This is the one
Many years ago my dear friend Katy Kelly lost her brother Michael, one of the truly great writers of our time, in Iraq. Michael Kelly, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, was killed when the humvee he was riding in was ambushed near the Baghdad airport. His death remains a terrible loss, especially if you've ever have the pleasure of reading his posthumous collection of columns, Things Worth Fighting For. (Like many, my favorite remains his his wicked profile of "Farmer Al" Gore, in which the former veep's childhood memories of growing up in Carthage, Tennessee come head to head with the realities of his other childhood-- the one spent living in the penthouse of a posh Washington hotel. It will make you pee in your pants.)
I knew Michael, though mainly through Katy, and had the pleasure of photographing him holding his young son Tom on the front porch of his northwest Washington home. Shortly after his death, while driving home from my Old Town studio, I had the crazy idea of doing a charity benefit, to raise money for the college funds of young Tom and Jack. I remember writing in my mass email that I didn't know anything about raising money but I knew a lot about taking portraits. A few weeks later, with the help of some good friends, we spent ten hours in my little studio shooting portraits on a vintage 4 x 5 camera. By the end of that one day we had collected $14,000 in donations. And I learned a valuable lesson of fundraising: everyone wants to help but someone's gotta get the ball rolling.
We did the Photo Marathon, as we dubbed it, for two more years, with a hiatus after Katrina, sensing people were being pulled in too many charitable directions. I've been looking for an opportunity to rekindle Photo Marathon, knowing that one day a reason would simply appear.
Well, after reading today's Washington Post I am pleased, though saddended, to report that we're back in business. Today's front page featured a truly touching story about Army Reserve Capt. Brian S. Freeman, of Temecula, California. From all accounts, Capt. Freeman was a remarkable human being--a West Point grad who served his country, an avid and accomplished bobsledder, a husband, and father to two small children, Gunnar, 2, and Ingrid, 1. But the most amazing thing about Capt. Freeman is how he spent the last six months of his life in Iraq--working tirelessly on behalf of a sick 11-year-old Iraqi boy in desperate need of lifesaving heart surgery in the United States. Tragically, within hours of finally securing the transit visas for the boy and his family, Capt. Freeman was abducted by insurgent gunmen and executed.
As I read today's story, with it's Romeo and Juliet twist of fate, the same feelings that came over me after Michael Kelly's death came rushing to the surface. Anyone want to guess what a college education will cost in 2022, when Captain Freeman's children are ready to enroll?
And so this will be our mission for 2007: we will raise money in memory of Captain Freeman, a brave and honorable man who refused to let a war get in the way of his heart. I don't know exactly how and I don't know exactly when--the details will sort themselves out--but we're starting today,
Stay tuned for details about how you can help Capt. Freeman's children. We will certainly be scheduling a Photo Marathon in Capt. Freeman's memory in the spring. But I'm also going to start looking into to creating a charitable arm of Matt Mendelsohn Photography, a not-for-profit fund devoted exclusively to helping people in need. I know many of my clients are attorneys, so here's an offer: the first attorney to help me navigate the minefield of creating a 501c3, or whatever it is we might need to get this going, gets a free family portrait session.
As I said, stay tuned for more details. And so as not to end this on a sad note, I'll leave you guys with a photo from the first week of February, the intimate and joyful wedding of Marine Capt. John Price Van Cleve and Wendy Colfer. More photos to come.
Matt
I knew Michael, though mainly through Katy, and had the pleasure of photographing him holding his young son Tom on the front porch of his northwest Washington home. Shortly after his death, while driving home from my Old Town studio, I had the crazy idea of doing a charity benefit, to raise money for the college funds of young Tom and Jack. I remember writing in my mass email that I didn't know anything about raising money but I knew a lot about taking portraits. A few weeks later, with the help of some good friends, we spent ten hours in my little studio shooting portraits on a vintage 4 x 5 camera. By the end of that one day we had collected $14,000 in donations. And I learned a valuable lesson of fundraising: everyone wants to help but someone's gotta get the ball rolling.We did the Photo Marathon, as we dubbed it, for two more years, with a hiatus after Katrina, sensing people were being pulled in too many charitable directions. I've been looking for an opportunity to rekindle Photo Marathon, knowing that one day a reason would simply appear.
Well, after reading today's Washington Post I am pleased, though saddended, to report that we're back in business. Today's front page featured a truly touching story about Army Reserve Capt. Brian S. Freeman, of Temecula, California. From all accounts, Capt. Freeman was a remarkable human being--a West Point grad who served his country, an avid and accomplished bobsledder, a husband, and father to two small children, Gunnar, 2, and Ingrid, 1. But the most amazing thing about Capt. Freeman is how he spent the last six months of his life in Iraq--working tirelessly on behalf of a sick 11-year-old Iraqi boy in desperate need of lifesaving heart surgery in the United States. Tragically, within hours of finally securing the transit visas for the boy and his family, Capt. Freeman was abducted by insurgent gunmen and executed.As I read today's story, with it's Romeo and Juliet twist of fate, the same feelings that came over me after Michael Kelly's death came rushing to the surface. Anyone want to guess what a college education will cost in 2022, when Captain Freeman's children are ready to enroll?
