I’ve been talking a walk down memory lane the last few days. All the way back to high school.
I’m being inducted into the William Horlick High School Graduates of Distinction Class of 2022 next month. It’s essentially my high school’s Hall of Fame, a very prestigious honor considering some of the people I know who are already Graduates of Distinction, like my friend Gail Lehto Zugger, who nominated both me and Gio Washington-Wright, a fellow inductee. Gio and I grew up across the street from each other on Marquette Drive in Racine, Wisconsin. Both Gail and Gio are acclaimed musicians and teachers. I’m proud to know both of them.
For the induction ceremony program, I have to submit a biography of life during and since high school. Thus the walk down memory lane.
I was on the Horlick Herald staff for three years. Getting on the newspaper staff was not as simple as joining a club. You had to be nominated, apply and be interviewed. I made it through the process to be a staff writer in 1984, then managing editor the next year and editor-in-chief my senior year. The photo at the top of this post is me at work as editor-in-chief. We won a Best Newspaper Award from the Kettle Moraine Press Association in 1986 and I was named Best Writer the same year. I also won a KEMPA Scholarship for $375, which in 1987 was a good bit of money to pay for tuition. Today it might pay for a book or two.
In addition to the newspaper, I played tuba in the Symphonic Band and Orchestra, and the pep band. We didn’t have a marching band but we played fight songs and such during football and basketball games. The homecoming football game was always a highlight of the fall. We played Kenny Rogers’s “Lady” when the homecoming court was presented during halftime.
I gained a bit of notoriety as a self-proclaimed freedom fighter in October 1984 when Principal Walter Stenavich declared a ban on wearing bandanas to school. It was the 80s and bandanas were a fashion statement. Some people thought certain bandana colors indicated your gang affiliation and gang violence was said to be on the rise. Thus, the ban.
Now, I didn’t wear my first bandana until after the ban was declared but as a sophomore and a newly minted member of the newspaper staff who was learning about the First Amendment from Dianne Belland, our amazing teacher, I knew a freedom of speech issue when I saw one. I defied the ban, along with my friends Scott Kister, Audrey Aber, Patty Nitz and others.
When Mr. Stenavich didn’t relent, we took our case to the Racine Unified District School Board. I still have the speech I delivered that ended with the words of John Paul Jones, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
Such hubris and badassery.
This was my first foray into media advocacy, which is the art of working with the media to tell stories that put pressure on decision makers about a policy you want them to support. I didn’t know that at the time, though. I was thrilled that reporters from the Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel and Racine Journal-Times interviewed me. They all published stories the next day. My favorite headline was on the Journal-Times story: “Horlick principal: Yes, we have no bandanas.”
We got editorial support from the paper, and Eugene Dunk, a member of the school board whom I lobbied in my living room, wrote an op-ed in support of our efforts and explained why he voted to overturn the ban. And the Horlick Herald supported us with an editorial. Polaris, our yearbook, printed a spread about our activities in its 1985 edition. Ultimately, the school superintendent left the principal’s decision in place. Ours was the only high school in town to ban bandanas.
Outside of the school newspaper, I got letters to the editor or op/eds published in the Journal-Times on several occasions. I got my first letter to the editor published when I was 14. I wrote about racism and how it needed to stop. The newspaper selected it as one of its “Letters of the Month.” Some members of my extended family weren’t happy about it, though. My great aunt Rose Marie, who in today’s vernacular was racist af, was pissed. She used the phrase “n…r lover” to describe me after that letter appeared.
I put my Freedom Fighter hat back on again when a couple of parents tried to ban Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five from the school library. Similar tactics, similar media coverage. In the end, books that were deemed “controversial” were placed behind the librarian’s desk but could still be checked out of the library if a student requested them. Today, Slaughterhouse-Five likely causes some serious pearl clutching, since schools are banning books like Maus and churches are burning the Harry Potter books.
Today I use my media advocacy and media relations skills almost every day, both for cancer advocacy and for my day job at ORAU. These skills are mutually beneficial. I need to share information with the public about important cancer issues, or to talk about the great work my company does. My friends in the media need help telling good stories.
I cut my teeth doing media relations for St. Mary’s Health System, where someone from the media was onsite almost every day because I pitched a story or because someone famous, like Dionne Warwick, was in the emergency room at 10 p.m. on a Friday night after collapsing onstage during a concert.
As media advocacy specialist, then division director, then regional director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, I worked to get media coverage of patient stories, news conferences, petition drops to lawmaker offices, rallies and more. As an ACS CAN volunteer, if I can create an event I’m always going to invite the media, or ask for time on air to talk about whatever issue of the moment is.
Some of the moments of my career are from media advocacy events, like pulling a wagon filled with stacks of signed petitions in support of smoke-free legislation that we dropped on the desk of each of Alabama’s state senators, a rally in the steps of the Florida capital building, and so many others.
That smoke-free campaign in Alabama helped me gain Accreditation in Public Relations. Although the campaign was not successful, all of the right pieces were there. It was a great campaign, and we couldn’t control how lawmakers ultimately voted. The Montgomery Advertiser called it the second most important piece of unfinished business that session, behind funding the state’s education budget.
Despite all these years of being a public relations practitioner, I still get a rush when members of the media come to cover an event or interview someone (or myself) that I pitched. The competition for time is fierce. There are a lot of things that get attention any given day. So to make it on air or in print is a big dang deal..
After spending most of my life in the storytelling business, I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it. I’m also grateful to all of the reporters, producers, editors, photographers and photojournalists whom I have had the privilege to work with over the years. I look forward to many, many more years of working together.
There are still so many stories to tell.
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