By Jack Odle, 1996 AAEA Past President, Progressive Farmer
Ok, I know. You think this headline is some kind of self-depreciating, over humbling disguise designed to garner sympathy and likability toward me. Well, you’re pretty close to being right. Still, my time as an AAEA member, a board member, president-elect, president and the best title anyone can have “immediate past president” is pretty well summed up by this headline. During my two years at Drovers Journal and 40 years at Progressive Farmer, I never won an AAEA photo or design award. I did win a couple writing awards, but that was an anomaly or maybe the judges marked their cards wrong.
My first experience with AAEA was the dreaded photo journalism school at the University of Missouri. Since I was a pretty dreadful photographer, the powers that be at Progressive Farmer thought that sending me to this combination “photo boot camp and torture chamber” would turn me into another Jim Patrico, Joe Link or Vann Cleveland. Oh, how foolish they were. After the first day of shooting, the instructors looked at my photos, called them snapshots and humiliated me in front of the rest of the students. I dropped to the floor crying, calling for my mama. Just ask Karen McMahon or Jim Phillips. They were there. They saw it.
Even with all that photo schooling, I never won an AAEA photo award. I did take an award-winning photo once, but our photo editor at Progressive Farmer shot the same scene and sent it into the awards program and won a first place in the livestock category, while I was still waiting to get my film developed.
While on the AAEA board we discussed whether to shut down the InfoExpo. We weren’t getting enough sponsors and it was costing us money. I casually mentioned that any idiot could get more sponsors so, they put me in charge of the InfoExpo saying we need at least 28 sponsors to make this thing work. I was told I could pick my committee. Some great folks stepped up and we, mostly they, got 31 sponsors and the InfoExpo hasn’t looked back since. Of course, I was given and accepted most of the credit.
As president for the 1996-1997 term things went pretty well, I thought. Of course, I was lucky because Gregg Hillyer was the 1997-1998 president and he cleaned up all my messes. Not only should you surround yourself with talent, but you should be followed by talent.
Even though AAEA didn’t get that much out of me, I got a lot out of AAEA. I was surrounded by some extremely talented writers, photographer and designers. In fact, I worked directly with 16 of the AAEA Writers of the Year award winners, 7 of the photographers of the year and 1 of the designers of the year. I was as proud of their accomplishments as if they had been my own. Of course, they weren’t, but then you all know that. I also was honored with AAEA’s Lifetime Achievement Award either because of a death of a candidate or the committee was stacked with folks that owed me money.
Yet, most importantly AAEA gave me friendships that still last today. Friendships that have helped me through tough times. Friendships that happened despite working for different and competitive media companies. Since I don’t seem to be that talented, I’ve always taken to heart a quote by another person, also seemingly with little talent our 30th president, Calvin Coolidge. He said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” There you go.