My friend Jack Corn died this week.
Though he was a quarter century older than me, we became close friends during our years together at Western Kentucky University.
We were both rookie teachers, trying to navigate this mystical new process of education.
Jack came to the job as a much decorated photojournalist.
I was just a punk.
While Jack served as a full-time teacher (his title was Photojournalist in Residence), he also worked on a bachelor’s degree. He’d started work as a news photographer right after his high school graduation, so now he was tying up loose ends and getting a degree.
So he took my journalism history class one summer session.
What a treat that was. Since he’d had such a long career, he knew some of the characters I talked about in class.
Hodding Carter, for example. He was one of my heroes and the definition of an independent, autonomous journalist.
While talking about Carter, I told the class that I might be guilty of over-romanticising the guy, because he was a white newspaper editor speaking out against segregation in the heart of Klan country. Carter’s office was bombed and his home attacked.
“Oh no, Beell.” (That’s how Jack said my name.) “That’s exactly how he was. You got it right.”
Jack asked me to help him do a book on a 1918 lynching in East Tennessee. One of his uncles was part of the mob trying to kill this young man. Jack’s grandmother went into the street and stop it. She was unable to protect the poor kid, who was murdered by the mob.
I wrote most of the book. Jack was handling the visuals. He finally sent the manuscript to journalism guru John Seigenthaler, one of his old pals. Seigenthaler told me later that he stayed up all night to finish it.
He also sent a copy to another old pal — a guy he worked with on several stories over the years, David Halberstam. Halberstam asked his agent to shop it around but nothing came of it. It’s a shame that story is still waiting to be told.
By the way, when Jack and I met Halberstam for drinks, I asked David to sign my copy of his wonderful book, The Powers That Be. He signed it, “From one of Jack’s collaborators to another.”
That’s some good company. I feel that I am part of a special tribe that got to know and work with this man. He was a great storyteller and a great teacher. He sometimes used draconian methods — if he didn’t like a print one of his students turned in, he might drop it to the floor and grind it into the linoleum.
He was tough. I didn’t have his level of gravitas and so I could never do what Jack did. He pushed people to think and to do their best, most compassionate work. I’m not sure you can teach empathy, but students absorbed Jack’s caring and commitment.
His methods worked spectacularly well.
His students went on to tremendous heights in journalism. Jack was proud of all of them and they were lucky to have him as a teacher. I was a colleague but I often felt more like one of his students. He taught me so much and I became a better teacher because of him.
Below is one of his portraits of coal miners. I may look for a few others to post. Watch this space. To me, Jack’s work has the power and intelligence of the work by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine.
Jack was 96 years old. He was married to Helen Corn for decades. They were beautiful people and their love gave us all something to which we can aspire.
Goodbye, Pal. We’ll miss you.
