but they’re really looking for the finish line, which painted on both sides of the canal, is just out of the frame on the left on their side, and just to my left behind me.
But I only had the one chance, and I’m glad I took it.
And it got me thinking, this photo, and I learned that as much as we want to believe in second chances, there are times in life where you get one chance to do something, and that’s it. Life will go on, but it will be different, and you will never know “what if” something else had happened.
Think about it: Often, life is a lot like the GPS system you might have in your car or your phone, where if you make a wrong turn, you get this message that says ‘recalculating’ as it tries to get you to go back on course, and because it’s doing that, you’re being given a second chance to do something that somehow you muffed up. The muff up could have been simple human error, it could have been not being prepared for what you were facing, it could have been something completely out of your control, but the fact is, what you planned to happen, didn’t, and now you have to sit there while something literally tries to get you back on the track you’re supposed to be on.
Then there are the other times. Some of you know I spent a number of years as a photojournalist, and saw many, many things through my viewfinder as I was shooting. The thing about shooting with an SLR is that you never actually see the picture you take. You can see what happens immediately before the image, and what happened after, but it’s only your training, your eye, or your instinct that tell you when to take the shot. You have to trust that everything worked in that blink of an eye when everything, the event in front of your camera, the experience behind it, came together.
I kept thinking, and like many of you, found myself wondering what it all means. And I guess it’s this:
There will be times in your life when you have one chance, and one chance only, to make a difference in some way. It may be a life changing experience for you, or for someone else. It may be something that comes completely out of the blue, and goes against everything you ever planned for that moment, but (and I’m speaking to myself just as much as I’m speaking to you) I encourage you to take the chance. It’s possible, just slightly, that something magical will happen. It might be in your job, it might be in your family, it might be taking a chance on repairing a strained relationship, or giving someone a second (or third) chance because you know what it’s like to not have that option. It might be simply holding someone you know at the funeral of someone you barely know. It might be taking a chance at applying for a job you don’t think you’re completely qualified for, but that will fit you like a glove, or that you can grow into. It may be finishing that last, painful cancer treatment that takes so much courage to go to when you know what it will take out of you.
I don’t know. All of the things mentioned above have happened to friends of mine or me in the last few weeks.
So…
Take the chance.
You might make a difference in someone’s life.
And it might be your own.
Or – you might get a cool picture of a duck that reminds you of every one of these things many years later.
So take care out there, folks.
Be safe…
Love each other while you can.
Be prepared for what you can be prepared for – and at the same time, be ready for when plans change, because they can, and will, with barely a moment’s notice.
Oh. One last thing. Here’s the photo I’ve been talking about.
The Duck… (click on it to make it bigger)
My son and I were talking the other day, and the subject of the conversation was about asking for things.
I’ve learned, over the years, that often you don’t get what you want because you don’t ask for it. This concept has been around for thousands of years. I learned it pretty clearly on a number of occasions, We talked about how, if you don’t ask for something, the answer, if you will, is a guaranteed ‘no’, whereas if you do ask, the answer is at least a ‘maybe’.
So I got to thinking about this whole thing – realized that a number of the stories I’ve written are because I simply didn’t understand that someone could possibly say ‘no’ to a well reasoned, logical request. The story about Fifi is a prime example. So’s the story about Misty 42. There’s a bunch of unwritten stories still in my head that are the same way – and this whole thing could apply to any life situation. I mean seriously, what right did I have to badger a newspaper photo editor that I didn’t know into holding space for me on the front page of his paper so I could talk my way onto the only flying B-29 in the world… Then again – who was I to just casually talk my way onto a KC-135 tanker (twice, actually) and get a picture of an F-4 Phantom seconds before it refueled? (Those are the above stories) Who was I to get strapped into a C-130 for the greenest ride of my life?
What did I do to deserve something as cool as some of the things I was privileged to do?
Well – the answer’s pretty simple. I asked.
See – that whole thing about a guaranteed “no” is something I learned early on, whether it involved asking a young lady out on a date when I was younger, or asking for a seemingly nonexistent transmission for my car, or if I somehow could get go onto a plane, train, or automobile (yes, I have stories of all three) – it was still the same. If I didn’t ask, the answer was no. So… I asked. So with that as a little bit of a background, let me take you to a small town in west central Ohio for one of these stories – just because it was an example of what a difference asking a question like that can make.
