Blog Posts by Susan Egner
Inspirations, thoughts by Minnesota author and flight attendant
I love march. It’s still wintery but there are those brief moments of spring every so often. People are experiencing spring fever, too. I can tell by the shorts and sandals coming onboard our flights.
I think our everyday lives provide plenty of material to be woven into our writing at a later date. Some of my memories may be a little different since I was the daughter of a photojournalist who brought home all kinds of stories, which he delighted in telling, usually at our dinner table.
In the late 1950s, I was still an elementary school student when my father received an assignment to cover President Dwight Eisenhower’s review of the Mayport Carrier Basin located at the mouth of the St. Johns River near Jacksonville, FL. The president’s visit would not have been complete without a visit aboard the USS Saratoga, pride of America’s carrier fleet at the height of the Cold War. Of course all the naval officers and enlisted men were on deck in their full dress uniforms, and top political and civic leaders were present for the occasion in abundance. Rocco Morabito, another photographer also employed by The Florida Times Union in Jacksonville covered this event with my father.
This was in the day of the Graphlex camera with its popping flashbulbs. My father was standing on one side of the president’s path and Morabito was opposite him. That’s when it happened. One of my father’s flashbulbs exploded. Secret Service agents quickly grabbed my father and escorted him from the event, erroneously thinking he had attempted to assassinate the president.
As I understand it, the picture my father took showed Ike standing tall while his Secret Service agents apparently ducked. Well, he had served as Supreme Commander of all Allied forces in Europe—one of the most powerful generals in world history. What would you expect?
Though I don’t have the picture my father took (family legend has it that it was confiscated by Secret Service; another version is that was sold to Life magazine), I do have this picture taken by Morabito showing my father just before the flashbulb exploded.
Needless to say, my dad was delighted by the entire event. He had a great sense of humor as well as a great respect for Ike as a historical military leader and President of the United States. In later years, I would hear the stories and see corresponding pictures of my father with President Ford, Johnny Carson, Paul Harvey, Lee Trevino, Elvis Presley, George Hamilton, Jack Nicholas, and Anwar Sadat, just to name a few. In fact, I’m in one or two of those pictures myself.
If you are a writer, possibly one of the richest sources of material at your disposal can be found in your own family’s stories.
The best thing about publishing an ebook is the response from former high school classmates. It’s been unbelievable. Some people I knew well; but others, I didn’t really know at all and now we’re becoming friends. Social media is an amazing tool. For all the complaints about people staring at cell phones, etc., there is another side to that coin. I think of all the people I lost touch with after graduation that are now coming back into my life. Thank you all for responding to my books.
Most readers associate me with my eBook mystery and romance novels; but as I mentioned in an earlier blog (September 24), my first publishing experience was in the traditional printed medium with my “Has Anyone Seen Woodfin?” books and life-size characters. On October 17, I was privileged to visit the classroom of nationally recognized Speech-Language Pathologist, Social Skill Teacher and ASD Staff Trainer Jill Kuzma who uses my Woodfin stories with her students. As Jill tells it, “one of my own precocious little 1st grade students asked where the author lived. Of course, I turned to the back flap of the book cover to find out. Well, you can only imagine my excitement to learn that Susan Egner lived less than 5 miles from my school!! It took me all of about 8 seconds to hop on my email to contact her! Susan Egner was so gracious and excited to come meet my students the following week and shared a fabulous visit with my special group of kids – complete with Woodfin costumes, an interactive program, and most importantly – she fostered the excitement my students had about meeting a “real” author and reinforcing the message to “be your true self.”
You can read the rest of the story on Jill’s blog under the caption: Meet Woodfin!!! A children’s book to promote social self-confidence and celebrate individuality… Jill continues, “These books are a wonderful addition to any literary library – they can be used to support social/emotional skills as I do in my work, but there are also solid character and setting elements, with a clear story structure to use as an anchor text to teach literacy skills. Check out the Woodfin website at: http://www.woodfin.cc/books.htm “
I encourage my readers to read more on Jill’s Blog at http://jillkuzma.wordpress.com and to “Like” her on Facebook at this link: https://www.facebook.com/kuzmaslp