The morning haze hung heavily over the city of Charleston, S.C., as my Honda traversed one of the many bridges populating the Southern colonial town. It was a late spring morning, and I was trying to find the address of my last stop on a three-day trip. Writer Jay Hancock had already done the bulk of his reporting on the impact of state-sponsored economic incentives there. Businesses were setting up shop in South Carolina and jobs were increasing in number, but because of the huge discounts given to corporations to relocate, the tax base was not. We were there to show that, despite the influx of business, the state had little to show in terms of prosperity.
My first GPS unit was several years from becoming a reality, so I fumbled with a map while looking for the home of A.J. DeStefano, a 68-year-old retiree. He, like many South Carolinians, was paying more in taxes and getting less for his money. As my angst increased proportionally with my inability to find the house number, my pager went off, further exacerbating my mood. My boss Jim Preston’s number lit up the LCD screen, requesting a return call. Mr. DeStefano was finally found and the portrait made. I asked if I could use his phone.
Stress levels now decreased, a call was placed to Preston in Baltimore. His only question was
about my availability to travel in early July. ‘‘Where?’’ was my response. Instead of another scenic trip along an East Coast interstate, I was asked whether I could cut loose for three weeks to shoot a story in Africa. I would be traveling with reporter Doug Birch as he investigated a possible breakthrough on a vaccine to cure malaria. The scene in the DeStefanos’ kitchen was frozen in time as I recalled the professional chasm that I had crossed by coming to work for The Sun just three years earlier.
I had grown up less than 15 miles from The Sun’s Calvert Street offices. While I was attending Oakland Mills High School in Columbia, The Sun and The Washington Post weren’t even on my radar for potential employment when I began taking my dad’s Nikkormat camera to school dances and football games instead of dates. I enjoyed seeing my images published in the yearbook and school newspaper, and I eventually began submitting sports photos to the Columbia Flier, now the flagship of the Patuxent Publishing chain of weekly newspapers in Howard County.
Because I was drawn to newspaper photography, a University of Maryland journalism degree followed, but my expectations of daily newspaper employment were still low. In fact, the gig at Patuxent, where my internship had already transformed itself into a full-time position, seemed pretty nice. Sights were soon to be set higher as my confidence grew. What I considered to be my hometown
paper, The Sun, quickly became my target. It was1980.
Phone calls were followed by resumes sent to a succession of photo directors in Baltimore. Resumes were followed by a fairly paltry, but growing, portfolio of images meant to impress. The process became repetitious in those first few years while I was at Patuxent. Little, if any, encouragement ensued, so my search expanded on a national scale but with little or no results.
Finally, leads in Dallas and Columbia, S.C., gave me reason for hope. While staying in the Baltimore area was the most appealing scenario, my frustration with the process made me seriously consider leaving. Living in Columbia, I would routinely run in to then-director of photography, Dave Lewis, in our local grocery store. We’d chat, but he’d offer little in the way of hope for employment at The Sun.
By the late 1980s, I was winning awards and my name was getting recognition regionally. One of the top photo newspapers in the country, The Pittsburgh Press, flew me in as a finalist for a position there. It eventually went to someone else, and I was devastated.
As I was cranking out images and building an impressive portfolio at Patuxent, changes in management at The Sun often brought renewed hope of an employment opportunity. In the mid-1990s, one such change occurred, and an interview with The Sun’s new director of photography was arranged. There
Realizing
a dream
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