I’d just started my internship as a photojournalist at the Sidney Daily News, and was between assignments, looking for some of what they called “Feature” shots. That means anything that makes you think thoughts like “oh, cool!” or “gosh, I wonder how they got that shot”, or just something that’s a fun picture to take, something to share with the folks who live in the area, and, hopefully, is of general interest. Part of this was just having a fresh set of eyes that hadn’t seen anything like this town before, part of it was just curiosity. So being between assignments, I found myself in the center of town, driving circles counter clockwise around the courthouse. There was construction going on, and I thought I could make an interesting image out of it. I saw a fellow up on the scaffolding, and figured I’d found something to work with – so I parked the car, grabbed my gear, and moved so there weren’t trees in the way. I realized I’d need my 300 mm Nikkor 4.5 because of how far I was – then realized that wasn’t enough. Hmm. I put the doubler on it, making it act like a 600 mm lens. Then I got down on one knee, steadied myself with one elbow on the trunk lid of the car, and then realized that I was taking a shot anyone on the street could take with what was then the camera that produced some of the crappiest pictures on the market, a Disc Camera. Oh, sure, my shot would look like it was shot through a telescope compared to the Disc Camera, but that wasn’t the point… The point was that I’d been hired to take photographs that other people couldn’t see, that other people couldn’t get to, or that other people would never in their wildest dreams think of taking. I mean, it was possible to take a photograph of the courthouse from the ground and have it look great. I found a shot online and asked the fellow if I could use it (Thank you David Grant)– and here it is:
Shelby County Courthouse, Sidney, Ohio. Photo Copyright David Grant, used with permission
Problem though, was the light for what I wanted to shoot, while gorgeous like the shot above, wasn’t that gorgeous on the side of the court house where my picture was waiting for me. I knew that – I’d driven around the thing, and sure enough, all the action was on the shady side. Sigh. I put the camera down before I took a poorly lit shot anyone else could take from across the street, and stood up.
And then I did something dangerous.
I started wondering…
I wondered what the view from up there was like…
And then I wondered how I could get up there…
And then I did some thinking about how I could get up there.
See, if you want to get into a building, and if you want to go straight to the top, it’s best to start right at the bottom – and often, as in this case, the fellow at the bottom is the janitor.
Janitors are amazing people. They have keys for EVERYTHING. So I made sure the car was locked, threw everything over my shoulder and headed into the courthouse, to have a chat with whoever was playing receptionist and see if together we could find the janitor. One receptionist’s phone call later, I was introduced to the older gentleman with the iconic huge ring of keys, and I heard myself give what would be my standard greeting for the next few months, “Hi, my name’s Tom Roush and I’m a photographer for the Sidney Daily News…” followed by the question of the day. In this case, it was: “I see you’ve got some work being done on the roof, and was wondering if I could get some shots of it for the paper. Is there any way I could get up there?”
I don’t think five minutes had gone by from the time I didn’t take that picture over the trunk of the car until I was walking out of the elevator, through a dusty attic filled with huge beams, and through a small open window onto the roof. The janitor looked out, called up to the fellow I’d seen, then stepped aside and let me crawl out. I introduced myself to the fellow many feet over my head up on the scaffolding and asked if I could come up. He stopped his caulking for a moment and looked down, seeing I was carrying a camera bag, a couple of cameras, including that one with the 300 mm lens and the doubler on it.
Somehow bringing the bag up there onto the scaffolding was deemed, without any words needing to be spoken, a bad idea. So I set it down, put the 24mm wide angle lens on the F-3, slung it over my shoulder, and carefully climbed up the scaffolding. I climbed on top of the topmost section so I could look down and see him, my goal being to see – and thus tell a story – that no one else could see. I sat on the very top of the scaffolding, wrapped my right leg around the vertical part of the support, leaned back, (yes, the scaffolding leaned with me, but not by much) composed the frame so the horizon was at the top, then told the fellow to just keep working as he could (as I write this I still can’t believe I did that – there was nothing but air between me and the roof about 30 feet below, and had I slipped, I would have rolled down, then off the roof and fallen another 40 feet or so before becoming one with the pavement.
And the thing is – I could have taken that first shot from across the street, it would have been safe – but it would have been a totally forgettable image, lost in the back of the paper somewhere.
But I didn’t take that first shot.
I wondered, “What if?”
I wondered, “What can I do that will make this better?”
