Story Number Six – My First Meaningful Photograph

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Although I didn’t really start taking photographs until about a year ago, I can remember the first time I took a picture that really meant something to me. Now this is a story I have told many times, mostly to large groups as I have spoken about an annual charitable dental project I work with called the Kansas Mission of Mercy. I can always tell how well I have delivered this story by how many people I see wiping away tears. I’ve often joked that I know I’ve given a good presentation if I look out across the audience and I see women in the room wiping tears from their eyes. I know I’ve given a great presentation if I look out and see the men wiping the tears from their eyes. The latter has happened many times and that, as I turn my attention to this annual event that occurs again this week, is story number six.

The Kansas Mission of Mercy began in 2003 with the goal of providing free dental services to as many patients as we can treat in two days. KMOM is a project of the Kansas Dental Charitable Foundation which I serve as the Executive Director. We accomplish this goal by bringing together more than one hundred dentists, countless dental hygienists and assistants and hundreds of local volunteers into a single location, setting up a seventy-five to a one hundred chair dental office and then opening the doors to about one thousand patients each day of our two-day clinic.

The story I often tell happened at our first project in February of 2003. We were in Garden City, KS and about eighteen inches of snow had fallen during the week of the event. Only four people out of the six hundred or so volunteers had ever seen a clinic like this take place, but somehow it came together.

I had never really taken photographs before, but I was looking for something I could do to be productive, since I obviously couldn’t provide dental care. I grabbed our digital camera and began walking around taking photographs of the volunteers and the patients. I knew nothing about the camera other than point and shoot, but I did know that composition was important. So I walked the clinic floor, looking for interesting angles, using the lights of the dental units aimed at the patient’s mouths to photograph what would ultimately show the dedicated work of our volunteers.

I had gotten called over to take a photo of a 103 year old patient who was sitting in a chair receiving dental care. I noticed he was wearing a volunteer badge and had come that morning to translate to our non-English speaking patients. We talked a few minutes, I took his picture and was then called over for another photograph. This time, it was a mother, likely in her mid-thirtees, who was being fitted for a full set of dentures. She had been selected in advance and had all the impressions done days before so when she arrived at the clinic on Saturday, she would be able to walk out with them that day.

When I got over to her with my camera, I noticed that she had two daughters with her. I’d guess that they were aged twelve and ten, maybe a year or two older, or maybe younger. As her dentures were being adjusted, she revealed something that I could not believe and is why I tell this story. With her two daughters by her side, she told us that they had never seen her smile.

Take a minute and think about this. Two daughters, both pre-teen aged, who had never seen their mother smile. As a parent, I can’t help but smile and laugh at what my children do. Perhaps what she said was that when she smiled, she consciously kept her lips closed so that her children wouldn’t see her mouth. Regardless, a smile, something that is instinctive, uncontrollable at times, and in a simple way, a treasure of life, was taken from this mother. I was about to witness the gift she received when that treasure was given back to her and I had the chance to take this photograph

Now, I wish I had the chance to take this picture again. With everything I’ve learned over the past year, I’d like to think that I could have taken a much better photo to truly capture this moment when she put the dentures into her mouth and smiled as she saw her smile for the first time in a very, very long time. Her children stood by her side as the light from behind created a beautiful glow around her.

But then again, this is maybe one time when it’s okay that the story is much better than the photo and the thousand words that I’ve told many times carries far more weight than the photograph ever could. There are, in fact, countless stories just like this mothers that I have seen first hand at these clinics. I call myself extremely blessed to be able to tell stories like this one.

– Forty Stories I Love to Tell is an ongoing series about some of my favorite stories I find myself telling over and over again in my life.

Story 5 – From a Devastated New Orleans

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Six years ago this weekend, I traveled to New Orleans to help with a free dental clinic organizers had planned to provide dental services following Hurricane Katrina.  I remember because I watched the Super Bowl in my hotel room in an almost barren downtown.

This trip was my first and only trip the Crescent City.   I would have loved to have seen New Orleans in all her glory, its rich cultural history and its appreciation for the unconventional.  Sadly, this city, six months after Hurricane Katrina, remained devastated and mired in political controversy.

The devastation I saw is indescribable, no matter how much I try.  The quietness, lingering over the flooded areas in much of the city remains painfully eerie.  The images of thousands of human beings struggling to survive as one of America’s great cities was transformed into a third world country still angers me.

