Gordon Parks attended the first celebration in his honor at his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, in 2003. I think he loved every minute of it, and we loved every minute of being with him.
Gordon Parks: No Excuses and Gordon Parks: Grit and Grace
Gordon Parks didn’t let his black skin or his lack of education stop him from becoming famous over and over again.
After the No Excuses book was published, I kept writing about Gordon because I think his story fits today as well as it did when he lived it. We don’t have the Great Depression now, but we do have homelessness and joblessness like he faced. With all Gordon’s problems— racism and prejudice, beatings and rejections—he could have chosen to be angry and resentful, much like the civil rights activists Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X he had written about in his Life magazine features. He could have given up, like the DaSilvas in Brazil or the Fontenelles in Harlem, families he profiled for Life. Instead, he ignored limits others wanted to put on him and became successful at whatever he tried, even semi-pro basketball and tennis. He took the high road every time and followed his mother’s words: “If a white boy can do it, you can too.”
This is how I started: After reading about Gordon’s gift of photographs and poems to his home town’s—Fort Scott, Kansas—new health center in 2003 and his long list of accomplishments, I wanted to know about this then-91-year-old Kansan. Why didn’t every boy and girl know his name, and how had he been able to forgive Fort Scott for the way it treated him? I read his three autobiographies and visited folks in Fort Scott who knew him. I learned about his ragged, poverty-ridden childhood, his becoming the first black photographer for Life magazine, a best-selling writer of more than twenty books, maker of ten films, and a music composer.
I sent a letter. “May I interview you by phone or in person in your home in New York City?” I asked. Three days later, he called. “When are you coming?”
What a thrill it was to meet him. So friendly and welcoming. In his comfortably cluttered apartment, I learned how he survived threats, broke through obstacles, and still clung to his Kansas ways of trust and friendliness. He appreciated recognition and awards—including more than fifty honorary doctorates from colleges and universities around the world—but he didn’t need them to live a full life. Becoming well-known was not one of his goals. He wanted others to learn from his courage.
My new biography, Gordon Parks: Grit and Grace, for middle-grade readers tells his life from being born dead to a full life of 93 years.
Tex Winter signs a cowboy hat when he came to visit Kansas State University, where his coaching career began. He is loved by his fans for who he is as well as his sixty-three years of coaching. He changed how basketball is played.
Coach Tex Winter: Triangle Basketball
Coach Tex Winter coached basketball longer than any other coach—more than sixty-one years! His ideas helped the Chicago Bulls win six National NBA Championships and the Los Angeles Lakers win four National NBA Championships.
In colorful scrapbook style, readers learn how Tex Winter directed Michael Jordan’s and Dennis Rodman’s roles with the Chicago Bulls during six NBA championships and coached Kobe Bryant and Shaq O’Neal for three Los Angeles Lakers NBA championships plus one more with Kobe in 2010. Every page has all-color photographs, news clippings, and quotes from Tex and his players.
Tex’s ideas about basketball and teamwork began at age ten when his family pulled together following his father’s death during the Great Depression. Landing fighter planes on carrier ships during World War II helped his ideas about teamwork, too. He was an outstanding basketball player and Olympic-level pole vaulter at both USC and in the Navy.
Tex became Kansas State University’s first full-time assistant basketball coach and soon took the head coach job. He filled several more head coach college positions before joining the Chicago Bulls in 1985. Following their six NBA championships, Tex and head coach Phil Jackson moved to the Los Angeles Lakers for four more championships.
Tex completed sixty-two consecutive season of coaching the world’s best players. He is credited with changing the game of basketball into an organized effort with his triple-post-triangle team method of basketball offense. There were no “stars” on Tex’s seven college teams, his Houston Rockets team, or with the Chicago Bulls or the Los Angeles Lakers. He set up his famous Triangle /Triple Post system where team players depend on each other to form three corners and pass around for the best shot. Tex changed the game permanently and has ten NBA championship rings to show for it.
Unique Partnerships
World War II veterans paired with high school students to tell their war stories. Students made notes, scanned pictures, and keyed-in the stories until we have three fascinating, nice-looking books for sale. A fourth book tells Korean War veteran stories.
Collection Projects
At the time we conceived the idea of gathering World War II stories, we needed to fill a technological gap between stories offered by senior citizens and computer skills needed to create digital volumes. The new Vision_Tek Computer Center in Lindsborg was seeking a way to showcase the new facility and communicate its availability as a community resource. Young people became an obvious choice, and we checked for wiling teachers to take on such a project.
For each project, first in Clay County, Kansas, and now twice in McPherson County, Kansas, middle or high school students joined the senior writers to provide the computer work. What started as a necessity for digital support became the star-studded cornerstone of the projects—the bonds that developed between the writers and the student partnerships.