And then I realized the only thing keeping me from making it better was me.
I had to go in, ask a question that they could have easily said,”No.” to, and that would have been that.
But I didn’t.
I asked.
And when you’re faced with weird situations in life when you’re just thinking there’s no way you can succeed – trust me, there are ways you can succeed.
And stand out – literally above the crowd.
There have been times in my life – and there will be times in yours, when you find you can barely think of the question to ask, much less step out of your comfort zone and ask it, but that little thought, that maybe, just maybe, asking will make a difference, that *is* the difference. In fact, often, the hardest/simplest/most important thing of all is for you to step out of your comfort zone and just ask.
Now, understand, whoever you’re asking might say no, and you’ll be right where you were before you asked the question, but so what?
You can try something else then.
On the other hand, if you don’t ask, the “no” is guaranteed.
So…
Take care – really – be careful out (and up) there.
And don’t forget, it’s okay to ask.
Think about it: what’s the worst that can happen? (they say “No”, and life hasn’t changed. But if you do – the results can be magic. I’m working on a few more stories that will show you what happens if you dare to ask – they’ll come out over the next year or so, and often, they will be the story behind a photograph (which is proof in and of itself) All that said, here (below) is the shot I’ve been describing. (in another frame you’d see the camera bag teetering at the bottom of the frame, but that one didn’t make the final cut)…
Shelby County Courthouse, Sidney, Ohio. (click for larger image)
…and how it appeared in the paper the next day.
The front page, with the camera & lens I shot it with. At top is the camera bag mentioned in the story. (click for larger image)
In this blog, I’ve been trying to write stories that have been “baked” – where I’ve spent the time over the years getting to that “aha” moment, where the laughter has finally come, the lessons finally learned, the tears finally dried, and I can share them with you.
This post is a little different.
I’ve been asked by a number of people to give “hankie warnings” on some of these stories, and in honor of that request, please consider yourself warned.
This post is a little more personal than the others, and it’s a number of stories, kind of intertwined.
As I write this – November 8th, it will have been 10 years since I spoke the words below, in front of a well-dressed, somber group of people who listened, who laughed and who cried.
I had been in that last category for ten months, and on November 8th, 2000, these people joined me there.
It was the day we buried my dad.
He’d been in the Air Force. He’d done his time in many countries. It was his time in the Air Force that had him meet my mom, that gave him stories of far-away places to tell, and that shaped my childhood. Some of those stories I’ve recalled in past posts, some are still, as it were, baking, and will be written when they’re ready.
I was at work on January 10th, 2000, when I got “the call”. Those of you who’ve been through this will understand what that means. It’s actually hard to describe the feeling to someone who hasn’t been there, but when I got “the call” – my heart froze, and given where I was, I did the only thing I could do…
I prayed…
…and then I wrote.
I didn’t know whether I’d ever get a chance to tell dad all the things I’d wanted to say over the years – and it seemed that if I was ever going to take the chance, that right then would be that chance, instead of saying all the things I wanted to say to him in a eulogy where he couldn’t hear me, and the words would be empty.
So I wrote a note to him that January afternoon. It’s included in what’s below – which, ironically, is the eulogy I gave for my dad, 10 years ago today.
= = =
Eulogy…
That’s what it says there in your program that this is going to be.
But how do you put into a few words the life of a man who was a brother, a husband, a father, an uncle, a father in law, a grandfather, a teacher — and all those countless other things that a man is in his life?
I’m not going to go into the history of dad too much, you all can read that on the backs of your bulletins. We tried to get as much in there as we could. We’ll also have some pictures going in the fellowship hall so you can see a little more about who dad was.
But right now, I’d like to tell you a little bit about who dad is.
By now most of you know a bit about how this all came about, and for a number of you, the last time you saw him was in this very church on January 8th of this year at Tom McLennan’s Memorial Service.
Dad went into the hospital that night, stayed in ICU at Madigan until May, during which time he had a stroke and some other complications, and later was taken to Bel Air Nursing home in Tacoma, where he died last Friday.
I wrote him a note on January 10th, when things looked pretty bad, his heart had stopped the night before, and we didn’t know what was going on, since he’d walked into the hospital the night before that, and I tried to tell him what he meant to me. I’d like to read part of that note to you, because in a lot of ways, it tells a bit about the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, and the legacy that he left behind.
