I spent some time talking with the Johns Creek Herald regarding the book and writing in general. Link to the article is HERE

Fortunately, that was as close as I got to the Cold War, to the oppressive Soviet rule over Eastern Europe. Other weren’t so lucky.

Bruce Judisch was in Berlin when the wall came down, and a particular moment during all the chaos had a tremendous impact on him. It was the starting point for research into his book Katia. He was gracious enough to answer a handful of questions I had about that moment, about history, and about how other people’s success and struggles have an impact in our lives.

Tell me a little bit about the photograph that inspired Katia.

Bruce: On November 10^th, 1989, the first full day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I hustled my family onto the U-bahn (subway) to Checkpoint Charlie to ensure we all got a full taste of this historic event. After greeting East Germans pouring through the checkpoint, unhindered for the first time in 28 years, we walked northward along the Wall through the celebrating crowds toward the Brandenburg Gate. We were approaching Potsdamer Platz when I noticed a gentleman standing on the street corner with a piece of paper held high above his head. Oblivious of the crowds milling about him, he stood there for the longest time. I discreetly moved around toward the front of him and read the name “Katia” scrawled in red marker on the paper. The curiosity, even intrigue, of who Katia might be, and who the gentleman was, prompted me to snap his picture. I never approached the man. To this day I don’t know his name, or who Katia might have been. However, the poignancy and uniqueness of the moment stuck in my mind and eventually became the seed for the story.

How do you think history can be even more impactful through the eyes of an individual person?

Bruce: I think individual people are the carriers of history. Some witness it; some research it. But boiled down to its finest point, it’s the individual mind that decides to preserve it. There are those who preserve it poorly, whether by lack of skill or personal agenda, and there are those who do it well—as intellectually and morally honest as they can. I hope I fall into the latter category of people, as my story, albeit fiction, carries truth that I think is worth preserving and transmitting. Ultimately, only my readers will decide that, though.

Why is it so important for present generations to learn from the past? What do we lose if we lose that perspective?

Bruce: I’ll avoid the overused adage about being destine to repeat history forgotten, and instead appeal to Scripture. Judges 2:10 reads, “All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.” (NASB) The book of Judges depicts a downward spiral in a bleak period of Israel’s history, and I believe it starts with that verse. Israel failed to teach its progeny the fear of the Lord, and they suffered the consequences of it. You can pair Hosea 4:6a with that, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” and the handwriting is on the wall (no, I won’t chase that rabbit to Daniel…sorry J) Israel lost the perspective of its history with God, and we can just as easily lose perspective with our history of the Cold War and the lessons to be learned from it. As a note, the sequel to Katia, For Maria, to be released next month, provides even a stronger reminder of an event that should never ever be forgotten.

As the journalist in your story is uncovering more of Katia Mahler, she begins to learn more about herself. Why do you think other people’s lives can influence ours like that?

Bruce: We see ourselves in other people, perhaps even look for ourselves in other people—something to esteem. Sometimes that reflection comforts us, sometimes it grieves—or even annoys—us. For Maddy, our young journalist, Katia and Oskar come to represent something Maddy longs for, although she didn’t realize it until she spends considerable time with them. The influence others have on us is an essential reason why it’s so important whom we spend our own time with. Even more weighty is the realization that we also influence other people who are looking at us for the same reason. Scripture holds us accountable for that influence.

There was a quote at the end of a biography written by Stephen Ambrose about Dwight D. Eisenhower that has stuck with me (or at least the paraphrase as I no longer have the book):

Biographies often tell you more about the biographer and his or her views than of the actual person being written about.

You need only to peruse the current events section of a bookstore to see evidence of that. How many books are written about a president in a positive light? Negative light? And when you get to popular case studies like Lincoln or Caesar – and especially Jesus – then you can practically start segmenting the biographies into categories.

You can see it filter into news stories and headlines. Is someone “pro” this, or “anti” that? Are they “defending” something, or “taking a stand” against it? How we use those words is often reveals how we feel about the issue.

