I’ve shot photos of news, features and personal use for more than 60 years, starting starting at age 11 with a nighttime shot of a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in Prince Edward County.

The Klan in Prince Edward had racist members from the county government, including the school board that closed the public schools and the board of supervisors who approved a all-white public school that left minorities without a source of public education for decades.

The photo ran in the Richmond News Leader and I decided that being a newspaper reporter and photographer would be my chosen profession. When our family left Prince Edward and moved to a family farm near Willis in Floyd County, Pete Hallman of The Floyd Press reviewed my clip files of photos and stories and hired me in 1962 to a full-time job while I was student at the then-new Floyd County High School, where I was also the school’s photographer.

As a student, I drove my 1957 Ford to Washington to see Martin Luther King at what became his hallmark “I have a dream” speech.

After graduation in 1965, with Hallman’s help, The Roanoke Times hired me as a full-time staff member at age 17. One of my early assignments was covering a meeting of the Klan in Franklin County. I also covered protests in Roanoke after Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis and then traveled on my own to cover the activities there.

Covering racial issues in Roanoke was part of my job. A decision of the paper to allow photos of Black brides brought too many nasty letters. The paper did not stop the change. I was also allowed to write columns, including one about a high school girl who had an illegal abortion. I had to fight to get it published, but it later won a Virginia Press Association. Another column about street racing won another VPA award.

My employment at the Times depended on completing my education at the Roanoke Center at the University of Virginia, but I foolishly delayed doing so and tried to hide that delay and I was told to leave when it was discovered. The paper had every right to do so and it gave me a lesson I deserved.

Fortunately, it took one day to find a new job and, in 1969 , I and joined the staff at the Alton Evening Telegraph in the St. Louis metro area. Interestingly, Alton was the home town of James Earl Ray, convicted of killing Dr. King, although he and doubts about his role remained after he died in prison. I found his family home, identified as his birthplace, was later occupied by a black family, bit was later destroyed in a suspected arson.

Alton was, and still is, a fascinating historical town, one where a monument to freedom of the press honors Elijah Lovejoy, a newspaper publisher killed when racists turned his paper’s office building and dumped a piece of the printing press into the Mississippi River and killed him in 1837.

I spent 12 years with the paper, had a column that tackled tough issues like racism, drugs, corruption and more. It won some awards from the Illinois Associated Press.

I shot a lot of news and feature photos at The Telegraph, including many of the popular music acts at The Mississippi River Festival at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, just a short hop from Missouri.

Had many opportunities to interview the artists after their shows, including Kris Kristofferson, who asked where we could go for a drink and I took him to the local bar in Edwardsville.

Also met wife Amy when she was cast as the heroine in a charity melodrama at the Alton Little Theater and I was asked to play the villain. Amy had worked as the resident heroine on the Goldenrod Showboat on the St. Louis Riverfront and the theater always had a professional actor to anchor the show. By the time the show’s run was over, we were a couple and got married in 1979.

Walt Sharp, a fellow reporter at The Telegraph and the editor after I left, noted in an article about the show that our marriage was probably the first time a villain ever got the heroine in a melodrama.

In 1981, we left Alton drove a rented truck packed with our belongings to the National Capital Region in Washington, DC, where I began a sabbatical with Congress as press secretary to then Rep.Paul Findley of Illinois. What I thought would be a two or three year break from journalism to learn more about how government worked turned into seven years. I met and worked the longest with Rep. Manual Lujan of New Mexico, first as his chief of staff and later as his special assistant to the ranking member of the House Science and Technology Committee. We traveled a lot together, investigated the crash of a space shuttle and other events.

Then I spent five years as Vice President to The National Association of Realtors, where I supervised what was then the country’s largest political action committee and ran an Independent Expenditures Program that ran successful shadow campaigns for members of Congress.

I sometimes took free lance journalism jobs, finally walked away from political activity and accepted a contract combat photographer’s job for AFP, the French wire service. I spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Somalia, Haiti and back in Washington when 9/11 attacks hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I also shot photos for The Washington Post, The New York Times and magazines like National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and others. In 2003, after returning from a combat assignment, I was offered an “embed” spot on the planned invasion of Iraq (again) but Amy asked me not to go, saying “I have a bad feeling about this one,” she said. I had learned long ago to listen to her “bad feelings.” I declined the assignment and a reporter I knew took the spot. He died when the Humvee he was riding in hit a IED.

I planned to retire and returned to Floyd County, in large part to help my mother cope with failing health. I thought I might put my photographic gear away, but Wanda Combs, then editor of The Floyd Press, asked me to photograph some of the high school sporting events and then also cover Circuit Court and Board of Supervisors.

I also also covered 10 years of events at FloydFest.

These memories came back today while I was sorting through files of many of the photos over the years. Some them are included in this article.