<note>
1:45 PM 1/10/00
Hi Pop,
It’s Monday, you’re in the hospital right now, and I’m praying for you.
I have to tell you a few things, just so you know them.
I love you.
— this is so hard to write…
I don’t want this to be the time to say goodbye, but I need to say a few things so that when the time comes, I can say goodbye knowing I’ve told you what I need to tell you.
You know as well as I do that there were a lot of things in our lives that haven’t panned out the way we’d planned.
Because of the time you spent away from the family in the Air Force and at school, I didn’t get a chance to have you around when I really needed a dad.
This doesn’t mean it was easy for you, in fact it was hard. I know now it was very hard for you as well.
But I want you to know that good has come out of that.
I try to spend time with my little boy now as a result, and I’m glad I was able to get my schooling out of the way before I became a papa.
Because you went away to school to improve yourself, I learned that sacrifice is sometimes necessary for future growth.
And good has come out of that.
I learned how much a son needs his father, and I try to be here for my son. So even though you felt very much like you were a failure, you weren’t. You taught me a valuable lesson, one that I will treasure always.
Because of the time you spent fixing things (and the time I spent holding the flashlight for you*)
*He’d ask me to hold the flashlight for him while he was working on something, and being a kid, my attention span was about as long as a gnat’s eyebrow, and so I’d be looking all over, shining the flashlight to what I wanted to see.
I learned how to fix things I never thought I could.
I also expanded my vocabulary during these times.
Because of the way you showed us responsibility, I was able to get a paper route and learn responsibility early, on my own.
Because you helped us deliver those papers on weekends sometimes, I learned that sometimes helping your kids to do the things they’re responsible for doing is a good thing.
Because of the way you told me to take things one step at a time, I was able to build pretty big things at Microsoft when I was there,, one step at a time.
And because you made things for me (like a train table)
and read to me (from Tom Sawyer)
and told me stories (like Paul Bunyan)
and sang to me (The Lord’s Prayer)
and took me to work (where I spun the F-4 Simulator)*
* — in the Air Force Dad was a flight simulator technician — he fixed flight simulators, and one time he took me to work, I think I must have been 5 or 6, and there was this whole line of these simulators — all just cockpits of airplanes, and he, as fathers are known to do, picked me up and popped me in the driver’s seat. I sat there, my eyes huge, as I saw all these dials and gauges in front of me, and it was just so cool and so complicated. — And there was this big stick thing in the way, so I pushed it off to one side so I could get a better look at the dials. I didn’t know that the simulator thought it was flying, and by pushing that stick over I made it think it was corkscrewing into the ground, and all the dials and gauges started spinning alarms went off. I got so scared, I thought I’d broken it, and I looked out at him — he was standing right there, talking to someone else, and with fear and trepidation said,
“Daddy?” —
He turned around, took one look at what was happening, reached in and fixed it. Just like that. He fixed it. I hadn’t broken it. But he just reached in, and with one touch, he fixed it.
and showed me things, (like Wolf Spiders)*
When we lived in Illinois, we discovered that the spiders there are significantly bigger than spiders here in Washington.
So one time Dad was in the basement, doing something, and he called me down. He wanted me to see what he’d found under this can. So, being a kid and being curious, I squatted right beside it, and then picked up the can — to find the biggest, hairiest god-awful ugliest wolf spider I’d seen in my entire life. I jumped up and screamed, and dad was over there laughing so hard. I didn’t think it was funny then, but for years all we’d have to say was “wolf spider” it would bring the whole thing back, and we’d have a good laugh over it.
and surprised me with presents (like at Christmas in 1971 when you told me to clean up a pile of newspapers, and you’d put a bunch of toy trains underneath them)*
*He kept asking me to clean up the papers, but there was always another present to unwrap, another toy to play with, another cookie to eat — and finally, when the Christmas eve was finally winding down and we were cleaning up, I remembered the newspapers and started to clean them up — and underneath was a train set he’d gotten from somewhere, on a set of tracks, just waiting for a little boy to play with them.
and provided for me (helping me get my first Saab)*
*Many of you in this church may remember praying for that very car…
and went out of your way to help me (when that first Saab broke down)
— and the second Saab, — the third one (the fourth one’s out there, it runs fine)
and drove all the way up to Seattle to SPU when I was a student one Christmas to bring me a present — a radio controlled Porsche 928) when you knew it was the only thing I would get.
and visited me at work when I was able to show you where I worked and what I’d become professionally
And supported me in your thoughts and prayers as I became a father in my own right.
