Dr. John O. West
Author! Author!
Dr. John O. West
(1925 – 2010)
When I become a published writer I will have many people to thank for whom I learned from, was mentored or helped along the way. In John’s words of “whose shoulders” I will stand upon. The first one I’d think of will be my friend, professor, teacher, and published author Dr. John O. West.
I met John in the mid 1990s as I went from a BA of Journalism at UT El Paso into a Masters program. It was not my first choice but when we get time with God to look back over the course of our lives I suspect God’s better plan was to include further education at the graduate seminar table of John West. If you have read the ABOUT PAGE of my web site and/or the RESUME section you will note an early life from the sophomore year of high school in 1975 to 1990 spent in the broadcast media of Radio and Television in El Paso and Odessa/Midland Markets. Reading between the lines is what happened in the late 1980s. This is part of that untold story.
I hit a glass ceiling in 1988 when what seemed to be a repetitive story occurred in the TV Station I worked for at the time went into Bank Receivership. I cannot tell how many stations went through ownership sales, mergers, or defunct as well as through format changes where I and many colleagues found ourselves out of work or pink slipped after a ratings book came out. It was the harsh reality of the media in the 1960s to the 1990s. For that matter its still a harsh reality today. So, after interviewing with KXAS NBC 5 in Fort Worth in 1990 and making the cuts from a dozen to the final two candidates, loosing out to the job but recommended for a similar job interview at their sister station KXAN NBC 36 in Austin, only to meet a similar fate, the common thread between hire and second place was not having a college degree and loosing out to the candidate that did. That and faith God would be with me in the journey sent me back home to El Paso and enrolling as a 31-year-0ld freshman to correct a mistake I made in 1977 not completing a college education.
Now I loved my broadcast career from 1977 to 1990. In some stations and cases I did very well. My best years were on KQIP FM 96.9 in Odessa/Midland from 1980-1986 and subsequently with KTPX NBC 9 in the same market from 1986 to 1987. It was only in early 1988 when the stations owners out of San Francisco defaulted on the note sending half of my colleagues to be pink slipped on a cold day in January and the rest of us to work for the receiver and the changed of management. In the lyrics of the 1971 hit by Don McLean that was ‘the day the music died.’ It was the death of my broadcast career. Oh, I’d limp on for several years at the top country station of the market in afternoon drive but it too went into bankruptcy during the Oil Bust of the basin and an owner with a bad habit of gambling and alcoholism. I landed at another station but this time completely automated by a satellite delivered format and doing part time sales with news, weather and commercial production. Even though it was a 9-5 job in a beautiful bank office tower it was essentially the end of my career coupled with the job interviews in DFW and Austin.
Post the BA of Broadcast Journalism with a minor in Theater Arts in 1994 I interviewed with just one station out of several I applied with in the El Paso market. And magically – well the truth? It was the beginning of the end of Television the same way Radio had slid as a profession by the late 1980s. The media once thrived on experienced professionals with the requirement of college degrees but by the mid 1990s and accelerated into the 2000s Broadcasting did more with computer automation, doing more with fewer people, and in some cases reducing staffing to exploit interns and early career twenty-somethings into fewer and fewer positions paying less and less and without one time gold standard benefits. The rise of HDTV technology combined with conglomerate ownerships of stations housing two or more stations under one roof meant the elimination of jobs and the reduction of staffing. That and the push for gender, alternative lifestyle and racial preferential hiring along with dual language operations requiring staffing to be bi-lingual is how the industry turned away both seasoned professionals who had spent careers in those companies and a closed door filtering process for those like myself who followed all the right rules but in the end were no longer desirable. So, without fully realizing the shift in culture and country I started a Masters Program hoping to gain back an edge in the competition for job and career success.
Had I been listening closer to God at the time and willing to risk more than the dreams I had for management positions in Radio, TV, Corporate Communications, Education, Feature Film, Christian Media and/or Documentary work I might have fared better avoiding bankruptcy (by 2007) and struggling to keep up with bills post 2001. Writers on average I’ve learned go seven or more years of writing and submitting before eventually landing their first book contract. My journey was part time from 1992 to 2011 before I became serious at the pursuit and now three years later I am closer to having a polished manuscript to solicit to my agent of choice and entry publisher of choice. But that part of the story is yet to come. For now its beginning started with a Masters program of Inter-disciplinary Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso and to my great admiration and appreciation of Dr. John. O. West.
John was born in 1925 and passed away at the age of 85 in 2010. I was blessed to sit in his seminars and work with him as a would be writer from 1994 to 2001. John earned his B.A. from Mississippi College, his MA from Texas Tech and PhD from UT Austin. He taught English and Folklore at UT El Paso for 39 years and retired as Professor Emeritus of English in 2002. That same year he was made a fellow of the Texas Folklore Society. His publications include Mexican American Folklore, Cowboy Folk Humor, the Introduction to Riders Across the Centuries, and his most famous work of Jose Cisneros: An Artist’s Journey. Several of his books received BRLA Southwest Book Awards and his ‘Galloping Gourmet’ received a finalist Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. He was inducted into the El Paso Hearld-Post Writers Hall of Fame in 1995. But mostly, John in my time with him was my graduate seminar in Mark Twain, Western Folklore and his love of quoting Edgar Allen Poe.
I wrote a melodrama play in John’s class for one final seminar paper and actually submitted it to the Midland Community Theater Summer Mummers longstanding competition. Though it merited an A from John it never produced a response from MCT but it was a lot of fun to write. My best memory was showing him a first edition of my father’s collection of B.J. Cochran and the story of the ‘Yaqui Gold.’ My father grew up in the NW Texas town of Aspermont in Stonewall County where decades earlier Cochran lived his wild west life and adventures. I wrote a grad paper on Cochran’s tale and John loved the subject and story. When I hit a snag with one of my PhD’s who overcomplicated the writing process of the written thesis accompanying my oral history documentary John popped a gasket. He corrected the PhD only after telling me it really stood for ‘Piled Higher and Deeper,’ as in ‘manure.’ And in May of 2001 after a successful defense by his benevolent chair leading the three professors I earned a Masters.
John also encouraged me as a writer. When struggled with finding my own voice in writing during those years and came by it legitimately not wanting to consciously plagiarize anyone’s style or tone he was quick to correct me in the quote I listed to open this first blog: “We build upon the writers shoulders of those who influence our work.” He gave a long list of those who influenced his writing none the least was Mark Twain. He loved that man and his work. In time, so did I. And I loved John’s writing as well. I am the proud owner of several of his books and think of him often when writing my present series THE STARS AT NIGHT, a 3-book series targeted hopefully for Harlequin LOVE INSPIRED Historical division. The first book in the series HER LEADING MAN is presently being critiqued and fined tuned with the assistance of Joy Avery Melville in Schoolcraft Michigan. I am grateful for her work in helping polish all I’ve learned in the past year of working with her.
With that knowledge you should know from where I came from on the journey to where I hope to be going. The goal is not to just become a published author but to actually at some point earn a living as one. In the mean time the hope is to supplement the income I earn today sadly not in Broadcast Media of any type but as a writer. Like art its the one thing a person can do from a laptop of desktop computer not dependent on an employer, a client or anyone other than the keys and the creativity of the one who writes. I only hope I will find readers willing and savoring the opportunity to read my work. Those results are up to God and pressing past pre to become published.
On the next edition of Author Sitings I will pay tribute to the Christian Fiction shoulders I’m standing upon. Many of them are members of the American Christian Fiction Writers organization.
Till next time,
I’m Steve Myers.
John 15:4-5