Carol Gray, conclusion, from the book "Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations" by Kent Miles and James N. Kimball (Handcart Books, 2009)

This is the concluding segment of the interview Jim Kimball and I did with Carol Gray.  Carol passed away after a long battle with cancer on July 3, 2010.

     The fact is that I know the Lord went with us on that first convoy, and so a month later I went on another one and I continued to return. The Lord has just opened so many doors to me that have allowed me to go into areas where not even the UN was in the early days.  The UN used to come up for a debrief. They would ask "Where have you been?"  I would tell them and they'd say, "How have you got into there?"  I would say, "It was because the village people took me round the back way so that they knew I would be safe."  They then said, "We can't believe you've gone there.  We can't even get in and we are a peacekeeping force."

     I had a strong feeling before I went on that first trip that I knew I would be kept safe and that the Lord would look after me, but I somehow knew that it had to be me to go.  I realize now why. I know that in the early days it had to be a woman, because a woman wasn't seen as a threat, and they were great with me.  They looked after me so wonderfully.  They are very special people. 

     I have been on 32 convoys there, and over the years the British people have been wonderful. It costs us approximately £8,000 to £10,000 every time a convoy goes over.  It is an extremely expensive trip.  Over the years we have taken well in excess of £4,000,000 worth of aid just as a small charity.  I know that is because the Lord has opened so many doors.  

     We have been able to go to some of the most incredible places where there has been the greatest need.  These people just throw their arms around me and tell me how much they appreciate what we have done and how grateful they are. It is a wonderful feeling to hug someone and say "We're here because we care and because we love you."  It has just been an unbelievable story to me of how, when the Lord is on your side and you have a desire to help He gives you the ability to be able to do it.

     I have learned a lot over these last few years.  I have learned that as individuals each and every one of us can make a big difference, regardless of how small we are, or how insignificant we think we are.  I am just a very ordinary English housewife and mother that has got involved in something that the Lord has somehow made very wonderful.  I did not expect that when I began this. I think the greatest lesson I have learned is that within each and every one of us there is a wonderful capacity to do a lot of good.  All we have to do is get down on our knees and ask the Lord what he wants us to do with our lives, and he will direct our path.  

     Another thing I have realized is that the greatest gifts I will ever have in life are the spiritual gifts, such as gratitude and love for these people.  There is just a wonderful feeling of oneness with them.  I know that over these last few years I have sometimes put my hand out in times of real difficulty, and I know that the Lord has taken it.  I have learned to love my Savior very much.  It has been quite an incredible experience for me.

     All we have got to do is just plunge in and do it and not be afraid.   I am not a business woman.  I am totally devoid of any business acumen, but I muddle through it, and somehow the Lord has given me the ability to raise the money that is needed.  I can't always believe that it was me that has been through all of this. Some people get involved in things like this because they enjoy the publicity of the moment, but most people go there because they genuinely care, and they do a wonderful job. 

     I remember one man who came on a convoy. He was an ex-SAS paratrooper and he was a very macho, tough man.  He was a born-again Christian. When he phoned me, he explained who he was and said, "I've heard about these wonderful convoys you do.  I'd like to go on one, can I join you?"  I said, "We would love to have you."  But then he said "I must say to you, I don't want any of this lovey-dovey stuff, I have heard that your convoys are a bit emotional and you put your arms around everybody and you tell them that you care, and that isn't my scene at all.  I just want to go and take the stuff and hand it to them."  So I said "Fine, that's lovely."  When I met him, he was a lovely man and I traveled with him for a time. As we traveled there he was saying, "You're not going to get me putting my arms around anybody.  It's just not my way.” 

     When we got into the first village all these old ladies came running out because they recognized our vans and all the other convoy members who had been before were greeting them and there were tears all around. Mike was standing back. This old lady went up to him, she just threw her arms around him and he just raised her in the air, and spun her around and he had tears streaming down his face. He hugged everything that moved after that.  He was just the most amazing man. He came on several convoys afterwards and always loved the experience. 

