Sharing My Story

Examples of my busyness. In February 1980 which was during
the hostage crisis in Teheran, Iran a special noon prayer group
was formed o pray for the hostages and their release. I was
involved in that group on a frequent basis during that time.
On Feb. 28 and 29 I visited the Human Engineering offices
in Los Angeles with several of my Worldwide Challenge art
team for extensive appitude testing. This was a valuable
experience that I have gone back to over the years.

On March 1 I attended one of my former housemates wedding.
Dean Riffert (a non-CCC housemate from the Hamphire house)
married Mary (?). This was one of the romances that developed
during the course of our living together. On April 26 one of the
CCC photographers I worked with Tom Mills got married to
Karen Murphy. The next Saturday on May 3 Noreen Ketchum
my WWC workmate married Mr. Dave Davis and I also attended
that wedding. My other WWC office mates (Bill Rhodes and
Ann Clayton) had married their fiancees the previous September.
I had a number of lunch dates with single women whom I was
interested in. This was definitely a time of looking for a
prospective mate. Lunch and dinner dates, hikes, trips to
Disneyland were part of the dating routine. While marriage
was something I was interested in the relationships I had
never seemed to point definitely in that direction.

During 1980 a group of CCC artist frequently got together
for drawing at lunch time on Wednesdays. we asked other
staff members to pose (clothed of course) for us. On Tuesday
nights starting on March 4 I started a portrait painting class
given by the local community college. One of the other CCC
artists, Jacque Donecho (and for a time Kathy MacDonald)
attended with me during the course of this class.

On March 15 and 16th I visited Johnny Meitz and his family
near San Diego and go to see him with his hawks (He has
written a book on falconery under the name Johnny Hawk).
Johnny was the artist I took over from as the transparency
designer back in 1972. Johnny and left Campus Crusade at
that time and was doing freelance illustration and design.

While living with Don and Lucille Franklin (Jan-June 1980)
I did yard work and painted one of their bed rooms and had
meals and devotions and prayer times with them. Living with
Don and Lucille was very special after being flooded out
of my Hampshire home.

I developed regular prayer times with another staff member
a writer named Jim Lowe. Jim later left CCC staff and went
back to Lampasas, Texas to run his family'e local newpaper
after his father died.

Amongst those activities there were prayer letters to put
out, church and Sunday School to attend on Sundays,
School Board meetings, Book dicussion groups to got
to (and read the books).

Books I was reading that year ranged from Lenin in Zurich
by Solzhenitsyn, Til We have Faces by C.S. Lewis to
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuckman to Mila 18 by
Leon Uris, to Foundation by Isaac Amioz to Eros Defiled
by John White to Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon
to Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs to
The Impressionists by Denis Thomas to
The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien to the
Battle for you Mind by Tim Lahaye to Star Trek:
The Motion Picture to Sharing Your Faith with a Muslim
and many others. Many of these were read for
the book discussion group.

I was involved with John Paul Stark's congressional
political compaign to oust longtime incumbent
George Brown. Precinct walking was a part of that.
1980 was the year Ronald Reagan run against
Jimmy Carter for president and I was very
interested in the race as were million of
other Americans.

I went home to Washington in September for my
support raising. During that trip my mother and I
took a side trip to Montana to visit my brother
LeRoy and his family. LeRoy at that time was pastoring
a small congregation in Manhattan, Montana called
the Manhattan Bible Church. During thast side trip
we visited Yellowstone National Park. The first time
I'd been there since I was a small child.

Of course I attended the San Diego Comic Con (July 31-Aug 3).

However by the 1979 and 1980 I sensed a need for a change.
During this time I had sent out resumes and even had some
job interviews that never went anywhere. On January 13, 1979
I wrote this as "Possibility Thinking" for the next ten years
1979-1989. It said "By 1990 to own and manage a company
that publishes and distributes Christian comic books. 1979-
Leave Campus Crusade. Work as a penciler for a comic book
company to gain credibility before Jan. 1, 1982. Work as a
pencil artist for two years - to learn the ropes 1982-1984.
Later on find financial support for the company. Work on
comics as part time--Have another job in commerical art
for full time. 1982-1987- Look for Christian editors, artists,
letterers, printers. Talk to comics people about Christ.
Problems: Comics industry may collapse in the early 1980s.
Find new format."

