Blogger’s Note

Photography has been a huge part of my life. No selfies, no social media. Simply to record life as I saw and felt it.

This picture is my start. In the summer of 1960, when I was 16, I was a camp counselor at the YMCA Camp Cutten for underprivileged kids from the inner city of Chicago. These were the guys in my first cabin. Eight guys, two were blind. The start of my life spent teaching, spent documenting the world of my students and the world around us. This image is my beginning. It is the first picture I actually processed – a neighbor took me into his darkroom and helped me develop the film and make the print. I like to think that this is the first picture in two threads of service and documentary work that continued through Robin’s and my life together.

Now of the thousands of pictures I have taken the prints, names, labels and captions of each image are gone but I still have the negatives. Thousands of images on film. There are gaps in this record – the gap between this image and when Robin and I met, the gap when Megan was young, the gap when I started back to school, the gap when Robin’s treatments progressed. But throughout, Robin supported my photography. She encouraged my documentary work as we did our service – our homes always had a darkroom! So I’m going to weave my images of our life in the 60’s and 70’s into the next few posts. I’m not certain of the dates of each photograph so I’m selecting and placing the images as my imperfect memory allows. Through the blog stories I illustrate with these images I hope you’ll see who Robin and I were and how we abandoned the radical movement and “thought globally but worked locally” to improve the lives of others.

Introduction

My mother formed me. She was an academic with a very distinguished career. I am an academic – with a less distinguished career. (The mathematician in me calls that “regression to the mean.” A child of a superlative often is closer to average than the parent!) In my 77th year I’m still taking classes, still reading American Scientist. But there are differences.

Everywhere I go I try to stay, to become family. That is the theme of these next blog posts.

I returned from my year in Europe as a vagabond wanderer with a new outlook. (See My own story begins near the end of the post – https://www.fbarrywheeler.net/our-journeys-begin/) I headed to Indiana University (I.U.) with a renewed academic focus, but also with a feeling that this life should be better for everyone – not just comparatively wealthy white males like myself. I joined the Students for a Democratic Society – the SDS. I was against the war in Vietnam. I supported the Black Power movement for racial justice. I worked for economic justice. But I was totally against communism, it seemed to foster the same injustices and wars as the extreme capitalism of the United States.

So I studied hard. Learned about the University. Made friends – I could even count some of the faculty as friends. I joined the IU family.

As an academic, my focus was on the university. The campus was my new home but, like I did in my childhood home, I rebelled against the university rules. At the time, the university served as in loco parentis, i.e., the university was to serve in the place of our parents. And like many parents, the university seemed more interested in our athletic status than in our academic success. And like good children we were to be seen, but not heard. The Berkley Free Speech Movement spoke loud and clear to me. In September 1965 as John, my roommate, and I headed off to I.U. I told his father that my goal was to join the university student “Board of Academic Review” and work to strengthen the instructional program and student rights on campus.

I did join the Board of Academic Review and in May of 1966 I became its chairman. I began the I.U. Student Evaluation of Faculty project. Over time I became a familiar figure on campus.

Here I am in May 1966 – a member of the I.U. Student Government Executive Branch as Chairman of the Board of Academic Review. (2nd from the right since I’m told I don’t look anything like I did back in those heady days).

Robin joins me

As I moved into my apartment in the fall of 1966, Robin was moving into her apartment ten blocks away. A friend introduced us and a few days later, she joined me on the back of my motorcycle for a day trip to Brown County – a beautiful scenic, and touristy, area just outside of Bloomington where the University was located. The rest is our history – our wedding is recounted in my previous post. We became partners.

This is the book we published. Members of the I.U. Board of Academic Review wrote and printed our evaluation survey during the winter and early spring of 1967. Near the end of the semester the board distributed over 30,000 questionnaires. I think about 17,000-18,000 were returned. Robin joined our team as we compiled the results, then wrote and edited furiously during the summer. The evaluation was printed and sold during the fall as students returned to campus and signed up for their classes. The book was over 300 pages, evaluating every professor of an undergraduate course at I.U. Our book was not the first, but one of the first, completely independent, student-run and published evaluations in the country. Perhaps I was the project manager, but Don Goldenbaum should get credit as the brains behind the operation and James Dyer was our computer programmer. Robin was our editor – and maybe task manager. I’m still proud of the project and still have my copy!

(Again, click any image in the gallery. Once the picture is up, you can view each image by clicking (tapping) on the arrow that appears on the right edge. Click through the image set. Move forward and backward. Then you can click on the small [X] in the upper right corner to return to the blog.)

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As we worked to complete our faculty evaluation project, Robin and I continued to support the various student activists in other areas. We both supported the Black Power Movement. We protested the university’s suppression of student freedoms. We worked to end the university’s discrimination against female students – females had to sign out of their dorms in the evening and had to sign in before curfew; males students did not have any similar rules. We journeyed to Washington, D.C. to protest the war in Vietnam. Here’s a picture I made on the steps of the Pentagon in the spring of 1967.

The Progressive Reform Party

In 1966-67 we joined with other student activists and formed the Progressive Reform Party – a student organization built to support candidates for student government offices. We produced fliers, made speeches, and campaigned vigorously. Here are many of our candidates – I’m in the middle, far right. Immediately below me and a bit left is Guy Loftman.

Guy became the party’s candidate for student body president; I became the candidate for vice-president. We didn’t stand a chance. Guy was the romantic image of a campus radical; I was the business face of the Student Evaluation of Faculty. But this was very conservative Indiana. Not a chance.

What?!?! We won?

Unbelievably, we won! The students split their votes – Guy and I won with a plurality. Change of plans – after we graduated, I turned down a three year PhD program at the University of Minnesota with a full NDEA fellowship. We stayed at I.U. as graduate students while serving in student government. (My mom was livid!)