Students sat across from ones who had lived what they had been exposed to in history courses, and writers responded with awe at the technical skills students brought to the project. “It was awesome,” and “I thought we’d be bored and have to go slow, but it was the exact opposite,” and “I would do it again in a heartbeat” are comments made by students at the end of each project. “The time with my partner was very, very good,” and “I feel like I have a new grandchildren, we got so close,” and “They really were interested in what we had to say,” are comments made by the senior writers. The mutual respect was palpable.
Veteran Stories
Working with veterans was a little scary for the students for our first World War II story collection, knowing that seventy, sometimes eighty years separated them from their veteran-partner’s age. “What if my partner doesn’t like teenagers?”
The veterans were anxious, too. “The teens might talk too fast, and we won’t understand them.”
Soon, the tension disappeared for each of the four projects. The rooms soon became noisy; getting acquainted turned to fun as World War II veterans from McPherson County, Kansas, and Dickinson County, Kansas, paired with school students to recall and preserve four collections of stories about their military service in World War II and the Korean War. Students from the local schools partnered with the veterans to provide the technical support needed.
Both veterans and students soon looked forward to the next week’s meetings. Students wanted to know if their veteran-partners liked the way they were writing the stories. What do they want to change? Did they have pictures to add? Veterans wanted to know if students understood their stories. Did they think they were worth sharing? What details could they add? Respect and good will for each other built. Both veterans and students became proud of what they were accomplishing.
A secret soon surfaced. During the meetings, many veterans were telling students about war experiences they had never told anyone before. Ever. Students were amazed. Veterans felt less burdened.
The First Collection:
Stories of World War II
by Smoky Valley Writers
Twenty World War II veterans, civilians with war-time ties, and family members of veterans met weekly to tell and hone their personal stories into shared memories. Participants served on the war front, supported war efforts on the home front, and provided services either at home or abroad. One of the writers summed up the experience: “History isn’t made up of distant, abstract figures and events that are locked up in dusty books and atlases. History is sitting right next to you in church, your next-door neighbor, or even that crochety man ahead of you in the checkout line. History has gnarled hands and peppermints in its pockets, and occasionally blue hair. By grasping those hands, we discover that history isn’t solely made up of radical figures. It is made up of everyone. Every individual has a part to play. And while we are looking for the next Napoleon, Washington, or Churchill, we may overlook the ordinary men and women who cheered them into existence. And they are slipping away from us faster than we can learn to appreciate them.”
This first collection of stories from McPherson County was published and distributed to libraries, book stories, museums, and gift shops. But the project was far from over. Students and veterans stayed in touch. They went to lunch together, sent each other cards and notes, and attended each other’s important events.
“Preserving the oral history of our nation’s World War II heroes is a labor of love—a truly rewarding experience for both the interviewer and interviewee. Pairing these heroes with Kansas high school students allows these young men and women to glimpse a time in history unlike any other. One by one, these students gain a first-hand education that is unlike anything they will read in history books. The veterans, in turn, have the opportunity to share with the community their remarkable stories, which might have otherwise have gone untold.”
Second Collection
Stories of World War II: Volume II
by Smoky Valley Writers
Twelve stories—some who were adults during the 1940s, others offer a young person’s perspective, and some are children or spouses of those who had direct experience with the War. It’s a unique book of varied remembrances.
Third collection
Stories from the Heartland: World War II Remembered
by The Five Star Writers of Dickinson County, Kansas
Seventeen World War II Veterans—pilots, ski patrols, gunners, infantry, sailors, radio operators, a Native from Poland, a native from Germany, and a Merrill’s Marauder’s spouse met with high school seniors weekly. Veterans told their WW II stories, and their student partners prepared the stories for publication. Archivists from the Eisenhower Presidential Library enriched the stories with details about General Eisenhower. The resulting book adds the amazing history of the “greatest generation.”
Fourth collection
Forgotten No More: Stories of the Korean War
by the Smoky Valley Writers Group
This book represents a sincere effort to remember, not forget, this war experience. The veterans hesitated at first, not sure they wanted to remind themselves of the bloody, dirty, unwanted conflict that ceased without true resolution or closure. The value of remembering won out, and we have this book as a commemoration of their efforts.
Students reflected on their experiences with their veteran partners:
“I will definitely remember the sacrifice my veteran had to make to serve his country. From the physical sacrifice of being shot in the leg to the emotional sacrifice of being separated from his family. That will always stick with me.”
“Without my classmates and me, this probably would be the “Forever Forgotten War.”
“I will remember that sometimes we take our freedom for granted. We are free because of the men who were brave enough to risk their lives for their country. It was not easy for them to leave their families and not know what the next day could bring, but they did it for their country, and they all deserve respect and thanks.”
“Hearing history from those who has experienced it first hand, and more importantly, were willing to share their stories, is rare. Instead of facts, I learned how people felt on a day in history, or a particular detail that stood out but would never be put in a textbook.”
In the end, students said these projects were not like reading a history book about World War II or the Korean War. They say they were about writing their own history books. As important, the veterans’ stories are not lost, but tucked away inside a treasured book for safekeeping.