     The Croatian government in Rovanska asked me if I could take lots of flat pack kitchens and bathroom suites. We had lots of these flat pack kitchens donated, and many bathroom suites of all different colours. I was just leaving on the convoy and I suddenly had this real strong urge to put my old pea green bathroom suite on the truck.  It was the last one to be loaded. I thought nobody will want it but I will take it just in case.  I was a bit embarrassed about it when it came out as it was such a disgusting colour. 

     As we started to hand the aid out in Rovanska all the lovely bathroom suites came out, the magnolia ones, the white ones, the pink ones, the light grey ones. Eventually the only bathroom suite that was left was mine and everybody was saying, "Ugh, who on earth would want that disgusting green?" 

     We went to this last house and the lady came out as she was expecting her bathroom suite.  When she saw the bathroom suite on the truck she threw her arms in the air. She laughed and started to cry and hugged me, and then she said, "You come, you come, you see."  She took me in to her home. It was devastated, but it had had a new roof on it.  There was no furniture in it and the only room that was left intact was where the bathroom suite was going.   It was the only room that had any tiles on the wall.  The tiles left on that wall were an exact match to the bathroom suite.  She just raised her hands and said prayers the whole time. She just loved this bathroom suite. 

     It is a funny story, but if I hadn't have been prompted to put it in, we would have been one bathroom suite short and she would have gone without. Yet it turned out to be the exact colour that she wanted. 

Eleven Years Later – September 2008 

     My last convoy to the Balkans was in 1999. It was in 2000 that I was invited by the church humanitarian department to visit Africa. We flew out to assess the situation and see if we could help in any way. My first trip was amazing.  

     I always had a dream to build an orphanage in Africa. It would be like a home with a momma and a family. There are so many children in Africa that grow up without their parents, due to the aids epidemic, other diseases and poverty. I wanted to give these children an environment that would be as close as possible to being raised in a family. 

     In 2001 I returned to Ghana and bought 36 acres of land in Trom, Somanya. This was an area of great need. The first necessity was to sink a well, so that there would be water close by for the village and the site. We then began the building work. We built houses that would a home for 10 – 12 children, a momma and another caregiver. 

     We called the site Mmofra Trom – this means Children’s garden, aptly named to emulate the focus of what we wanted for the children whose home it would become. The homes were opened in 2004 and since then I have been privileged to see many young children come to our homes. They have been sad, frightened, shy, nervous and timid on arrival. It has been amazing to see the transformation in them from their arrival to when I next visit Ghana. They are cared for, sheltered, fed and loved. When I see them again they are smiling, laughing and playing as all young children should. Their personalities are flourishing; their confidence just gleams and their eyes are bright. 

     The site has always tried to be as self sufficient as possible. There is a fish farm, poultry and a plantation to provide food for the children. Also the children are to be trained in a trade that will help them be able to provide for themselves when they are adults.

     In 2006 the school was opened and it has gone from small beginnings to grow and flourish. It now has an intake of 400 students. The next plans are for a medical centre that will reach out to 40 villages in the surrounding area, so that those who cannot walk to get medical treatment will still be able to have health care. All the volunteers in Hugs International feel that Mmofra Trom is an oasis in Ghana and will always try to shelter and protect those in need. It has been a wonderful blessing to have been part of this amazing experience.

 

Carol Gray, part 2, from the book "Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations" by Kent Miles & James N. Kimball (Handcart Books 2009)

          The feeling that prompted me I know has prompted me many times in my life, but because of that experience I was more aware of it.  I recognized it when it came.  It was that same feeling that came one day when I had been watching the events that had been unfolding in what was then Yugoslavia.  We were watching awful scenes of what was happening there day after day and night after night. Although I didn't want to see it, I was compelled to put the TV on every day to see how the situation was unfolding.