You showed me love.
And because you told me, I know you love me.
I love you too.
</note>
I read this note to him several times, never being quite sure whether it got across to him. In August, at the nursing home, I read it to him again, and he looked at me very intently while I read it, and as I finished, there was this look on his face, of peace, of contentment, of, “My job is done.” and for a split second, the stroke seemed to be gone.
He then took the note from my hand and read it himself.
And I know that he knew when he left that he was loved, he was cared for, he was appreciated, and that he would be missed.
We rejoice for him, we’re happy, for him, that this ordeal is over, but we’re sad for us, for the big, dad/Gary/grampa shaped hole he leaves in each of our lives.
— I was thinking the other day about the things I’d miss about him, and I’m sure there will be many to come, but the things that come to mind right now are the little things — and it’s always the little things, isn’t it?
The fact that he’d say “I love you” and “I’m proud of you” so often that we didn’t realize how important it was for him to be able to say that, and now, how important it was for us — the whole family to have him as a cheerleader in the background. There were times he couldn’t do as much as he wanted to do for us, and in his mind, he always wanted to do more — and the fact that he’s no longer in the background, just being there cheering us on — I’ll miss that. We’ll miss that.
I miss his meow — for those of you who don’t know, he had this way of meowing like a cat so you couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It drove us nuts — and we miss it.
I miss him greeting Michael and me with, “Hello Sonshine”
I miss seeing him snuggle my little girl Alyssa, in his lap, reading any of a number of books to her, and the look on her face that told me of the security she felt in those arms.
I miss him standing with mom, waving good bye to us as we left after a visit. — and no matter where we were, when we got together, he’d always thank us for taking the time to do that, to get together as a family, and to include him and he would always remind us, “You are loved.”
We miss him telling us “Remember, a fat old man loves you.”
I miss him yelling at us to shut the living room door. That’s the sound we grew up with. We’d run out, be halfway up the stairs, and hear, “SHUT THE DOOR” — of course, he hadn’t done that for years since he put a spring on it so it’d shut itself. But I miss knowing I won’t hear it again.
I miss him calling me up at night to tell me there was something interesting on Channel 9 (PBS) that he wanted to share with me, even though we couldn’t be together, we could see it at the same time.
When I was growing up, and I’d be upstairs brushing my teeth late at night, I’d hear dad snoring downstairs, — a gentle snore (at least from upstairs) and I knew that that meant all was right with the world.
I’ll miss that, too.
And even though there are many things we’ll miss about him, I know he’s better off now than he was for the last 10 months.
Some time ago I had a dream — a dream of him essentially dying, and it didn’t look as bad as we all generally think of dying.
In my dream, he was laying there, his body all there, but kind of gray, and damaged. It looked like dad, but suddenly he broke free of that body, and he just kind of came up, there was this whole, healthy copy of him, in living color that kind of came out of him like a butterfly comes out of a cocoon, and he was free, he was whole, and he flew away, leaving the gray, damaged body behind him.
After Dad died, Petra was doing some thinking about what his death was like for him, and the image she came away with was this, that dad was in bed, in the nursing home, having just been sung to and prayed for by the love of his life. She laid down on the bed next to him to rest, and dad, who had had his eyes closed, suddenly could see her.
The machine wasn’t breathing for him anymore.
His mind was clear, not muddled by a stroke.
His heart didn’t struggle.
His feet weren’t cold.
We imagine he looked around, saw the things we’d brought in to make him feel at home, saw his beloved wife laying there, who’d been with him for 41 years, for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and with his new, whole body, then left the presence of his wife to be with his Lord.
During dad’s life, we all knew that no matter where we went or what we did, dad loved us, and I am convinced that up there in heaven, he loves us still.
When the service was done, we headed to what would be dad’s final resting place, and on that cold, clear day, the wind blowing the oak leaves around the cemetery, our family gathered around dad one last time as he was given a military funeral, with an Air Force Honor Guard from McChord Air Force Base, a flag, and a rifle salute.
We shivered as we took our places in the chairs under the portable gazebo they’d set up for us, with mom sitting in the front row. I walked away for a bit to clear my head as the ceremony started.