Imagine your next door neighbor’s house with each of its windows boarded over and tree limbs scattered all over the yard as if a heavy thunderstorm had hit just yesterday.  The roof has sections ripped away, exposing bare rafters, and the siding on several sections of the house is tattered and torn.  The house is empty and no public utilities serve it.  If there is a car, it is abandoned or is still upside down or pushed underneath a nearby overpass awaiting its own graveyard.  Spray paint on the doors indicates the house has been searched and too, those who perished inside.

Now, imagine the house next to it, equally devastated, if not even more so.  And the next house and so on until every house, including your own, is uninhabitable.  Now, take every house in your neighborhood, and the next neighborhood, and then the next.  Now imagine driving miles and seeing nothing but these houses, sitting and waiting for a bulldozer that would eventually come and finish what Katrina started.

Commercial centers sat vacant.  Long stretches of roads where restaurants and shopping centers once employed thousands were the skeletal remains resting on a desert floor.  A ten-foot barbed-wire fence surrounded a Home Depot and the entrance was guarded by security officers as if it were a high-security prison.

It was easy to see the destruction of the infrastructure, the houses ripped apart and the feeling of despair.  During the newscasts immediately following the hurricane, we saw the footage of tens of thousands of people packed into the Superdome and the Convention Center.  To stand at the Superdome and imagine those people, many approaching death from starvation or lack of medical care, brings an entirely new perspective to the magnitude of this catastrophe.

As I drove the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward and witnessed the destruction, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this city would ever recover? Someday, I hope to return to New Orleans and see the city and I hope the people who were relocated across the country return too.

Katrina may have stolen away much of New Orleans, but it did not take away her soul.  And it is that soul that will rebuild it and again become the New Orleans we all once knew.

From the Keeper of the Plains

A recent trip to Wichita, KS took me to the Keeper of the Plains, a 44-foot statue which sits along the Arkansas River.  During my travels, I’ve done a good job of carrying a still camera with me and taking photographs across the state.  On the other hand, I haven’t been quite as good at carrying my video camera.  Sometimes it can be a bit more work to put a video clip together, but it is no less enjoyable.  If you have thirty seconds to look at a moving picture, I think you will enjoy.

Story Number 4 – And I’d have pulled it off too, if not for that Meddling Governor

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This week, I deviate from the  ”bucket list” stories I have told these last two weeks, to one of the stories I have always thought was pretty funny.  Or at least I do now.   As you will discover in later stories, I had a unique opportunity to work on the campaign of Kansas candidate for Governor, Bill Graves.  Graves served as Kansas Governor from 1994-2002.  At least one of the stories in this series will be about the campaign.

Each year, my home town, Independence, KS, holds an annual carnival and parade over a weeklong celebration in late October, called Neewollah, which is halloween spelled backwards.  The Saturday parade often lasts two hours and is a favorite for elected officials, especially during election years.  On several occasions too, the parade has been the same day as our big in-state football rivalry, the University of Kansas Jayhawks versus the  Kansas State University Wildcats.

I am a 1994 graduate of Kansas State University and while I’m not a fan that goes to many games, I’ve enjoyed following the K-State Wildcats and I was certainly not going to let a parade stand in the way of a football game, particularly one against our in-state rival.

In October of 1998, I took Gwen, my wife, although we were just dating at the time, to her first Neewollah parade, which of course, happened to be during that football game.   If memory serves me right, I was strongly discouraged from taking a radio to the parade and listening to the game, so I did what every fan would do, I snuck my radio into my jacket, hid the earphones and then slipped the earpiece into the other ear.

… And I would have pulled it off too, if not for that meddling Governor.

As Governor Graves rode by, sitting on the back of a convertible, he saw me standing and we waved to one another.  Unfortunately, he also saw the earpiece in my ear.  That’s when he yells, “Hey Greg, are you’re listening to the game?  What’s the score?”

After I told him the score, I looked over at Gwen.  She was none impressed that the governor had yelled out to me.  I took the earpiece out of my ear, wrapped it around my radio and put it back into my pocket.  Ironically, later during that game, the starting KU quarterback went down injured.  His replacement was my second cousin.  And I missed it.

Thanks Governor.

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Story Number 3 – A Mountain to Climb

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In 2002, I participated in a 100-mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe as part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program.   For those unfamiliar with Lake Tahoe, it’s a large lake high in the mountains, straddling the California and Nevada border.  Our lowest elevation was about 5800 feet and our highest at approximately 7200 feet.