          One particular night I can remember watching a program on the women who had been released from the Serbian rape camps.  I was watching the looks on their faces and I really felt inside this same feeling come. I felt I needed to do something, but I didn't know what.  At this time I was serving as Relief Society President in my ward and I questioned my feelings again.  I'm not an adventurous woman at all and I didn't even go down to the London temple without my husband.  I had no intentions of ever leaving my family at any time.   I really felt strongly that the Lord was requesting me to do something more than just take out my cheque book and write a cheque for a charity that was doing something over there.   

          I spent a lot of time on my knees over the next few days, pleading with the Lord to help me to know what it was that He wanted me to do.  I phoned several charities that went over into Bosnia.  I was just checking around to see what I could do.  I asked that if I started an appeal what would be the best aid to take in, what would you advise me to collect and if I could collect some stuff, would you be willing to take it on the back of one of your convoys?  It was never my intention to go into a war zone. I love my family far too much to even remotely think that I would get involved in anything like that.  My intentions in the beginning were to just do something that would help me feel better, knowing that I had done something practical for them.  Finally I got one charity that was willing to take all the aid over to Bosnia, if I collected it.

          It was just before Christmas of 1992 and I went and saw my bishop. I told him that I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for the Relief Society sisters to get involved in some compassionate service that was outside of our area.  Then I went and saw the stake president. I then went to our area church headquarters to see if we could use the basement of our chapel, which was completely empty, for storage, just on a temporary basis. They were very supportive and said yes, I could do that. 

          The next Sunday I went to the Relief Society sisters and within three weeks we had collected 38 tons of the most incredible aid.  We did 24-hour shifts boxing and packing and going through all the aid.  All the missionaries used their Preparation days to come in and help.  People who would have never walked into a Latter-day Saint church before came in and stood side by side with the Latter-day Saints, sang with them and laughed with them as they boxed and packed.  It was just the most unbelievable time. I think with it being near Christmas, everyone became infused with giving.

             

          Everyone became involved, not only our own church, but many other denominations as well, hospitals, the Post Office, schools, the police force and the general public.  Day after day there would be wagons pulling up and dropping off tents, cooking equipment, emergency equipment and hygiene items. There was everything from food parcels to medical supplies.  It was just incredible.  

          I had already arranged with one of the transport companies that their donation would be that they would pick up all the stuff and deliver it down to London where the charity was based, free of charge for me and this charity was going to take it over there.  Two days before it was to leave the charity rang me up and said that they were very sorry, but they couldn't take it.  They had run out of money and they were not taking stuff over any more, which left me in a real dilemma, because the church was absolutely packed full.  The classrooms were full; even the bishop's office was full of baby milk and disposable baby nappies.  Then on Sunday I went to church early as the Relief Society president to make the room look nice, and as I got there, my heart just absolutely sank to my boots because a lorry had been and dumped about 10 tons of aid in front of the chapel doors the previous night. 

          When we arrived at church, we couldn't get near the building so church services were not held that day.  We had to spend virtually all of that Sunday, moving all the boxes just so everybody could get into church, and I wasn't the flavor of the month, with the bishop.   We just had Sacrament meeting and everything else was cancelled.  The Primary children thought it was wonderful. 

          When that happened, I was absolutely devastated.  I can remember getting down on my knees and saying to my Heavenly Father, "Lord, what have I done?  Was I listening to the wrong promptings?  What has happened here?  Everything has gone wrong.  Yet there is all this wonderful stuff, absolutely incredible aid, that is waiting to go and they were waiting for it, and I have no means of getting it there."  More vans and cars were showing up all the time with more contributions. The whole situation was spiraling out of control.  

          I found out that somebody had gone to the newspaper. Some of the newspaper headlines said "Christmas Carol Bags for Bosnia", "Mother of Seven Bags for Bosnia", or "The Latter-day Saints are bagging for Bosnia."  It really seemed to somehow capture the imagination.  The BBC picked up the story and although it was wonderful because it got more aid coming in, it put me in a difficult position as how to get it over to Bosnia. 