I’d seen the airman with his trumpet, trying to keep his mouthpiece warm on that cold day, and I knew he was going to play Taps – which I’d learned to play when I played the trumpet in junior high school, but I’d never had to play when it counted.
Taps, originally used to signal “lights out” in the military, eventually became the bugle call played at funerals, where it signaled – or symbolized – a final “lights out” for an individual.
I’d heard it played when my friend Bruce Geller died in 1978.
I’d heard it played when I, as a photojournalist, was covering the funeral of Lee Stephens, a sailor from the USS Stark that was hit by a missile on May 17th, 1987, and each time I’ve heard it, it has been like a knife in the heart for me.
It is a symbol of the end of a life, and of a loved one, where they make that transition from living in your life to living in your memories.
I remember, as I shot the funeral of Lee Stephens, how I wanted to honor the grief and sorrow his family was experiencing, but at the same time, I wanted to tell the story that this young sailor, from a small town in Ohio, who’d graduated just a few years before, had people left behind who still loved him.
I remember seeing, through the viewfinder of my Nikon, through a long, long telephoto lens, the look on this sailor’s mom’s face as the sergeant of the honor guard handed her the flag. It was a photo that, while it was “the” photo from a photojournalism point of view, I did not take. The moment was too intimate, the grief was too raw.
I remember her eyes, simultaneously exhausted, numb, disbelieving, and utterly spent as she accepted a flag from an honor guard member, “…on behalf of a grateful nation…”
In walking away a bit, I had unconsciously recreated the view I’d seen through that camera, the photo I didn’t take in 1987 at that cold cemetery 13 years later, and I was not prepared to see that look on my mom’s face and in her eyes.
But I’d seen that look before, and knew what it meant.
We’d had 10 months to prepare for this moment, but the fact is, we all know we’re going to die. Being faced with it as “sometime” in the vague future is one thing. Seeing it in front of you in unblinking reality is something else entirely.
I saw the honor guard fold the flag as precisely as they could fold it
But this time, I wasn’t hiding behind my camera, trying to insulate myself from the pain of a mother who had lost her son.
This time, while I wasn’t a mother who’d lost her son, I was the son of a mother who’d lost her husband.
This time, I was the son who’d lost his father.
I understood things a little more clearly now.
I understood a little more about how much it means to sit in that chair, and have someone hand you a flag, in exchange for someone you love.
As if that wasn’t enough, it was then that they did the rifle salute. For those of you who have not experienced it, it is very much like a 21 gun salute. Retired military members who have served honorably receive a 9 gun salute, a volley where 3 soldiers fire off three rounds apiece. It is done as a sign of respect, of honor. For those not prepared for it, it can be shocking.
The call was made,
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
Three fingers squeezed three triggers.
“Fire!”
Three firing pins hit three cartridges.
“Fire!”
Three cartridges fired and were ejected.
The honor guard was called to attention, and the command “Present Arms” was given so precisely – they all moved as one. Those without rifles saluted – those with rifles held them in the “present arms” position.
As the three shots echoed away, the only sound left was of those leaves, the movement of cloth, and the click of rifles being presented.
There was a moment where this was all we heard. Leaves rustling, coats flapping, and the stunned silence of those still not ready to let go.
It was then that the bugler, who’d clearly kept his mouthpiece warm, played Taps. He played clearly, with dignity, and with the respect and honor due.
– and through the wind, I heard the sergeant’s words I’d heard years before, “on behalf…of a grateful nation…” drift across on the wind as he solemnly handed the folded flag to my mom.
And at the end of the day, as I watched them drive off, I found myself, in spite of the fact that I had my own family, a job, a mortgage, all the trappings of being an adult, I found myself crying, because underneath it all, I was a little boy who’d just lost his daddy.
I cried for the fact that much as I’d wanted to, there were things left unfinished.
I cried for the relationship that had at times been rough, but had started to mend.
I cried for the relationship that, like it or not, mended or not, was ended.
…
It is Veteran’s Day as this is published…
For those of you out there who are wearing the uniform, or for those of you who have worn it, with honor, you have my greatest respect.
For those of you who’ve lost your sons – like Mr. and Mrs. Stephens, who lost their son Lee, and so many others, and for those of you out there who’ve lost your daddies, my heart goes out to you.
For those of you who are still daddies, remember your kids only have one of you, and they only have one childhood.
It’s not a dress rehearsal, it’s the real thing.
Take the time to be there for them while you can.