So here I am, hiding behind the water pitcher, running the Indiana University Student Council. We made a little progress, but the big changes came after we left when our successors said there would be more leftists in office if the university didn’t grant more student rights and improve instruction!

Robin

Meanwhile, Robin and I rented a little house just off campus. A small garden, a pottery wheel. The electric power connections provided the backdrop for this fun portrait. She helped support us by sewing party and prom dresses. (I don’t know – did we have proms in college back then?)

Developing my style

Bloomington, Indiana – January 1967

In a heavy snowstorm I opened a window in the tower near my student government office. I took the picture looking almost straight down. While the print was still wet I showed it to my teaching assistant instructor. “No black. You need a pure black” he said.

Undeterred I dried it. Spotted it carefully. Showed it to Professor Henry Holmes Smith – a personal friend of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. “You need a pure black to key the tonal range” he said.

I showed it to Robin. “Only you’d be out taking pictures in that weather. I like it” she said.

I pinned my print to the review board before class. Tried to hold my ground. My modest print got a lot of discussion. Some support but most said, “You need a pure black to give impact to the full tonal range of the zone system.” Maybe I lost the battle, but I’m still convinced that there are times to break the rules. Robin agreed.

We lived our lives that way – lives of our own creation.

Christmas Card – 1967

I’m not sure I can explain this. Robin and I were walking past the army surplus store in Bloomington. I took this picture of the old surplus bombs with Robin’s reflection in the window. We used this picture for our Christmas card.

It was not well received! Even today, friends ask, “Why did you send that? That’s not Christmas.” But we sent it. I still feel glad we did.

Lexington – a fateful trip

Sometimes the consequences of a minor event can be huge – over 30 years later! As I completed the Student Evaluation of Faculty and served as student government vice-president, my assistantship was doing mathematical models of school bus routing problems. My course work was to be in math and educational research. But I actually spent my time in fine arts photography focused on documentary work. One of the most important collections of documentary photography in the United States is held at the Library of Congress. The Library holds a huge collection of photographs documenting the Great Depression of the 1930’s. These pictures were taken by photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) – they were my heroes. I wanted to study those photographs. I couldn’t get to DC but the University of Kentucky in Lexington had a large collection of prints taken from the original negatives. To study them I had to:

• get letters of introduction so I could get into the University collection and handle the pictures
• prepare a study plan so I could request the pictures I wanted and be given the workspace needed
• get time off my assistantship
• save enough money to make the trip including staying 3 nights in Lexington
• put it all together.

Need I say, Robin was again the task manager and editor!

So off we went, driving to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, spending 3 days and driving back. While I spent hours studying the photograph collection, I also spent hours with Robin photographing the streets of Lexington. Trying to emulate what I saw in the FSA photographs taken by my heroes. These pictures are my immediate results.

(Again, click any image in the gallery. Once the picture is up, you can view each image by clicking (tapping) on the arrow that appears on the right edge. Click through the image set. Move forward and backward. Then you can click on the small [X] in the upper right corner to return to the blog.)

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Doesn’t seem like a life changing event? But …

Over 30 years later, as a professor of Library Science specializing in digital libraries, I applied for a job at the Library of Congress as a digital project coordinator. During my interview, I recounted my trip to Lexington. I reminded them that in the 1960’s, people like me who wanted to see the FSA pictures had to travel to Washington, D.C. Or they had to have the credentials and connections and money and time to travel to a university which held copies of the pictures you wanted to study. So I knew first-hand how important it was to put these pictures online so that anyone could do what I had done without leaving their home. Now my dream of universal, free access was possible. I got the job!

Moving on – joining the Teacher Corps

“What’s next?” In the spring of 1968 Robin would ask as we started to wonder where we would go. The radical movement was tiring us out and we were afraid that the minimal results of our meager passive, non-violence activities would inspire more violent activities. A PhD program and professorship would keep us in academia – and in the radical movement. I also worried – how could you teach in the university bubble without any real-world experience. One day I saw a Teacher Corps campus recruitment program. I gathered the brochures and paperwork and headed home. We had our motto and our mission! Think globally, act locally. The real world. A chance to make a difference in peoples’ lives.

So we headed to East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. We spent 15 months, half day at ETSU, half day student teaching at the Little Milligan Elementary School in one of the most remote, poorest, mountain communities of Tennessee. Everyone else lived in Johnson City and commuted to their assigned schools but Robin and I moved 35 miles out into an old house near our school and commuted back to the university. We had all we needed: tin roof, running water, electricity, wood stove, and a darkroom. We wanted to become part of the family life of our students.

The community was wonderful. My first (and only) hog killing. Coffee with our students in their homes. We watched the moon landing with neighbors (It was too dark for me to get a picture.) We were living our motto.

I’m simply going to summarize our view of the University and elementary school system with this single picture.

Life in a more natural world

As a bonus, as we lived life in the remote mountain community, we became immersed in a more natural world. At first, the silence around us was amazing. Until we began to listen. To hear. The sound of rain on our tin roof. The sound of the insects after dark. Coon dogs. Our students, their families, our new friends introduced us to streams, mountains, flowers, and the wildlife around us.

Under the tutelage of our students, Robin learned to navigate cross-country, to find “trails” next to streams, to stand on mountain tops.

With my cameras always available, I tried my hand at nature photography.

(Again, click any image in the gallery. Once the picture is up, you can view each image by clicking (tapping) on the arrow that appears on the right edge. Click through the image set. Move forward and backward. Then you can click on the small [X] in the upper right corner to return to the blog.)

Christmas card – 1968

Our second Christmas card reflected our new life. Still a bit unusual, but an improvement according to our families.

Next – two reconstructed documentaries