And so this will be our mission for 2007: we will raise money in memory of Captain Freeman, a brave and honorable man who refused to let a war get in the way of his heart. I don't know exactly how and I don't know exactly when--the details will sort themselves out--but we're starting today,
Stay tuned for details about how you can help Capt. Freeman's children. We will certainly be scheduling a Photo Marathon in Capt. Freeman's memory in the spring. But I'm also going to start looking into to creating a charitable arm of Matt Mendelsohn Photography, a not-for-profit fund devoted exclusively to helping people in need. I know many of my clients are attorneys, so here's an offer: the first attorney to help me navigate the minefield of creating a 501c3, or whatever it is we might need to get this going, gets a free family portrait session.
As I said, stay tuned for more details. And so as not to end this on a sad note, I'll leave you guys with a photo from the first week of February, the intimate and joyful wedding of Marine Capt. John Price Van Cleve and Wendy Colfer. More photos to come.
Matt
posted by matt mendelsohn at 8:18 PM
9 Comments:
Starting a nonprofit isn't difficult. Here's some quick notes on what establishing a nonprofit entails. http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-501c3-Nonprofit-Organization
OK, you made your hormonal pregnant sister tear up... ;-) Your heart is always in the right place, Matt.
I would love to help...keep me up to date about it!
aw Matt. You know I"m in. Maybe baby and dogs? :)
Matt, you have an incredible heart. Keep Tom and me in the loop. My brother Ralph is/was a bobsledder and skeleton racer and knew of Brian (who got into the sport after my brother wasn't as active.) We would be happy to contribute.
keep me posted, too...i want to help...
I don't want to be a jerk, but I can't forgive Kelly for his ridiculous support for the war or this breathtakingly obnoxious and wrongheaded column about Gore:
Gore, now and forever, as someone who cannot be considered a responsible aspirant to power
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Distasteful as it may be, some notice should be paid to the speech that the formerly important Al Gore delivered Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
This speech, an attack on the Bush policy on Iraq, was Gore's big effort to distinguish himself from the Democratic pack in advance of another possible presidential run. It served: It distinguished Gore, now and forever, as someone who cannot be considered a responsible aspirant to power. Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Gore has now shown himself to be ignorant of those limits, and he has now placed himself beyond that pale.
Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts -- bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.
Gore uttered his first big lie in the second paragraph of the speech when he informed the audience that his main concern was with "those who attacked us on Sept. 11, and who have thus far gotten away with it." Who have thus far gotten away with it. The government of Gore's country has led a coalition of nations in war against al Qaeda, "those who attacked us on Sept. 11"; has destroyed al Qaeda's central organization and much of its physical assets; has destroyed the Taliban, which had made Afghanistan a state home for al Qaeda; has bombed the forces of al Qaeda from one end of Afghanistan to the other; has killed at least hundreds of terrorists and their allies; and has imprisoned hundreds more and is hunting down the rest around the world. All this while Gore, apparently, slept.
Well, perhaps Gore was talking loosely. No. He made clear in the next sentence this was a considered indictment: "The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the coldblooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized." If there is a more reprehensible piece of bloody-shirt-waving in American political history than this attempt by a man on the sidelines to position himself as the hero of 3,000 unavenged dead, I am not aware of it.
And, again, this sentence is a lie. The men who "implemented" the "coldblooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans" are not at large. They are dead; they died in the act of murder, on Sept. 11. Gore can look this up. In truth, the "vast majority" of the men who "sponsored" and "planned" the crime are dead also, or in prison, or on the run. The inmates at Guantanamo Bay, and the hunted survivors of Tora Bora, and the terrorist cell members arrested nearly every week, and the thousands of incarcerated or fugitive Taliban, might disagree as to whether they have been located, apprehended, punished or neutralized.
Although Gore knows that Bush has been publicly trying to move the nation toward war with Iraq since at least January, he pretended to believe the president was only now -- "in this high political season" -- pushing for war in order to gain electoral ground for his party and to divert attention from his administration's failure against al Qaeda by attacking "some other enemy whose location might be easier to identify." I see -- Bush is risking his presidency on a war with Iraq because it is the easy thing to do.
Although Gore knows that the Democratic leadership insisted (and both practical politics and constitutional imperatives demanded) that Bush seek the congressional support he is now requesting, he pretended this too was something the president was doing simply for political gain. Although Gore knows that Bush is also seeking, as Democrats also demanded, United Nations approval, he pretended this represented a failure of leadership as well because "thus far, we have not been successful in getting it." True enough -- because the Security Council hasn't voted. Thus far. Cute.
Probably the purest example of the Gore style -- equal parts mendacity, viciousness and smarm -- occurred when Gore expressed his concern (his deep, heartfelt concern) over "the doubts many have expressed about the role that politics might be playing in the calculations of some in the administration." And then added: "I have not raised those doubts, but many have."
What a moment! What a speech! What a man! What a disgrace.
On Michael Kelly...
The death of Michael Kelly was a tragedy and condolences go out to his family.
But one hopes he would be remembered for some better writings. Analysis of the metnioned piece here:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h040399_1.shtml
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h040599_1.shtml
Thanks for article!
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