In an an effort to outline a career in photography in my last post (here) I neglected many things, most notably my first teaching position at New England School of Photogtraphy in Boston from 1975-1980. I was hired by Fred Sway who was the director at the time. Fred and I have remained good friends since those days and have done photo trips together and shown together too, most notably at City Hall in Bermuda in the early 80's and last year back at NESOP in the Three Amigos show.

While I was not fishing in For the Record I got this response from Dana  McLaughlin, who was a student of mine at Northeastern:

In the limited time during a few photography classes, you also provided a rare and delicate balance of inspiration and constructive criticism that will last a lifetime for this student. I always will remember the healthy pursuit of perfection while working on prints in the lab. I've enjoyed applying this creative and thoughtful effort to so many other areas in my personal and professional life. So, thank you!

It is a constant surprise to me the effect I had on young students' lives. I remember Dana back then. I believe she was a business major. Dana was small and very sharp, inquisitive, eager to learn and to push at boundaries and challenge norms. Northeastern was filled with students really loving the experience of learning photography and she typified the non art major taking a couple of courses as electives. Much of my job in those days was really difficult: boring, stressful, political, long hours with little reward, endless meetings with no apparent effect,  an adversarial relationship with the upper administration. But walking into a classroom with 25 students who were there because they wanted to learn photography made my job eminently rewarding and fun too. 

So, thank you Dana, but also thank you to so very many students over many years.