“Thank you, Chuck Scott, for giving so many of us our roots.”

Chuck Scott had a thing about trees.

I remember this from when I was a self-absorbed, obnoxious, 20-year-old photo student. He would come into class after the weekend and tell us about how many he had planted.

Of course, we were not fully alert on Mondays, so it didn’t register as meaningful at the time.

But now that I’m a slightly less self-absorbed, obnoxious, 68-year-old, I have a greater appreciation for what he was doing. My wife and I recently moved to Maine where trees are also a major thing. As we revive our neglected property, it’s the trees that we are trying to save while removing the invasives. And, yes, like Chuck, planting new ones.

But here’s the thing about planting trees when you are in the later years of your life: you won’t live long enough to see them fully mature. Planting trees is an act of faith in the future. And that is the parallel with Chuck’s trees and his photojournalism students: he could never be guaranteed—for all he put into helping us get started in work and life—that he would see how our careers eventually blossomed.

Chuck did not just teach the basics of handling a camera, working in a darkroom, cropping (oh, yes!), etc. He instilled an unwavering drive and commitment to the power of photojournalism to touch people’s curiosity about the world. And he seemed to do it with a positive spin. No matter how frustrating things got for us, he often threw in a grin in a way to remind us that we would overcome whatever obstacles we might encounter as we learned the ropes.

And so it is, years after Chuck’s passing, that we honor him on the milestone of what would be his 100th birthday. More importantly we Chuck for his unselfish commitment to launching young photojournalists across the planet, while he also continued to increase the forests of southeastern Ohio. 

Thank you, Chuck Scott, for giving so many of us our roots.
 

One of Scott’s early students, David Griffin (BSJ ’80) submitted this tribute to honor Scott (1924-2015). David Griffin was 1978 College Photographer of the Year and won the prestigious William Randolph Hearst national competition in 1977 and 1978. Griffin held leadership positions at The Washington Post, National Geographic and US News & World Report. Listen to his 2008 TED talk about the sustained power of photography.