“Out of difficulties grow miracles.” Jean de la Bruyere.

   During the autumn of 1981, while I was a fledgling reporter in the University of Missouri’s London Reporting Program, I scoured and scrounged the city and even countryside to come up with the required 12 reports for a passing grade. I never did make 12 then, and my eight credits of C for reporting (failing in graduate school) and 3 credits of B for research, reflected that fact.

   However, the difficulties I faced then in writing ’so many’ stories (today, I could do them in a day), stemmed as much from my picture-taking as any writer’s block I might have suffered from then. When I had turned 30 in November 1979, I’d bought myself my first 35mm camera, to help remove the sting of my recent divorce.

   Though I’d always been a good writer, I loved this newfound camerawork moreso. In London, I pursued it with vigor, including my photographing a children’s day care center daily for a month. In addition, I roamed the streets of London every day, and took good photos there, too. When I sent in some of my reports for publication to the Columbia Missourian, I once sent photos, as well.

   With my report on Rudi Christopher, a Paralympic champion weightlifter and sprinter, I sent all my photos of him, including from the day I met him, as he took part in Thames Day as a kayaker. I photographed him as he pulled up to shore, with the Houses of Parliament in the distance. We made an appointment, and I later photographed and interviewed him at his school for the disabled in Alton. My report was published in the Missourian, but the photos I’d sent separately were lost. Rudi did well in the classroom and also played the drums very well. His greatest dream was to drive an 18-wheeler semi-truck for work, after he graduated. I don’t know if that ever happened.

   One day, I photographed a homeless man coughing beneath a Thames bridge at Charing Cross. I may have shown my strongest view of him to John Whale, our group’s moderator, because I found a note on a desk in his office a few days later, asking for a reporter to photograph the homeless at Charing Cross. Mr. Whale didn’t ask to publish my photo then, but I don’t remember what we discussed about it.

   Another time, I covered the Camden Jazz Festival, featuring the Archie Shepp Quintet. My article mainly focused on Charlie McGhee, his great trumpeter, because Charlie was whom I interviewed that night. I also took some memorable photos of Mr. Shepp pretending to blow on his saxophone (he insisted on posing that way, just before he went onstage). I later lost those images, which would have been perfect to include in a cigarette (I believe) billboard photo-campaign I saw in my hometown a few month’s later, showing famous musicians at work.

   However, I did borrow a good photo showing Charlie at work then, taken by the printer that semester for my black-and-white work, Prem Olson. Prem’s action-portrait was used small on the front-page of the Missourian to lead-in to my Camden report on an inside page.

   Although there were difficulties getting my own photos published then, Prem Olsen (following Sally Soames, see ‘An Exalted Leader’) did open the door to the biggest interview and photo I did that semester; which prompted some real miracles much further up the road for me, but that interview and photo will be covered soon enough in a future column.