Travel Journalist

My life began in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Clarkesville, Georgia. Mama and daddy, Juette and Kimsey, taught me how to plow a mule, work a sewing machine and shell butter beans until my fingers turned green. I spent every Sunday at Bethlehem Baptist Church. I rode down the country roads propped on the tailgate of my daddy's pea-green Chevy pickup holding onto our mule Besse's rope, watching over her as she kept pace with daddy on our way to the garden. I chased fireflies on warm June evenings and made my own lamp by shoving those luminaries into a mason jar only to release them when mama called. I would wake each morning to the hiccuping sounds of revival preachers over the airwaves of W-CON in Cornelia which still bellows loudly on my Athens dial. I would rock away the day's worries in my front porch rocker moving in rhythm with mama and daddy on either side. I'd cuddle Dopey, my mutt of many colors, each night for he was my best friend - ever.

Award Winning Travel Photographer

My life began what might as well have been a zillion miles away, in Flemington, New Jersey. Parents, Veta and Neil, taught me how to shovel over a foot of snow without my five layers of clothing slowing him down. I watched dad walk, with lunch box and coffee thermos in hand, to his daily job at the downtown hardware store. Sometimes in the summer, I would join father, shadowing him the entire way. When I wasn't with him, me and my friends were blowing up army men with firecrackers, making rafts, swimming and riding bikes - the cool ones with banana seats, monkey handle bars and tony-the-tiger grips - as far as the daylight would allow. I would catch the school bus with the neighborhood kids on New Jersey's lesser known Pennsylvania Avenue until I was the last one remaining. Soon, I didn't have to catch the bus, but simply walk across my backyard and I was at the high school. On Sunday, I sat beside my parents at St. Magdalene's, and afterwards, we would make the routine Sunday afternoon drive to find lunch that always included pie.