After a Forest fire He decimated the drafting room of a High School in California, destroying his archive cameras, computers and newspapers that cover six decades, one of the first help offers that his journalism advisor received came from the other side of the country.
Claire Smith, founding executive director of the Sports Media Center at the University of Temple, had met Lisa Nehus Saxon since they helped to forge a place for journalists in Major League Baseball more than 40 years ago. They had supported each other during the days of being excluded from the changing rooms, and now with much of Palisades Charter High School damagedSmith wanted to be there again for her friend.
“I simply thought: ‘What can we do? How can we help with healing?'” Smith said.
Earlier this week, he traveled from Philadelphia to deliver the result of that offer: a university article with articles of high school students.
In almost a dozen pages, the insert exhibited articles on increasing prices in the rental market after the forest fire and the school that return to the lessons in person, along with first -hand stories moving to lose everything to the fire. There were also poems and photos drawn by students from the Pasadena Rosebud academy, a garden of transition infants to the eighth grade school in Altadena, California, which was destroyed in the fire.
Forest fires in January devastated the Los Angeles area, eliminating almost 17,000 structures, including houses, schools, companies and places of worship.
Palisades high school, composed of about 3,000 students in Los Angeles, saw approximately 40% of its damaged campus and had to temporarily move an old Sears building. Nehus Saxon estimated that about a quarter of the personnel’s staff lost their homes, and some forced to move from the community and change schools.
This project, she and Smith said, was a way of giving students a project to focus after the tragedy, while providing them with a place to tell a broader audience the experience of their community.
Smith said he thought the project would be healing for students “but would also give them something they could sustain in their hands and, when they grow up, they show their children and grandchildren.”
Within a basement classroom in Santa Monica on Wednesday, Smith and Samuel O’Neal, editor in chief of Temple News, gave the newspapers to the secondary school staff.
It was the first time that they saw their printed Tideline articles, since the document had moved online due to cost.
Kate Swain, 18, co -editor in chief of the newspaper, said she felt surreal to finally sink the printed pages.
“Due to everything we have happened together, everything we have had to persevere and all have had all these personal things they have been dealing with,” he said. “And yet, simultaneously, we have been pouring all this time and energy and all our passion for journalism to write these articles.”
Gigi Appelbaum, 18, co -editor in chief of the newspaper who lost his home in the fire, said the project felt especially different because he involved people to thousands of miles away.
“The fact that people from all over the country are aware of what happens with us and emphasizes our situation and want to get our voices, it is really special,” said Appelbaum, who has been in the newspaper for four years.
One of the things he lost in the fire was a box full of cards and important messages. She said she plans to store her copy in a new box while working to restart the collection.
Smith and Nehus Saxon met in 1983 during a game between Los Angeles and Los Yankees in Anaheim, California. Nehus Saxon said he walked to Smith to appear and found her busy to meet a deadline.
“Who knew that little introduction would bloom in this,” said Nehus Saxon.
In later years, they have traveled to London together for the first Major League Baseball Games in Europe, and cried in 2017 when Smith became the first woman to win the Professional Excellence Award of the United States Baseball Writers Association.
“We don’t talk every week,” said Nehus Saxon. “Sometimes we can go, you know, months and months without speaking. But all we have to do is send a text message and we know that the other will be there immediately.”
That link was made even more clear when Nehus Saxon heard from Smith while Fire wrapped his community. His house was just three blocks from school. While surviving the fire, it is full of ashes loaded with LED and it may not be safe to live for years.
But with the help of Smith, she and her students have been able to advance and produce the final edition of the school year. After the papers were delivered, Nehus Saxon maintained one for the school file.
“When you have lost everything, you have to start somewhere,” said Smith.