On the north side of Lake Tahoe, 80 miles into America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride.

Now, for those unfamiliar with Kansas, particularly in Topeka, we are relatively flat and our altitude is about 900 feet in elevation.  The question I am always asked is “how did I train?”  Each weekend, for about three months, I’d put my bicycle, a 1984 Fuji twelve-speed, onto a trainer, lock it down and crank up the tension to simulate climbing.  For hours (sometimes four or five hours) I’d pedal as hard as I could.  If I couldn’t simulate the altitude, I could simulate the mountains and if I could climb a mountain for five hours, I could make it through a century ride in the mountains.

We set out in the brisk cold morning in Lake Tahoe.  The morning temperature was in the low forties and I remember wearing two pair of gloves and my hands were still frozen.  It would warm up later in the day, but for the first three or four hours of the ride, it would be bitterly cold.

The first part of the ride was a downward decent to about 5700 feet and then at about mile sixteen, there was a series of switchbacks as we climbed six hundred feet or so over the next six miles.  It was all uphill, rarely was there a place flat enough even to catch your breath as you climbed the mountain in the altitude of six thousand feet. Just as I began my assent, I realized that I was not able to shift gears.  I was stuck in one of the lowest gears on my bicycle and I could not shift out of it.  I had built speed going down the hill that I was able to climb a part of the mountain, but as I slowed, I struggled to stay on my bike in the crowd of people climbing the mountain.  Finally, I was going too slow to even pedal and had to step off my bike.

There was no place to stop and fix my bike.  I had two choices.  One, I could walk my bike up the mountain until it leveled out enough for me to ride, or I could walk my bike back down the mountain until I found a flat enough stretch that I could get back on my bicycle and peddle.  I opted for the second choice.  I found a stretch flat enough and climbed back on my bike and stood for the next four miles, gave every ounce of energy and power in my legs to climb the mountain. About three quarters of the way up the ride I was able to get a small adjustment made to my bike which made it slightly easier to pedal.  But I was still not able to change gears.

Once I made it to the top of the mountain, I had about fifteen miles to go before I could have a mechanic fix my bicycle.  As I rode, my legs felt as if they were large tree trunks.  I feel certain I looked exactly like Lance Armstrong as he climbed the Pyrenees.

In my pocket during the ride, I had a piece of paper in which I had written the name of a friend of mine who had lost a battle with leukemia a few years earlier. He was the reason I had gotten involved in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in the first place.  When I learned that another friend was battling non-Hodgkins lymphoma, I sent her that jersey.  Both their sisters are friends of mine and I regularly run into them in my work.  You will hear more about my involvement with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in future stories.

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Story Number 2 – Looking Down from 10,000 Feet

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A friend of mine had always wanted to skydive.  He asked me to go along.  Since I had recently bailed on him as his Best Man (I would be in Europe during his wedding), I figured the least I could do was accompany him on his skydiving trip, which of course, meant I would skydive as well.

We did what is called a “tandem” jump, which essentially means that you strap yourself to an experienced skydiver and you are just along for the ride. It takes very little preparation, is relatively inexpensive (at least in 1997) and is quite exhilarating to say the least.  After our short class, we boarded the plane and climbed to 10,000 feet.

First, I have to tell you, this was a small single engine plane.  Once we were over the “drop zone”, we all scooted over to the canvas tarp that covered the door and rolled it up and secured the Velcro straps.  When I say scooted over, that is exactly what I mean. Recall that we are strapped to our jump partner and moving around is not particularly easy.  Nevertheless, we managed to roll up the tarp in our very confined quarters and as fast as we rolled it up, my friend was out the plane, beginning his 5000-foot free fall.

Now, the way this was supposed to happen is that once my friend was safely out of the way, we were supposed to follow.  However, when they jumped, my friend hit the tarp with his head and the tarp fell, covering the door.   For us to jump, we had to roll the tarp back up, which took long enough that we were out of the drop zone and had to circle around once again.  The problem with this is that in order to roll the tarp up, we had to sit on the edge of the plane, or rather, my jump partner sat on the edge of the plane and I sat on his lap, looking straight down 10,000 feet.

Did I mention that I was afraid of heights?