I think it’s important for us to recognize the lenses we use to filter our opinions of people. That doesn’t mean we make excuses for them when they make stupid or hurtful decisions, but what were their motives? What are our motives?

That was one aim in writing Hero’s Tribute. Here you have this decorated war veteran and football star who was a hero to many, but also a villain to a few, and whose motivations weren’t entirely transparent until he tried to reveal them by opening his life to a complete stranger. Yet that stranger, too, had his own filter, and how he went about the investigation affected the answers he got. It also affected what he did with those answers, which is what I explore in Legacy Road.

Image courtesy of Roger H. Goun. Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License

I’ll be doing promotions and book giveaways in the coming weeks at my website and facebook page so look for this in the coming days and weeks. Also, once you’ve read it, I’d love to get your feedback and would much appreciate any reviews you could post at websites such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads. If you’re involved or know of any book clubs or small groups who’d be interested in reading this and even asking me some followup questions I’d love to do that as well.

Some links:

Book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFCw8UnVxJc&feature=related

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0825426715/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0FN7DNS3BTJB9XWR8XXC&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

• 2,920 days
• 70,080 hours
• 4,204,800 minutes
• So far, we’ve been in 2 apartments
• 1 house (that’s been struck by lightning once)
• Lived in 4 towns (our town became incorporated in 2006)
• Had 1 dog (with an estimated 98 times he’s gotten into the trash)
• 2 kids
• Changed an estimated 5475 diapers (of those a ratio of 80/20 for Katie and I)

And on and on goes the measurable stuff. But what about the immeasurable stuff? Hugs, laughs, cries … My heart’s been filled with joy, over and over again, with a life I don’t deserve and a family I did nothing to earn. I can honestly say not a page of Hero’s Tribute or Legacy Road would have been written were it not for my wife, who is as much an inspiration in her example of grace than any person I’ve ever known.

“A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds….” — Proverbs 31:10

We crossed the Cascade Mountains on the first day and stopped close to Spokane, Washington, on the first night. I can remember waking up in an unfamiliar hotel room and looking outside to a sunrise in an unfamiliar landscape and thinking – I can’t go back.
Sometimes change is gradual. Other times it’s quick, and final. One minute we’re in one spot, then we turn around and realize that the path behind us is gone. How did we get there again? Where in the world are we going?

The story in Legacy Road begins where Hero’s Tribute ends. Wes Watkins has just witnessed an act of grace so powerful that it leaves him reflecting on his own life and relationships. He can’t go back. I think grace has that kind of impact. It’s disarming, when we see it leap from a mere word or definition and into the actual application in someone’s life. Wes explores that shift in Legacy Road, and it’s not an easy one. He has relationships from his past that he hadn’t planned on revisiting. He has to deal with failure – people failing him, and Wes failing them. We’d like to think that grace and forgiveness is this neat and tidy thing, but it’s not. It’s messy and chaotic when you consider the human element, yet beautiful when you understand that grace is God’s to give.

OK, so it’s a comic I helped my 4-year old draw.

I noticed that lazy Saturdays can quickly turn into media-related days of cartoons, movies, and games on my iPad. Katie is much better at heading this off with trips outside if it’s warm or other activities. Games and movies and shows aren’t necessarily bad in smaller doses, but when you walk into the living room and look at your kids plopped on the couch and you can’t tell if they’re watching a show or turning into a zombie, then you realize that perhaps you should unplug your house and jumpstart their imaginations.

This comic was a compromise of sorts. Nick wanted to draw “the castle game,” which is a tower defense game he and I will play after dinner (if he’s eaten his dinner, of course). You would think that drawing a comic would be a slam dunk activity, but it took a little coercing for Nick to engage his imagination. But think about the media we show our kids – movies, TV shows, games. They’re all from someone else’s imagination. With books, coloring, drawing – our kids own part of the story with their imagination.