          Again there was another article about what we were doing and underneath was this tiny little piece. It said "Convoy of Hope bound for Bosnia.  Anyone wishing to join this convoy would they ring this number."  I rang them up hoping that they would be able to take all the aid that I had got. It was not with the intention of going myself, just hoping that they would take all the aid.  But they wouldn't, instead they said "We would love to have you join us." 

          It was a convoy of people who had collected all their own stuff and they were joining on to a convoy.  However when you voluntarily go into a war zone, all insurance is null and void.  Now, because, I've had cancer and nobody can still to this day understand why I survived and I am reasonably healthy, nobody will touch me with insurance.   But my husband is well insured, so when he offered to go and join the convoy, we were told that he would lose his insurance coverage.  I said, "If you stand on a land mine or if you're shot by a sniper or a shell lands on you, we will be in trouble because I will have the children to look after.  I just have this feeling inside that the Lord wanted me to go." 

           I couldn't explain it to anybody and I can probably explain it better now with hindsight, but I knew that I would be all right.  He wasn't too happy about it, but after a day of fasting and prayer, we came to the conclusion that this would probably be the best solution. One of my daughters, who was very adventurous, decided that she was going to go with me and drive a truck.  It was a big seven and a half ton truck, which was about 28 feet long, it was massive and she was going to drive it with me.  

          I phoned a lot of my friends, who had big trucks and vehicles, many of them came and supported me and they joined the convoy as well.  There were 110 vehicles that left on that first, humongous convoy.  There were 38 ton trucks, 7-1/2 ton trucks (which is the largest one you can drive on an ordinary license, and that is what I drove.)  There were also minibuses, small vans and even cars with trailers that went.   

          On that first convoy it took us 10 days to get through Europe.  It was a massive adventure for me and such a big decision to make, because the only pictures that I had ever seen of Bosnia were the ones of warfare. The whole time we were traveling I was wondering what I was going to see.  I am rather a compassionate person and get very involved with people. I was getting very nervous as to how I would react with seeing people in distress over there, because I don't cope with it very well. 

           I was feeling proud that I was driving this vehicle through Europe and I was doing ok.  It was a major accomplishment for me.  We went through some of the most wonderful scenery, right through Europe.  It was 2,500 miles.  We slept rough, in minus temperatures but it was a wonderful experience.  

          We arrived in Croatia, in the capital Zagreb. There was a large meeting held.  There were 400 drivers altogether.  We were asked if any of us would volunteer for crisis areas.  I suppose it was because I was very naive, having grown up in the Church, and we both looked at each other and thought, "Well, we've not driven all this way to stick our aid in some warehouse. We're off to a crisis area to give it to the people." We volunteered. 

          What we didn't realize was that it was a crisis area because it was under shell fire and no one else was crazy enough to go.  I looked around and there was only us and two other men who put their hands up to go into crisis areas.  I can still remember now the sinking feeling that came over me. I wondered if I had made a mistake.  But I was too proud to renege on the decision I had made. That was how it started.   I got into doing these convoys by chance really. 

          I think the Lord got me doing this in the only way He knew I would do it. There was no way I was brave enough to have actually made the decision straight away.  I just wasn't that sort of a woman at all. It was just a step at a time, which is the way He usually does things with me. 

          That first experience was unbelievable.  We went into an area where the Canadian peacekeeping forces were, in a place called Polinska Poljana.  The Serbian guns were only a matter of 20 feet away from us. We had to transfer all the supplies into the back of a big army wagon, so that they didn't know that there were any civilians there.  We had to go through a mine field.  I don't know whether you have ever been through a mine field or not, but it was quite an experience doing that.  

          We went over a pontoon bridge, which absolutely terrified me, because I couldn't swim. The river, with it being winter, was very badly swollen. The pontoon bridge was just big thick beams of wood that had all been chained together and then they were chained to oil drums that were floating on the side.  It was quite an expanse across the river. It was already lapping up between the wooden beams and we had to take our large truck over this pontoon bridge.  