How do this actually work out in the years ahead? I actually
left Campus Crusade in July 1982 (not 1979). I never seriously
pursued the comic book penciling option. Here is another
report I wrote on May 16, 1979 ten days before my 31th birthday.
"Have been getting input on my career goals and aspirations
as far as going into comics as an artist is concerned. Most of
the input is negative but very realistic.
"Yesterday I received The Comics Reader #168 that contained
an interesting article by Mike Tiefenbacher in it. He describes
his attempt to break into the comics industry.
"His comments seem to be very much like my own efforts to
do comics. His main thrusts are these: (1) To go into comics
you have to live in New York City for at least some time. He
states that New York--"a very crowded, very alien environment
that I was glad to exit as soon as possible." (2) He states that
after a visit to the DC offices he found them to be "a closed shop."
(3) His greatest argument came from a letter by Dan Atkins, a
inker for DC and Marvel. Atkins stated he in 1975 did 217 pages
of new art and his gross pay was $4,575.50 and after expenses
it was $1.875.00. In 1976 he did 178 pages (at a higher page rate)
for a gross of $4850 and a net income of $2010. Inkers are not
paid as much as pencilers but still the pay is not that great. (4)
He sums up "in order to make living wages these days in the
comic book field, one has to be very very fast. Quality, beyond
competency, doesn't enter into it."
"This leads me to the conclusion that I should not try to enter
the comic book field as a full time artist."

As I entered into the 1980s thoughts of working for comics full
time pretty much died. However I did get a get a full-time job
in 1982 as a commerical artist (art director) with the Narramore
Christian Foundation that took me through the 1980s and 1990s.
From 1987 to 1991 I formed a Christian Comics company with
Ralph Miley and Charles Whitley called Valiant Comics and we
produced several issues of Valiant Efforts.

The comic book industry did not collapse in the early 1980s
but it did begin to change from its traditional distribution
centers —general stores, super markets, and drug stores to
comics specialty shops.

During the late 1970s and 1980s while I didn't keep
a daily journal I did keep a detailed weekly and
monthly schedule. Occasionally I'd write out my
thoughts concerning personal events or thoughts
on the future. These schedules have survived the
years and several moves. As I look back on these
schedules they were filled with numerous activities.
I was becoming somewhat unsettled about my work
with Campus Crusade. While I had no problems
with the organization I felt that I had done about as
much with Crusade as I could without a radical
re-orientation of career objectives (and conversely
Crusade had done about as much for me as it would -
or at least that was my perception). The basic option
was to leave headquarters and accept a field ministry
assignment such as being on a college/university
campus team or an international assignment.

Many of my co-workers were dissatisfied with being at
headquarters and wanted to be on the field where they
perceived they could have more direct people-to-people
ministry. They felt that being at headquarters was a second
rate assignment and were anxiety to move on. Campus Crusade
put a great emphasis on having a "submissive spirit" and following
the decisions of those in authority (This did not make Campus a
dyfunctional or cultic organization as most secular businesses
require a level of cooperation and availability from their employees).
Issues such as readiness for field assignments and the wider needs
of the organization played into these personnel decisions. However,
that was not my inclination as I enjoyed being at headquarters
doing art and design work. Increasingly during this time a sense
that the reasons I had jointed CCC staff back in 1971 were
completed —especially for me.

Dr. Bill Bright was very big on setting audacious and humanly
impossible target goals. One of his favorite sayings was, "Small
goals don't inflame the hearts of men." When I jointed CCC staff
in 1971 the goal was to see the Great Commission fulfilled in the
United States by 1976 and the world by 1980. Massive projects
like Explo 72, Explo '74 (in Seoul, South Korea), Here's Life America
and the Jesus Film Project were all launched with the idea of seeing
the Great Commission fulfilled within this generation (the generation
of the 1970s is how I interpreted it). As mentioned earlier this made
Campus Crusade with its very conservative button down image a
revolutionary organization. There was a sense of urgency to get
the gospel out. While even then I realized that there were many
ethnic/people groups that didn't ever have a written language or
a Christian church the great goals CCC had were very exciting for
young people such as myself to be involved in.

Returning to my oncoming Autobio.

Much of the next two years (1980-82) was centered
on designing the Athletes in Action magazine. This
was a dream job and the culmination of my previous
years of working on the Worldwide Challenge art team.
The AIA magazine was designed outside the organization
by a Christian designer. The decision was to bring it in
house and I applied for the position of art director. Since
AIA was a quarterly magazine I was able to solo design
and paste it up as well. Those were a good two years.

I had a good time working with same of the same folks
I did with WWC. Photographers like Tom Mills, Greg
Schneider, Phil DeJong and writers like Bill Horlacher,
Ken Sidey (nephew of well-known Time Magazine writer,
Hugh Sidey), Chuck MacDonald and others. John Carvalho
was the editor of the magazine. He was a young, bright, very
energetic sports fan and a very good writer and editor. My
work with John had mostly to do with him handing me the
article gallies and article page count and I'd come up with
the layout and design. He and I were involved in photo
section and photo shots also.

Perhaps my best issue was my last one (Summer 1982) where
the cover had a crowd shot of media people mobbing a "pro" athlete
in his home much to the chagrin of his wife. My dear friend Don
Franklin was in this photo and it as a hard-bitten sports commentator.