Birthdays for Friday, June 25
Here’s wishing the happiest of VizEds birthdays to four wonderful folks…
Lindi Daywalt is art director for niche publications at the News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla. A 2005 graduate of Ohio University, Lindi interned at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and for me at the Virginian-Pilot before moving to Florida later that year. She also illustrates. Lindi turns 28 today.
Wonetha Jackson is a production editor and page designer for the Orlando Sentinel. A 2004 graduate of Detroit’s Wayne State University, Wonetha spent five years as a designer for the Detroit News before moving to Florida in 2009.
Lauren Kuntz is a designer and artist for the Dispatch of Columbus, Ohio. A 2007 graduate of Ohio University, Lauren interned at the Albuquerque Journal before joining the Times of Northwestern Indiana in Munster in 2007. She made the leap back into Ohio in April. Find her online portfolio here. Lauren turns 25 today.
Cindy Caudle Neal retired last month after 37 years of teaching in the upstate of South Carolina. A 1967 graduate of Lander College in Greenwood, S.C., Cindy earned a master’s degree from Clemson University in 1978.
But just before that — or possibly it was while she was working on that master’s — that she spent two years teaching at Long Cane Academy in McCormick, S.C., where she instilled a love of the written word into one of her students. Not only did Mrs. Alvarez — the name by which I’ll always know her — work with me in English class, she also edited some of my first published work, in the local weekly, the McCormick Messenger.
To this day, I don’t know whether to thank Mrs. Alvarez for causing me to become a journalist. Or to blame her.
(She also taught me two years of French, which did me no damn good at all. But I’m not blaming her for that, either.)
Lauren, Lindi, Wonetha and Mrs. Alvarez share a birthday with actors June Lockhart and James Carter “Jimmie” Walker; director Sidney Lumet; musicans Carly Simon and Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (better known as George Michael); sportscaster Phyllis George Brown; supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor; artist Robert Henri and writer Eric Arthur Blair (better known as George Orwell).
Plus, today is Take Your Dog to Work Day. Seriously.
Best wishes to all for a wonderful birthday today!