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At any moment there are a number of emotions running through a person's mind and body. Some are fun and whimsical and some are deep and meaningful. Big life questions are very revealing to the mixed emotions a person has rushing at any moment of time. I have most often chosen the fun, maybe silly and irreverent, attitudes about approaches to life and different situations. Here are a few answers to some Big Life Changing Questions that communicates who I am and what I am thinking, (at least on the days I answered these questions).
1. Are you happy about where you are in your career? I have been happily retired since the year 2000! I spend a lot of professional and personal time using the skills and networks I established while working, to volunteer for various organizations and ministries. 2. Which of your family members are you closest to? My wife, then my children, then my brother. But I'm pretty close to some of my former students and international friends like they were family.
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I had a heart attack on Friday morning, Oct. 4th, while in New York on vacation. It was also on my sweet wife's birthday!
On my birthday back in April, Donna gifted me with something I've wanted all of my life, a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. We flew into Albany on Tuesday and drove to Cooperstown on Wednesday. The next day on Thursday, we went hiking in the Adirondack mountain trails. I woke up Friday morning in in a very small town at an AirB&B. I was suffering from severe pains in my chest and I knew exactly what was happening. Donna asked if we needed to go to an Emergency Room. I said, "Yes!" Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” – Hebrews 11:1-3
What are some of the spiritual benefits of telling your life stories to your children?
Telling your life stories to your children can have several spiritual benefits, as it can be a means of passing down wisdom, values, and connecting on a deeper level. Here are some of the spiritual benefits:  David Underwood was a man that I came to affectionately call PopPop, even though he was a couple years younger than me. David was a development director at Harding University for the last 25 years. Recently, at the age of 68 he suddenly passed away.
My first memory of David Underwood was in May of 2008 while attending the Pepperdine Bible Lectureships. Pepperdine University in Malibu, California was one of David Underwood's favorite places, (after Harding of course). I was recently asked, “Why do you think HU has failed to fill the advertising professor position? I am mystified by it.” Signed by one of my former colleagues.
The Demise of an Advertising Major I have wondered, worried and lamented over the demise of the advertising program and and not hiring a lead advertising professor since I left in the Summer of 2020. I could have given a couple of short answers but writing this out with my complete (or somewhat complete) thoughts will be very cathartic for me. Please keep in mind that my answers are just that, MY answers. Most of this is based on my opinions and first-hand knowledge and not necessarily inside management's valid decisions, or directives. When I was eleven years old, I got a job distributing the pertinent news and advertising information of the day. Yes, I was a Paper Boy. Remember those? That was also the time when I became so engrossed with watching the evening news on television. I was very curious about the current events and the happenings of the world outside my door and around the world. I watched the network news in the evening when all my friends wanted to watch cartoons or such nonsense.
My first professional career job out of college was as an intern with KATV-Channel 7, an ABC affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas. The previous semester the very first Harding student to intern at KATV was assigned to be in the production department. I was the second Harding student to have an internship at KATV, but was the first to do so in the news room. At the time I had dreams and aspirations of being a news anchor… until I found out that there was a lot of deadlines, and writing, two things I was not very good at! However, I made it known that I was a semi-professional photographer and I could intern under that job description as well.
I was born and raised perhaps in the one of the most integrated groups of racially mixed people in our culture during the early 1950s and 60s - the U. S. military! The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines had no room for racism. I’m not saying there was no racism practiced in any of our military branches by many of the officers, rank and file, but, it’s hard to have a racist attitude towards another human when you are fighting for your life, or you are living in similar, if not, exact conditions together regardless of their skin color or race.
 This is the story of the day I attended the Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Victory Parade,
Friday, November 4, 2016 The temperature in HELL was getting lower by the day. Hello next year! Finally! At last! These sentences and phrases were all the buzz that was going on in my head and out of the mouths of millions of Cubs fans and even Cubs haters all of over the world. The Chicago Cubs, a Major League Baseball team was embarking on their quest to win it all. My favorite baseball team since I was 14 years old won the world series for the first time in 108 years. It was a day I had only hoped would happen someday before I died. Now at the age of 62 the day I had dreamed of, prayed for, lived for and believed in, finally happened.  In a day where customer service is almost non-existent, Katie Sanders, Ticket and Gate Agent for Delta Airlines saved my one-day-family-excursion by getting me to Chicago on short notice when the OTHER airline failed me! In fact, she was so good that I gave her a new nickname. Here’s our story.
“Would you like to meet and help the Gamu family, a young family comprised of a husband and wife, with three children under the age of 9 that is from Sudan?” That was the question presented to my wife Donna and I in December of 2021.
 The world lost a great man yesterday and I lost one of my all-time mentors. Dr. Mike James played a major role in many of my life-changing-turning-points of my existence.
