The Way I See It: The spark – Sometimes a simple presentation can launch a career
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I've always been fascinated by the paths that people take in life caused by what seemed like minor events at the time.
This coming week, Marietta Elementary School will mark 100 years since it first welcomed students on Sept. 7, 1926, as the "new" Marietta High School.
If you grew up in Marietta in the last century and attended public school, you at some point walked the halls of Marietta High School/Marietta Junior High School/Marietta Middle School/Marietta Elementary School. You get the point; the entire city at some point has passed through the building on the hill in the last 100 years.
That is a lot of students, a lot of people figuring out what they want to do when they grow up. A lot of choices being made because of what they saw, heard, or read while attending classes.
I would be over simplifying things if I said that this was true for everyone. But for me, it was. I can track everything that I have done professionally back to a class, a day, in that school in the early 1970s.
I am likely not alone. The building served as the high school until the current one replaced it in 1968, Meaning that everyone that attended it as a high school are either now retired, or are at least the age that they could be. Those students, and the junior high school and middle school students that would later take over the building likely were at least somewhat influenced by something that happened there.
For me it was a series of presentations in a science class taught by a young teacher named Miss Keck. Each student had to come up with a presentation for the class that dealt with science. I believe mine was a lame attempt at explaining water quality. Classmate Dave Wesel's presentation was more interesting. Dave was a young photographer at the time, and he had John Corpening, owner of The Photo Center on Putnam Street, come to the class as a guest speaker. For some reason I latched onto it and started what would become a lifelong obsession.
The idea that you could take photos and process the film and make prints yourself was intriguing to me then.
Soon I bought a used Minolta, a purchase that my own dad thought I would never profit from. The next year I would join the yearbook staff at the high school and become the nerdy kid with the camera.
In hindsight, I was not a very good photographer at the time. Fortunately, you get better by taking more photos and the yearbook staff allowed me to practice my skills without going broke buying supplies.
By my junior year I thought I was good enough to work at The Marietta Times - I was not - but I knew their high school part-timer was going off to college, so I applied. To my shock, they hired me.
The staff of The Times encouraged me to attend Ohio University. The journalism school there was nationally ranked, and much of the staff had attended the school.
Athens is not that far away, so it allowed me to work the weekends covering sports and weekend events for most of my time there. It was on my last day of college that I walked in to cover the NCAA College World Series when advertising representative Wanda Miller dragged me from the newsroom to advertising to meet the "new girl" Lori Klinger.
We have been married for 35 years.
I've often asked myself, if it had not been for a guest speaker in a classroom a half century ago what path would things have taken.
Classrooms are bridges between childhood and the rest of your life; they are meant to spark interest in something that you may not have been aware of.
The imposing school on the hill has served as such a bridge for a century, during which it has likely set thousands of Marietta residents down a pathway that became their life.
Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times and The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com.