I spent the last few days down in Sanpete county and made a vacation out of a photo shoot. It is nice having connections all over because that virtually all our vacations revolve around a photo shoot. My good friends Ted and Michelle live in Mt. Pleasant on 10 beautiful acres and we stayed with them while I went down to Manti and spent some time with two of Utah's greatest basketball coaches of all time, Wilbur Braithwaite and LaDell Andersen. I have followed LaDell for years because his son Clint and his wife set my parents up. Clint and Janet are some of my favorite people. I worked for Clint doing concrete for a few summers and he is a large reason why I run my business the way I do. Well anyway they are a basketball family and my dad who played basketball up at USU raised me telling stories of Wayne Estes and I always loved to hear LaDell tell stories of how he coached Estes.
Last year we were able to get some footage of LaDell telling that story among others. I have to lay the foundation of how Wilbur comes in to play. Bob who is another son of LaDell helped me on the footage with his dad and it turns out we have a similar interest which is a desire to tell the story of some incredible people so that others might benefit. Bob approached me with the idea of doing some photography of Wilbur and I jumped on the opportunity. As it turns out Wilbur and LaDell are old teammates up at USU. Wilbur came back from World War 2 after having been hit with shrapnel and still played. To this day he lives with the shrapnel in his body. He went on to coach basketball and tennis at Manti High School. He coached basketball for 37 years and tennis for 52 years. He gave his time voluntarily almost every summer to teach tennis. He has won numerous national awards including the Award of Merit which he shares with others like Gerald Ford. The awards are many for these two coaches but I like them because both of them share a common quality. They make you feel like you are the most important person in the world. When I met LaDell some 15 years ago we stayed at his house and he put his arm around me and couldn't wait to show me his collection of classic movies. I have never forgotten how a man who has coached some of the greatest players in basketball and seen so much put his arm around me and made me feel like I was somebody. Small but significant. Wilbur possesses this same gift. I drove him to a location for a photo shoot and immediately he began with questions. He was very perceptive and interested. He asked me why I would be willing to drive clear down to Manti to take pictures of an old man. I responded that I need my children to have genuine role models and if the media isn't going to seek them out I will. With all the false role models we have I need my kids to have real ones. He responded by saying, "There is always a reason behind what people do." That is my reason.
I have barely scratched the surface on these two but I thought it was incredible that I was able to get them both in a photo together. To me it was a classic moment and I hope the beginning of taking pictures of many more incredible people
More to come...
