Kim (left) and a friend at Park of the Pines.

You don’t realize the significance and importance of some events until long after the event.

It was Thursday afternoon, July 22, 1999 at Park of the Pines in northern Michigan. I was on the staff at a senior high camp. It was right before dinner time and Kim, a teenager at the camp, challenged me to a footrace to the dining hall. I nicely said no. She challenged me again and I again declined. When she challenged me the third time I decided this must be important to her and I said yes. In a flash we were racing to the dining hall. At well over twice her age I knew I wouldn’t win, but I was doing a respectable job of almost keeping up with her when my foot caught in an exposed tree root and I went down. Hard. On a boulder. The pain in my chest was the worst pain of my life.

That night after the day’s activities were over (I didn’t want to miss anything), Harvey, who was on the camp staff, took me to the nearest hospital for X-rays. Around 1:00 am I got the news. Four broken ribs. I still have the X-rays.

Back at home in Kalamazoo Michigan after camp, my doctor would not allow me to drive more than 15 minutes from my home for a few weeks. Then 30 minutes for a couple of weeks. Then 45 minutes. Except for Kalamazoo, all of the cities in my Michigan territory that I was supposed to travel to were beyond the driving limits my doctor had set.  Plus I hurt too much to drive.

The first page of my first web site, November 12, 1999.

My photography students at my one night per week photography class at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts had been bugging me for some time to put up a web site. With my travel severely limited, I finally had time to put up a photography web site.

Several years later a book agent found my web site. By then it was a new and improved version of my original site, and I had moved to Ohio. The agent was looking for someone to write a book and she contacted me. Another photographer/author had been contracted and started writing the book, and had to bow out unexpectedly. The agent needed someone to jump in and write a book from scratch in just four months. I was asked to submit a book outline and one fully written chapter. The publishers liked the outline and chapter and through my agent they offered me a contract to write the book.

A field trip at Jeremy and I’s first photography workshop for OSU.

One year later, Jeremy Bruskotter, who had taken my photo class years earlier in Kalamazoo, contacted me about team teaching a photo workshop with him for “The Ohio State University”. The powers that be at the university wanted to know if I had a degree in photography. I didn’t. But Jeremy told them I was a published book author so the powers that be decided that was good enough and that is how Jeremy and I ended up doing photo workshops for OSU.

If I hadn’t broken my ribs, I would have been on the road and not home creating a web site. With no web site the book agent wouldn’t have found me. And with no book in print OSU would not have hired me to team teach a photo workshop.

So I periodically like to publicly thank Kim for challenging me to that foot race.

Kim (on the right with her daughter)) surprising me at a workshop.

Several years ago Kim (and her daughter) showed up to surprise me during one of my photo workshops at Park of the Pine, the same campground where it all started in 1999. Winnie Johnston, the workshop coordinator, was part of that scheme to surprise me. I begin my workshops by telling the whole broken rib story, so it was fun for the workshop participants to actually meet the culprit in that story.