Love them. Hug them.
Veteran’s Day, 2010
Dad and one of the merry go round horses he carved.
A number of years ago I was shooting in Muskegon, Michigan, for the Muskegon Chronicle, and over time discovered that one of the favorite things for local folks to do was to just go down to the lake (Lake Michigan) and watch the sun set. It was a tradition, it was peaceful, it was pretty.
The clouds in Michigan, or at least that part of Michigan always amazed me, and I realize now that subconsciously, when I had the chance, I shot images that emphasized them…
This one day I went down there, and – oh, you need to know that I was driving a 1979 Ford Fairmont I’d bought in Ohio – with a paint job courtesy of Earl Scheib and Acid Rain, Incorporated. This thing was as smooth as sandpaper. My mom tried to wax and polish a little corner of the trunk once after I’d brought it back to Washington and it was like trying to wax a gravel driveway…
She said, “Oh, look, I can see my shadow!” (as opposed to reflection).
I gently cuffed her one…
The reason the car comes into the picture is that it had Ohio plates on it.
I was in Michigan.
The plates had expired.
Put that on the back burner for just a little bit.
I got down to the lake – and – oh, another important thing. I’d found that shooting with ‘normal’ lenses just didn’t work for me – and found myself shooting with an 18 mm super wide angle lens on one camera body, and a 300 mm telephoto on the other. You don’t get much more of a spread than that. I figured that if I was close enough to shoot something up close, I wanted to be right in its face, hence the 18… if I couldn’t be in its face, I needed to reach out and touch it – with the 300.
In this case, I saw a bunch of guys fishing at the edge of the lake – and figured I sure didn’t need the 300 – so the 18 it was. I was thinking the shot through as I walked closer, and to get him in the shot, along with the sky and the sunset and everything, I’d end up kneeling on the ground and shooting up at him – so I went over and chatted for a bit, then got into position to shoot.
And a police car pulled up.
And Tom, with expired, out of state plates, suddenly got really, REALLY nervous.
I didn’t know what he could/would do – but if there were some problems, they’d have been bigger ones than I was capable of dealing with right then. So I did the only thing I could think of, and ignored him, figuring he might not think that the car was mine – or something like that. (note: this would be an example of the application of the Infinite Wisdom of Youth®).
I shot away, and chatted with the fellow, making some nice images with the sky, the clouds, the sunset, the water, his fishing pole, and the silhouette of him…
…and the cop kind of faded from my consciousness.
Until I felt a huge, hairy, gorilla’s hand land on my shoulder from about ten feet up, and a firm voice saying, “Hah! I’ve got you now…”
If I hadn’t already been kneeling, I would have been very quickly.
I was petrified, was it worse than I thought? Had he run the plate to find out that it was registered to me? What were the ramifications of driving out of state with expired tags? The fine? The penalty? A confused, scared storm of thoughts tore through my mind as I tried to figure out how to get out of this one that I wasn’t even sure I was in…
I slowly turned around, to see, much to my horror, that the image my terrified mind had conjured up was right. The hand on my shoulder wasn’t attached to a gorilla, it was worse.
It was attached to an arm in a policeman’s uniform.
I don’t know what my face looked like but as my eyes worked their way up that sleeve, I saw that the face on the policeman attached to it was smiling.
Was this an evil smile? An “I have you now” smile? I wasn’t anywhere near calmed down by that smile – and I saw he was raising his other hand. That didn’t make sense, the gun would be in his right hand, and he was raising his left one…
(I cringed)
…which had a little disposable camera in it.
The cop’s smile got even bigger.
“I got you! I got a picture of you getting a picture of him!”
If I hadn’t been kneeling already (you know…)
The relief that was pouring through my body was like cold water on a dry lakebed. Cooling, sizzling as it hit the hot surface, it soaked in to cool it to the core.
(Luckily, that’s the only fluid we’ll need to talk about in this story.)
I laughed with the policeman, joked with him a bit about how his lens very likely outclassed mine, and so on. He promised to have a copy of the print at the paper as soon as it was developed, and true to his word, he did.
As soon as I find that shot – it’s in a box ‘somewhere’, I’ll put it in here. However, failing that, here’s the “Fishing by the lake” shot…
Oh – one more thing… he never mentioned the license plate….
Fishing at Lake Michigan – and… you never know when you’re being watched.
Tom Roush's Blog 
