Online Portfolio: April 2009

Monday, April 13, 2009

Front-Page Refer

I designed this refer to the all-county team for the front page.

Living History Series | Garnette Smith Turns Into World Traveler

By Leroy Bridges
Sports Editor
Just before midnight 65 years ago, Garnette Smith thought his life was about to get cut short.
Aboard a U.S. Naval ship in the middle of the English Channel, Smith was prepping for a four-hour watch duty. Then the ship was rocked by what Smith thought was a mine.
“I thought that was my last day,” Smith said.
Masked in complete darkness, Smith’s ship was nearly split in half by another vessel. The outcome was much less severe than first thought and it put Smith on land as D-Day approached in the summer of 1944.
“We were in dry dock for a big share of the big invasion,” Smith said.
Smith – now 91 years-old and living in Delphi – was in year number two at the time after joining the Navy in 1942. The lure of $50 a month pushed Smith into the service and at the time he thought it was going to be a one-year stint. Like many others, he was wrong.
“Everybody else was going at the time so I thought ‘I might as well go,’” Smith said. “It lasted a lot longer than I first thought but it didn’t bother me. It was a good experience.”
Waiting for him after his time in the Navy was Marilyn Holloway. The wedding plans were set and they were tying the knot. It was the classic high school sweethearts scenario from when he was a senior and she was a freshman.
“I fell in love with her and I just knew it,” Smith said.
With his service time behind him and now married, Smith was still searching for the right job. He had spent time at Alcoa before the service and ended up there again once returning but he didn’t like it. He knew there was something better.
“That’s part of the reason I went to the service because I figured it was going to get me anyway,” Smith said about working at Alcoa. “I just didn’t like the factory.”
The pay pushed Smith to keep the job but he found a long-term solution at the Delphi REMC using his business degree. For 22 years, Smith was the office manager.
“I finally used some of my bookkeeping skills,” Smith said. “I was always pretty good with figures so it was a good fit.”
With a steady job and some land that he and his wife acquired from her family, Smith took some inspiration from a golfing magazine to build a par-3 golf course. There weren’t many courses around, so Smith made it happen and opened the Hollow Acres golf course in 1960.
“We couldn’t figure out what to put down there on the corner,” Smith said. “I looked into it and built it. It did put me in some debt, though.”
Financial backing from both families helped Smith early on and he has no doubt that the investment paid off.
“I made a living on it,” Smith said of the Hollow Acres golf course.
The course put him to work during the days of his owernship. Smith left the REMC in 1970 and worked full time at the course for 16 years doing it all. He cut the grass, managed the money and fixed the problems.
“I was pretty hardworking until we sold it,” Smith said. “Anything and everything, I did. I did enjoy those years. I met a lot of people.”
His kids – Jeff Smith and Suzie Vogel – worked hard every summer at the course. Garnette said Jeff enjoyed running the place when dad wasn’t around but Suzie never enjoyed it.
“We had a good system,” Smith said. “It worked out pretty good.”
During Smith’s childhood, he never knew he was going to see as much of the world as he has. After graduating from Delphi High School in the late ’30s, Smith became a world traveler through the service and on his dime.
“I never really thought about traveling,” Smith said. “I was just trying to get a job for a while.”
He has spent time all across the U.S., in Europe and Africa. But he’ll never forget fulfilling a lifetime dream of travelling to Alaska. In 1987 when the course was sold, him and Marilyn loaded up a newly-purchased motor home and headed north for eight weeks.
“Every where you look is like a picture postcard,” Smith said. “We should have spent another month up there.”

Published in the Herald Journal in April 2009.

Manahan Earns Player of the Year Honors

By Leroy Bridges
Sports Editor
The boot on Emileah Manahan’s recently fractured foot says it all.
It’s bulky frame is protecting a stress fracture that was a result of too much activity. It’s not shiny and she probably won’t save it, but it’s her trophy of sorts. It represents her domination of the White County athletic landscape during her four-year high school career.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this big,” Manahan admitted about her success in athletics. “It turned out to be my life.”
Originally, the 2009 White County Player of the Year just wanted to make Twin Lakes’ varsity team. And before that, her parents weren’t even sure if she would ever compete in a sport. That’s because Manahan was all about civic plays and crafts.
“She was not athletic at all,” her mom, Susan, said. “She just wasn’t in to sports at all.”
All that changed the summer before seventh grade. That’s when Emileah joined a traveling team with some of the area’s best players her age. At the time, practices were held in Lafayette, so the then timid Manahan spent a lot of time in the car sobbing on her way to and from the gym.
“I would cry because of fear on the way there and I would cry because I got in trouble on the way back,” Manahan said. “(The rides) seemed like they took forever.”
Despite the tears, Manahan wanted to continue playing and it paid off. That seventh grade traveling team competed against high school varsity teams and would win by double digits. The team’s success and Manahan’s production pushed her to new heights.
“She really cut her teeth that summer,” Susan said. “It gave her so much confidence and then she realized she could compete with the best of them. That opened up this whole new world that she hadn’t seen before.”
Couple the confidence with her No. 1 fan – her father, who played Division I college basketball – having a passion to help his daughter improve and Emileah’s athletic ability was in full bloom.
“It’s great because he has the answer to every question I have,” Emileah said of her dad, Pat. “There have been nights after the crying that we’re going out to the court at my house and making me practice for hours out there.
“He was always trying to make my game better even though I didn’t always want to get better. He made me get better and now I want to make myself better.”
That drive made Emileah’s presence on the basketball court bigger than ever this season. She was the cornerstone of an 18-4 Twin Lakes team on her way to averaging a double-double with 14.7 points and 11.2 rebounds a game. Both of those stats were easily the best in the county. Oh, by the way, she shot a county-best 47 percent from the field.
“She’s a very talented, athletic girl,” Twin Lakes coach Brad Bowsman said of Manahan. “She’s worked hard. I’m very proud of her. We knew that she was someone special and was going to be an integral part of the program.”
During her four years on varsity at Twin Lakes, the Indians won 68 games, she scored more than 1,000 points and captured the career rebounding record. How’s that for someone who’s going to Illinois State on a volleyball scholarship?
“It’s a mix of emotions,” Emileah said about graduating high school and moving on to play collegiate volleyball. “I’m excited because it’s a new level of play and a new step in my life but I’m nervous because it’s all new people and a whole new level.
“It’s going to be hard and it’s going to take up a lot of my time.”
She should be ready because it sounds a little bit like those car rides back-and-forth to Lafayette.

Published in the Herald Journal in April of 2009.

2009 Girl's All-White County Basketball

Here's the spread I designed for the 2009 Girl's Basketball All-White County team. I compiled all the information and wrote the story on the player of the year, Emileah Manahan.