          The unfortunate thing was that my eyesight isn’t great and though I was fine driving through Europe, I didn't fancy driving on this pontoon bridge.  I was worried about taking this heavy vehicle on to the bridge because it was only made for army vehicles.  When we actually drove on to the pontoon bridge, there must have only been a couple of inches from the wheels to the edge of the bridge.  My daughter is an excellent driver and so I had said, "You can drive the truck and I will stand in front of you and direct you over inch by inch." What I hadn't realized was that as the vehicle went on to the pontoon bridge it pushed it down below the water line. I was there with the water was just swishing round my legs and trying to direct the truck safely across the bridge, but I was terrified.   

          That was such an important experience to me because I immediately recognized that I needed help from my Heavenly Father.  It was very unnerving when I could not actually see what I was walking on in the water. It was quite murky and muddy and it was very cold.  My feet were freezing in the water.  I can remember just standing there and saying "Lord, you have gotten me into this."  My legs were stiff, they wouldn't move, I was petrified, and I said "Somehow you are going to have to work a miracle on my legs and get them moving because I cannot move them myself."  

          Immediately I had said it, all fear left, which was unbelievable to me. The fear was gone, and I was able to walk across with that vehicle. As the planks went under the water, so did the chains which were a guideline as to where the edge of the bridge was, but as a team we made it across to the other side.

         

          We went down through an area where 381 people had been just killed.   It just changed me completely when I saw that area.   What distressed me more than anything were the people.  Nothing prepared me for their sunken, hollow, lonely eyes.  On our journey back, I realized that I couldn't turn away from them. Having been over there, I could no longer stand by and do nothing.  I had seen the people, I saw what they needed.  I saw how lonely and heartbroken they were because they felt that the world had just turned their back on them and had allowed the most unspeakable horrors to happen to them.  That first trip really sealed in my heart a love for the people over there, which I have never been able to shake off. 

  

Carol Gray from the book "Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations" by Kent Miles & James N. Kimball, (Handcart Books, 2009)

Carol Gray 

Humanitarian, Home Maker

Sheffield, England 

          As a Relief Society President, it was not Carol Gray’s intention to become a recognized humanitarian leader throughout Europe and the United States. She simply proposed to her ward members that something be done to help bring relief to the war ravaged areas of Bosnia. Seven years later, over thirty truck convoys had delivered food, clothing and medical supplies to Bosnia.

          Carol has also adopted a school for the mentally handicapped near Sarajevo, several residential schoolhouses for children who suffer from dementia, a retirement home for the elderly and a front-line emergency hospital.  In 2001, after the end of the Balkan conflict, she founded an orphanage in Ghana. A mother of seven, Carol expresses her gratitude “to my dear husband, Stuart, and valued friends who helped me so much on the home front.” 

          “I did not plan on personally driving a lorry to deliver relief supplies into the areas of conflict.  When the agency we were working with failed to organize a convoy, I simply did what had to be done.”

          Carol passed away on July 3, 2010.  Her husband Stuart wrote “She had battled cancer for 35 yrs and suffered from the effects of chemotherapy so much these last 6 yrs.” 

*****

Part 1
Interview March 7, 1997 
©Kent Miles & James N. Kimball
Excerpted from "Mormon Women: Portraits & Conversations" Handcart Books, 2009

My parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I was about five. I have always loved the gospel and my parents were wonderful examples of how the gospel teachings work in our lives. So I grew up in the Church and I was very happy.   I've held lots of different callings in the Church, and thoroughly enjoyed every one.

It's challenging to be a member of the Church in England.  We have built our own chapels and have to do so many other things.  We have to work hard for everything, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  It's wonderful.

I married my husband when I was 21.  Stuart has always been a wonderful support. Our home is always full. I have seven children there are four daughters, three sons and seventeen grandchildren. But apart from them, I have lots of adopted kids who come and stay at our home quite a bit.  It's a very busy household, we've always got people in and out all the time, but it's lovely and I wouldn't have it any other way.