In 1974 I had just arrived at Harding College and was able to secure a scholarship position as the photographer for their yearbook, the Petit Jean. I was probably not qualified to do the job, but I thought I was. I needed the money, and I figured I would learn on the job to do what I needed to keep the scholarship.  On a warm September Saturday morning in 1971, when I was a Senior in High School, my Dad and I walked into a music store (I can’t recall the name of the store), on the north side of downtown Libertyville, Illinois, to trade-in my drum set in order to buy a new guitar. I was conflicted on what I wanted. I was new at learning the guitar and I couldn’t decide whether to buy a steel string acoustical, or a nylon-string classical acoustical guitar. I ended up purchasing the steel string option that the clerk showed me. I NEVER regretted that choice. It was a Martin Guitar, the 000-18 Model. This particular Martin Guitar featured a small box with a slightly smaller neck than most guitars that fit my small hands better than other guitars.
 As a working advertising professional turned professor, I like to say that I started my career in the distribution of news and advertising when I was 11 years old.
ELEVEN years old, you ask? Yes. I was a paper boy and I had two newspaper routes! Remember those? One of the routes was a door-to-door delivery, Sunday only route. One of the duties of that route was to also periodically go door knocking to ask if they wanted to subscribe to the newspaper delivery, as well as collecting for the aforementioned newspaper for the previous month. Today all newspaper subscriptions are paid for in advance.  Today, an email, a social media post, or almost anything on the Internet, can circulate breaking news around the world in a matter of seconds.
I started working in news on a professional level since I was a college intern at an ABC television network affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas, KATV-7. 2-3 days per week I would drive from Searcy to Little Rock to show up to be "trained" in the news business but to also be abused in the pettiness of the personal errands I had to run. I must have done pretty good because before I left college in 1977, I was the first intern ever hired at that same station as a news photographer and my career in media has never looked back. Sometime in early the 1980’s, the 24-hour delivery of news and sports started unfolding in the form of CNN and ESPN.  For several years, before my wife Donna and I had ever heard of Agape Asia, we inadvertently practiced what you could call sponsoring a child. How? We would often reach out to young adults (married or single) at church who were from away from home and family. We would have them in our home for meals and activities. There have been many of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners that we had non-family visitors at our table. They became like our own sons and daughters.
 I call it "My Wall of Fame" with apologies to any other Hall of Fame. To me, this isn't just any Hall of Fame, it's "my" Hall of Fame, er, I mean my WALL of Fame. I do realize I run the risk of failure to include everybody, but I wanted to add a photo of me with every one of my majors that I oversaw (advertising), and many other of the students that I hope to have made a profound impact on their life. I know they have made an impact on my life.
"And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
II Corinthians 3:18 Change is sometimes very hard for me. For a guy who never likes to do something twice the same way -- I am often at odds with myself. On one hand I know what I like, and I know what works. But I get bored… easily, so I change. When I was a 20-year-old young man, young women my age were always on my mind. But they were not my priority in the fall of 1974. Instead, I needed to get off to good start in school, I had a scholarship campus job as the yearbook photographer that absolutely consumed me, and I was tired. I was tired, and the semester had just started!
 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” Genesis 22:13-14
What did you want for Christmas when you were 11 years old? After all these years, I can’t really say I remember exactly what I wanted, but I know what I received was not something I had thought about. I was so surprised to see a gift-wrapped box under the Christmas tree that was much smaller than the thing I wanted. I thought maybe it was a part of something that would lead to a bigger prize in another room or outdoors, because that was sometimes what my parents did. Little did I know the contents in the box was actually the perfect gift for me. Inside the box was a camera. Not just any camera, but a Kodak Instamatic 100, cartridge-loading, flash-cube-popping camera. As I said, I was surprised, but not disappointed. The idea of a camera settled in quickly because of the intriguing possibilities of what I could do with it. I didn’t realize it then, but that gift would change my life! Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. Luke 2:52
When people ask me what “I do?”, I like to tell them “I’m a professional story teller!” I speak. I write. I’m a blogger, photographer, audio-recorder, rinse and repeat. I’ve worked as a broadcast journalist, photojournalist, speech writer, and a copy writer.  It was the summer of 2012. Everybody that loved me, gently but firmly said, “Steve you need to lose some weight!” And they were right. At 5’3” and 217 pounds I WAS overweight! I was endangering my health, and my future. Something had to change. I knew I needed help. I couldn’t do this alone. I had done this before, only to gain my weight back, rather rapidly, and I had tried everything, gimmicks, tricks, with money included, for all of the easy fixes. All to no avail.
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About Steve
Steve Shaner is a professional story teller that delights in traveling to meet new and old friends. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Please also check out Steve's other blog, www.yeyegoestochina.com Blog Contents |
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