As long as it took for the plane to circle back around over Independence, MO, I sat with my feet dangling in the clouds and I’ll admit, scared beyond belief.  Keep in mind that my friend jumped immediately, having hardly any time at all to look out the window.   I’d estimate that it took five minutes to circle and I really had only two places I could look.  One was down at the ground and the other was the back of my eyelids. But as scared as I was, I was also quite intrigued at the world from nearly two miles above the ground.

… And then we jumped.

I remember I was pelted in the face by raindrops for the first few seconds and then the loudest noise I have ever heard as we fell for nearly thirty-seconds.  I remember yelling as loud as I could and not hearing myself.  After we fell nearly 5000 feet, the shoot opened and then silence as you have never heard.  I mean dead silence.  A mile in the sky, not a bird, no sounds of cars, even the parachute that was just drifting through the air was silent.

My jump partner asked how the earth looked from 5000 feet and I replied, “Absolutely beautiful.”  There was really no other way to describe it, and I can’t.  It’s something you have to experience yourself.  Slowly, over the next few minutes, the earth approached and we set our feet upon it safely.

It was about a year later I read the news in the Kansas City Star.  The airplane we jumped from suffered engine problems at about 4000 feet.  Inside that plane was our pilot and my friend’s tandem partner.  They, along with the other passengers died when that plane, our plane, crashed to the ground.

I often think that could have been me and as much as I would love to skydive again, I can’t  and I won’t.  Not now.  Not with two young children.  As exhilarating as it was, it simply cannot compare to those four words I hear each and every day, “I love you daddy.”

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Story Number 1 – The One Goal I Remember

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In all likelihood, this is the first story in chronological order.  That is not why I lead with it though, as you will soon understand.  Several of these stories are about the game of soccer.  It was my sport of choice, even as a youth in the Eighties and I spent hours upon hours practicing and playing.

Soccer was the one sport I was pretty good at playing.  I  lucked out by having a great group of teammates who had played together for four seasons and we lost only one game during that span.  I vaguely remember a few of the many goals that I scored during those four years, but not well enough to write about.  At least not the goals I scored anyway.

Roger was my best friend while growing up.   He lived in the country and sometimes it was difficult for him to be able to make it to activities because of transportation.   We solved this by requesting that we could be on the same team so that he could come to my house after school and we could walk to practice together, which we did for about five years.  Roger played defender and worked probably harder than anyone to get better.  We would practice together at school, after school and on weekends.  The more we practiced, the better he got.  As he got better, I did as well.  He’d learn my soccer moves and I’d have to develop new ones, all the while making myself a better player. (I don’t know that Roger knows that last part)

Our school principal would often give special rewards for the accomplishment of different activities.  For example a home run over the fence in softball would often earn a trip to the ice-cream store.  One day during P.E., Roger and I were heading the soccer ball back and forth, trying to see how many times we could do this without the ball touching the ground.  Our principal, Mr. Johnson,  walked up to us and said that if we could head the ball twenty-five times without the ball hitting the ground, he would take us to Braum’s for ice cream.  I took the ball, “juggled” it on my head twenty-three times, headed it to Roger on the twenty-fourth and the ball hit his forehead for twenty-five.  I think Mr. Johnson knew he had been had, but he honored his deal.

One game, our team was winning big.  I think the final score 13-0, but I don’t remember any of my goals that day.  The goal that I remember came late in the game.  I was on the sidelines watching, cheering for my friend Roger who had been moved from defense to forward.  The pass came right to left.  Roger trapped the ball with his feet, swung his leg and I watched as the ball slid past the goalie and into the back of the net.  His mother cheered and jumped up and down.  Heck, I jumped up and down.  As Roger jogged back to the center of the field, he had the biggest smile on his face.  So did I.

This is story number one, not because it was Roger’s first and only goal. It is number one because it really is the first memory I have of watching something really special happen and when I learned the awesome reward of witnessing someone else’s success.  Until that day, success in soccer was about how many goals I had scored, not even so much as whether we won or lost.  But from that day forward and more so even today, I enjoy and appreciate watching someone else’s hard work pay off.

Several years ago, I played in a soccer league in Topeka.  Instead of playing forward where I had played as a kid, I chose to play back on defense, forcing myself to play a position I wasn’t very good at playing.  I never scored a goal that entire season, but I enjoyed getting better each game we played and yes, I gained inspiration from thinking of my grade school friend Roger.  I don’t remember how many games we won or last that year, but I can tell you that I don’t remember my team giving up that many goals.