When I had my patriarchal blessing, it told me that my life would be spared for a special purpose.  I never gave that any thought until I was a young woman of 28 and I was diagnosed with having cancer.  It was terminal cancer.  The doctors rushed me into hospital and they had to do an emergency operation on me.  They literally shut me up and sent me home and told my husband that I had about three months to live at the most. 

While I was being wheeled back out of the operating theatre, a gentleman was in the hospital who was a very well-known English surgeon.   He specialized in many forms of operating procedures and often worked in America. I didn't know this until later, but apparently as I was being wheeled out he just inquired what was wrong with me, and they said, "Oh, she's dying basically.  There's nothing we can do for her, the cancer is too extensive, so we've shut her back up and we're sending her home to spend her remaining time with her family."  He said, "But she's only a young woman.  She's too young to die."  I was 28, I had just the four girls then and my youngest daughter was only six months old. 

So he robed up and he said "Let me take her into the theatre and see what I can do."  He went in and apparently he did an experimental operation on me which has only been done twice since.  One gentleman died in the operating theatre and another lady died ten days later, so I'm the only survivor of this unique operation.  They did all sorts of things, but I'm basically a mass of plastic tubing and steel inside. I have to take tablets daily, which keep my body going because I am minus most of the things which regulate the normal functioning of the body.

I knew with the fasting and prayers of my stake, that my Patriarchal Blessing had come to pass, that I had obviously been saved for something.  I assumed it was for the birth of my three boys which followed a few years later.  I felt we had been blessed with a miracle when our first son was born, who was Jamie and then three years later we had twin boys, it was incredible. It actually hit all the newspapers because they couldn't understand how I'd actually managed to have them safely. I had the boys and I assumed that the reason why my patriarchal blessing said what it did was because I was to raise my boys. 

I've always stayed at home with my children.  I'm a blessed Latter-day Saint mother and I've never needed to work.  I have stayed at home and contented myself with looking after and raising my family and doing lots of creative things that mothers tend to do.  I enjoy gardening, painting, flower arranging and writing poetry, so I was perfectly happy at home and never went very far a field.

I have always tried to live my life very close to my Savior.  I think when you have been faced with losing your life and not knowing how long you've got on the earth, to put your life in order, it changes your attitude to living.  When you think that maybe you've only got three months left, you forget about things like getting cross with people or getting irritable or delay doing tasks until tomorrow.  You learn to pack so much into every minute.  I suppose that is something that has never left me from that experience.  I now had my seven children and life was wonderful for me.  I was very grateful to my Heavenly Father for the extra time which he had profited me. 

About five years later I was phoned by a local hospice.  It was because of my experience they asked me if I would go in on a voluntary basis and if I would like to do bereavement counseling for the families who were preparing to lose their loved ones, due to cancer. I jumped at the chance.  The boys were getting a little bit older now. They were old enough to leave with my family or with neighbors. I started to do it and I got know some lovely families. 

There was one couple in particular that I got very close to.  They were very old, they must have been in their late 80s, and she was dying with bowel cancer.  He was obviously distraught to see her virtually disappearing before his eyes and being helpless to do anything for her.   I spent a lot of time with them.  They had no family, so they were everything to each other.

I got a phone call one day and when I answered the phone it was him. He was obviously very tearful over the phone. He said “Carol can you come to the hospital please?  She's going to die."  I immediately got ready, sent the children off to the neighbors and I got in the car.  The particular house that we lived in at the time was a Victorian home.  It had a beautiful garden that was full of the most exquisite old English roses and the fragrance from these roses, the honeysuckle and the quince was beautiful. 

