My Top 10
These are the stories I consider my best work so far.
125 Years of Auburn Women
In 2017, Auburn celebrated 125 years since admitting women to the school for the first time. As is the unfortunate case everywhere, the accomplishments and contributions of Auburn women seldom received equal recognition as their male counterparts. The end result was that much of their history was lost to time — the first women graduates at Auburn, its individual athletic and scholastic achievements. By the end of the year, we had succeeded in bringing light to lost history.
My role within the Auburn Alumni Association is to communicate to graduates of Auburn University, to connect the past and the present. I felt it within my purview to reclaim as much history as I could and bring it to light for the benefit of everyone. From compiling the first complete record of Auburn’s female athletes in each sport to discovering the oldest living Auburn alumnae Helen Krauss Leslie, we left no stone unturned.
Echoes of Jake Adam York: The Life and Times of an Auburn Poet
I had never heard of the poet Jake Adam York prior to this assignment, nor had I ever researched and written so extensively about someone whose impact was still as strong as the day he died, perhaps even more so.
With a window of less than three months, I understood I could never fully comprehend York’s life and work completely enough on my own, so I turned to the people who could: his friends, his family, his ex-girlfriends, his widow, his colleagues now scattered across the country and even an acquaintance living in Prague.
Mr. Clark’s Opus: Dave Clark ‘94
That so few people know about Dave Clark is not by accident. The man behind Amazon’s vast logistics system that enables the company to ship everything under the sun in a matter of days, or even hours, prefers not to be the center of attention. Instead, he lets his work do the talking — thousands of employees, machines and online technology working in harmony, synchronized down to the second.
Forks in the Road: Destination Dining Around Tampa Bay
I have always been fascinated by the differences geography has on a region’s cuisine, especially around Tampa Bay. Ten miles inland and you’re suddenly in cow country, where barbecue and soul food abound, while ten miles out you’re surrounded by beachfront restaurants serving great seafood that was still in the water only hours prior. This feature for TAMPA Magazine is a byproduct of my weird obsession and is written to not only share the area’s food options, but lays out a whole day’s worth of activities, sights and history for readers to enjoy, with enough variation between the four compass points to have a different experience each time. The best part? Everything is only about a 45-minute drive apart.
Rustling the Palmetto Thicket: Florida’s Cracker Cowboys
The beginning of my obsession with Old Florida and my home state’s rough-and-tumble history, I must admit. Something about the juxtaposition of cowboys and alligators together seems fascinating to me. I would address the indigenous history of Tampa Bay later for TAMPA Magazine, but here I got to write about history for history’s sake, something I love but unfortunately don’t get to enough. Mostly though, I got to feed my inner Zane Grey, to a degree, which was allowed me to work on my nonfiction descriptions and scene-building a little more. This story also opened me up to so much more Florida history than I was aware of, knowledge I never would have acquired without it.
Lighting the Stars: Becky Colwell ‘94
As far as people profiles go, this is easily one of my favorites. Extremely gracious and at all times accommodating, Becky Colwell was the perfect interview subject. And though this story may not be as technically difficult or innovative as some of my other articles, I think that’s precisely why I enjoyed writing it so much. Colwell has such a fascinating career as a general manager for outdoor amphitheaters in North Carolina and now at the famous Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, the hardest part was trimming all her great stories down to fit the word count. What I learned from this feature was that a story does not need to be overly suspenseful or dramatic to have energy. Using a slow-building energy in the form of personal anecdotes is the perfect way to tell a story without adding anything artificial into the mix. I let Colwell’s story tell itself and in the end, that’s really all that was necessary.
From the Jailhouse to the Jukebox: the Lomax Blues Collection
I had wanted to do a story on the Blues, but in the process of researching its early history I came across Alan Lomax, one of its most important individuals. Lomax was the first person to record blues and folk singers in prisons, railroad gangs and countless work camps during the 1920s and ‘30s, but he was also the first to recognize the power of the music, to connect it to its roots in gospel music and also to evangelize it to the masses. So strongly did I admire Lomax after finish his book The Land Where the Blues Began (an incredible read) and a separate biography, I wrote this article on him for Good Grit Magazine with input from the American Folklife Center’s Alan Lomax Collection and Lomax’s own creation, the Association for Cultural Equity. Knowing that I helped return this important figure to public attention again, coupled with the fun I had writing and learning from my interview sources make this one of my favorite early assignments.
Dining at the Crossroads of History
In 2017, Auburn celebrated 125 years since admitting women to the school for the first time. In retrospect, the significance of this event should have been apparent, but at the outset it garnered very limited support. Women, as is the unfortunate case everywhere, had never received the recognition they deserved at Auburn, either historically, academically, athletically and beyond. Determined to right that wrong, I set about researching anything that could shed light on women's contributions to Auburn history. A massive crowdsourcing campaign generated hundreds of submitted stories from living alumnae, while partnerships across campus and around the state amplified our message even further.
Our Fall 2017 issue was
Our website, [www.alumni.auburn.edu/women][1] will remain online permanently as a resource for women not just at Auburn but everywhere.
Kitchen Wizard: Ken Schwartz & SSA Foodservice
Some interview profiles require a little bit of narrative flexing to make the story work, but in this instance, that wasn’t the case. Ken Schwartz was and is one of my favorite interviews of all time, period, because the man was incredibly intelligent and full of fascinating stories. You think a man who turns high-end restaurants into a combination kitchen-theater would be more ostentatious, but Schwartz was incredibly humble and allowed our interview to encompass a wide range of topics. The biggest challenge I had writing this was simply taming my disbelief and awe to create a realistic profile, though I believe the title of “kitchen wizard” is apt for his line of work. This was one of the first stories that showed me how much there is to learn from the most unassuming people and really opened my eyes to the power of the individual, something I have never forgotten.
Summer Traditions: Anna Maria Island, Fla. & Highlands-Cashiers, N.C.
My first feature for TAMPA Magazine and my first serious contract work was also, coincidentally, the biggest story I have ever written by myself and a huge project by every quantifiable way. To do a double travel feature on two dissimilar locations, each almost 10 pages long, seems absurd now, but we did it. I wasn’t able to go to North Carolina, but I tracked down the author of a 1970s travel guide (and also Tampa native) about the Highlands-Cashiers area to be my expert source, while extensive online searching and Google-mapping let me explore the area from my home in Tampa. Anna Maria Island, only an hour south, was a place I was more familiar with, but a whole day spent down there was monumental in figuring out the area. I was instructed to complete a “real estate” section for both places as well, and in one instance this meant actually sitting in with realtors to discuss how to market their properties. I learned so much about how to plan a story out, how to check for mistakes, how to “visit” a place without actually putting a foot down, all thanks to this story. But at the time, it was a nightmare to write for a while. Definitely trial by fire.