At first, Nick simply sat at the table, tapping his pencil on the placemat and staring at a blank page. I placed a couple “towers” in the boxes and then asked him what happened next. The light went on, and his eyes got really wide, then be began to tell me the story. Then he began to draw his towers, and “the bad guys” they were going to defeat.

The first drawing session wasn’t the last. He’s gone back a couple times and added things, and he will bring it out when I get home and talk about the story with me.

Hopefully, he’ll end up drawing better than me.

A number of fellow Finksters have written some amazing tributes:

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_15980/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=3buJ7jvq

http://joshkatzowitz.com/2012/01/15/for-fink-rip-you-rascal/

http://blogs.ajc.com/kyle-wingfield/2011/11/23/the-thanks-we-owe-to-mentors-like-conrad-fink/

Perhaps his greatest contribution to the field of journalism was his red pen. He molded countless editors and reporters with red ink, correcting mistakes and pointing out flaws in our reporting. There is a legion of Finksters doing tremendous journalism because of the lumps taken in his classes. I pulled out a few of my Fink papers from my college days this weekend and had a look. It was almost like he was having a conversation with us through those papers, through our trial and error, and I laughed at a few of the comments as I imagined myself back in his classroom, waiting for either his approval or correction of an article I’d written for that day’s edition of the Red & Black school paper.

In the beginning of my senior year, Fink called me to his office and offered an opportunity of a lifetime – a 3-week internship at the Army’s National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif. I turned it down. What did a sports reporter with an interest in magazines have any business training to be a war correspondent, I asked myself. I remember him being disappointed, but not overly so. I’m sure he’d seen plenty of knucklehead students let opportunities like that slip through their hands. A month later, our world changed, when the Twin Towers came crashing down, and so did a lot of our youthful innocence. I was angry, conflicted, a million emotions. But most of all, if men and women my age were going to war, I wanted to at least know some of the hardships they would endure, some of the training. I walked into Fink’s office the next day and asked if the internship was still open, and if he would consider me. He said yes, and didn’t ask for an explanation.

Maybe he knew me better than I knew myself. I didn’t have the instincts for investigative reporting or the debating skills for a career in opinion columns, but I had a desire to dig deeper to understand the people behind the stories, their motivations, hopes and fears. I think he knew that even before I could communicate it myself. And that’s essentially what I got on that internship. I’d never be a war correspondent like he was, but I watched a group of men and women train for war, and was able to use some of those observations in writing Hero’s Tribute.

“Take hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands and you will live. Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or turn away from them. Do not forsake wisdom and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it costs all you have, get understanding.” – Proverbs 4:5-7

I’m in a different season of life, but the need for wisdom, for a mentor, is just as vital. Mentors provide instruction; they point out our blind spots; they encourage (a simple nod of approval from Fink might as well have been a Pulitzer); they break down to build up. But it all hinges on our ability to submit to that instruction.

I and countless others will miss him. I’ll miss the brief e-mails updating him on my career or the next book project. Of a shared interest in the Civil War. Of listening to him grumble about the next crop of students as if it wasn’t pure joy for him to begin a semester.

He would often tell students as he handed back papers that, “You’re lucky, you rascals. You couldn’t afford my editing.” He was right. His instruction was priceless.

Thanks for your wisdom, pal.

Aren’t we kind of like that? We see the Point A to Point B, but throughout our journey God is at work in our hearts. The work ranges from subtle tweaks to major, foundational revisions. Sometimes you can see and feel the revisions, other times they’re hidden. But how often do you get a few miles down the road, turn around and look at where you’ve been and just shake your head at the turn of events that got you there?

Each of us has a story, but they’re part of a much larger story. His story. And though our author may know what’s ahead in the next sentence or chapter, for us each day is a page with fresh ink and unlimited possibilities.

“No one has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, [but] what God … has revealed to us through the spirit.” – 1 Cor. 2:9-10

Ok, back to work.