As I got into the car and I started to go down the drive, I had this really strong feeling inside that I needed to stop the car and pick a single rose.  I just put the idea to one side and said "Don't be silly.  The woman is dying.  There's no need for you to take her any flowers."  So I carried on down the drive.  But again, this feeling came, this time even more strongly. "Pick a single rose and take it to the hospital."  Again I just pushed the idea away and made the usual excuses that there wasn't time to do it as he needed me there now because she was dying.  As I drove out on to the road I knew in no uncertain terms that something unusual was happening, because the feeling that I had seemed to reverberate right through every part of my body and it just said (this time it was very specific.) "Turn the car around and go back and pick a single yellow rose."

I knew that I had been chastised by the spirit.  I turned the car around and I went back into the drive, but all the time I was thinking, "But I don't have any yellow roses in my garden."  I have pink and red and white and peach and every colour you could imagine, but no yellow roses.  It was the only colour I didn't have.   I stopped the car in the drive and I got out. There facing me on one of my pink long-stemmed roses, was the most beautiful yellow rose.  It wasn't pure yellow, it was fringed with pink bits all around the edge, but nevertheless it was yellow.  I just stared at this rose in total disbelief, because in the eight years that I had lived there that plant had never produced a yellow rose for me before.

I rushed into the house, totally bemused by what had happened. I fully expected that when I got the scissors and had gone back outside again, it would disappear because it was a figment of my imagination. It was still there when I got back, so I snipped it off quickly and popped some maidenhair fern with it, wrapped it up and put a nice bow on it.  I put it at the side of me, this remarkable rose that I couldn't take my eyes off.

I rushed into the hospital, still not knowing what the rose was for and I quietly went into the ward where they were.  The curtains were pulled around the old lady.  She was obviously very close to dying.  As I peeked through the curtains I noticed that he had got hold of her hand, but his head had fallen onto her bed. He just sat there with his head on the bed near her hand.   I just felt it was a very tender moment and I didn't want to intrude. I just laid the rose by the side of her and tiptoed out.  I was about to go to the matron’s office to explain that I was here and if he needed me to come and fetch me.

 But before I got there, he came shuffling down the corridor after me, and he had got tears streaming down his face. He shouted my name, and I turned round, then he said, "Carol, how did you know?  How did you know today was our wedding anniversary?" Every year on the day of their wedding anniversary he had given her a single yellow rose.  I had no idea, absolutely no idea whatsoever.  He had never mentioned that to me before.  But it made me realize that the Lord knows the desires of our hearts and He had obviously listened to the heart of the old man who was so distressed about losing his life-long companion and it was their 70th wedding anniversary that day.  That was a special experience for me and I will never forget it.

The feeling that prompted me I know has prompted me many times in my life, but because of that experience I was more aware of it.  I recognized it when it came.  It was that same feeling that came one day when I had been watching the events that had been unfolding in what was then Yugoslavia.  We were watching awful scenes of what was happening there day after day and night after night. Although I didn't want to see it, I was compelled to put the TV on every day to see how the situation was unfolding. 

(To be continued)

Welcome to Portraits & Conversations

Welcome to my new blog.  This is a space in which I will publish the portraits and interviews that I create.  Some will be from my archive of work through the last 15 or 20 years.  Some will be current and new work. 

I have a code for this blog...  "more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules"...


1. My intent in a portrait is to focus attention on the subject, not on my visual dexterity.
2. Before an image can be a good portrait, it has to be a good photograph.
3. Any photograph can only show what the outside of something looked like at a given moment in time.
4. If one is lucky and good - or good and lucky - the photograph can suggest meanings beyond the outward appearance of the subject. It does so by paying attention to gesture, to expression, and what is happening at the edges of the frame.
5. The function of interview text is to reveal something of the internal reality of the subject, and must be edited and selected with that in mind.  If done well, selected text from an interview added to a good photograph creates a deeper and more meaningful portrait than text or image alone can reveal.
6. Observations, criticism, and suggestions about my work are welcome.  Malicious comments about the individuals whose portraits are shown here are not welcome and will be deleted.

I intend to add a new post every week, occasionally more than once a week.  If you like what you see and read, please pass the word along to those you know who might also be interested.

Cheers,

Kent Miles