"There's always a point in the season when you're faced with a challenge and you see what you're capable of. And you grow up." -J. T. Curtis, head coach, John Curtis Christian School PatriotsOn Saturday, August 27, 2005, the John Curtis Patriots met for a grueling practice in the late summer New Orleans sun, the air a visible fog of humidity. They had pulled off a 19–0 shutout in their preseason game the night before, but it was a game full of dumb mistakes. Head coach J. T. Curtis was determined to drill those mistakes out of them before their highly anticipated next game, which sportswriters had dubbed "the Battle of the Bayou" against a big team coming in all the way from Utah. As fate played out, that afternoon was the last time the Patriots would see one another for weeks; some teammates they'd never see again. Hurricane Katrina was about to tear their lives apart. The Patriots are a most unlikely football dynasty. Theirs is a small, nondescript, family-run school, the buildings constructed by hand by the school's founding patriarch, John Curtis, Sr. In this era of high school football as big business with 20,000-seat stadiums, John Curtis has no stadium of its own. The team plays an old-school offense, and Coach Curtis insists on a no-cut policy, giving every kid who wants to play a chance. As of 2005, they'd won nineteen state championships in Curtis's thirty-five years of coaching, making him the second most winning high school coach ever. Curtis has honed to a fine art the skill of teaching players how to transcend their natural talents. No screamer, he strives to teach kids about playing with purpose, the power of respect, dignity, poise, patience, trust in teamwork, and the payoff of perseverance, showing them how to be winners not only on the gridiron but in life, and making boys into men. Hurricane Katrina would put those lessons to the test of a lifetime. Hurricane Season is the story of a great coach, his team, his family, and their school-and a remarkable fight back from shocking tragedy. It is a story of football and faith and of the transformative power of a team that rises above adversity, and above its own abilities, to come together again and prove what they're made of. It is the gripping story of how, as one player put it, "football became my place of peace."
Ever since my high school English teacher suggested I had some talent, I'd dreamed of the writer's life. In college, a drunk-Irish professor/priest further stoked the dream, and in 1988 I found myself happily employed as a newspaper reporter. Twenty years later, I'm still a professional writer, but the circumstances have changed. Instead of working 9-5 (more like 6-6, most days) at one of the nation's sadly struggling newspapers, I'm self-employed. That means I'm writing, thinking about writing, or feeling guilty about not writing, all the time. Writing is my hobby, my career, my obsession. If not for my family, I'd likely be writing (and reading, and probably drinking) day and night. I'm not proud of that. It's a problem, trying constantly to improve my work (and boost my income), while striving to be a good dad, husband, person. Balancing work against the rest of my life seems to get harder all the time.
One problem I've often wrestled with is finding the right balance between the artistic and the structural. I've felt strongly that writing can't be a strictly artistic endeavor. Like the construction job I'd held as a teen, working as a mason's helper, the simple formula is usually brick by brick by brick. Of course, there's room for art in masonry, too (see: Colliseum), and that's where the formula gets complicated. One lingering question of my career has been: how can writers create something meaningful and compelling, but remain productive and efficient? I've dedicated my career as writer (and teacher) to filling my toolbox with the best tools, my playbook with the best tactics.
Fifteen years as a journalist flew by like this: Philadelphia Inquirer (a year); Roanoke Times & World-News, in southwest Virginia (3 years); St. Petersburg Times (less than a year - marriage intervened); The Bergen Record, in northern New Jersey (3 years); and the Baltimore Sun, which I left in 2002, after 5 years. I've also written for Outside, Esquire, Men's Health, Backpacker, Sports Illustrated and the Washington Post Magazine, and newspapers such as the Christian Science Monitor. And I've taught workshops and seminars, incuding three years with the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.
As a journalist, the issue of art-slash-poetry versus structure-slash-efficiency was often governed by a daily deadline. I had no choice but to submit the best-built story by 6 or 7 p.m. If I started early enough in the day, I could add some flair, a bit of me. But usually, the stories were merely functional, and therefore ephemeral, and this often troubled me. I bristled against the limits of daily journalism, the narrow just-the-facts focus, and frequently nagged editors to let me write longer, more meaningful stories, the kind of "narrative non-fiction" found in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Outside, and Sports Illustrated. Similarly, as an author, I've aspired to achieve the kind of non-fiction storytelling on display in such books as Friday Night Lights, The Perfect Storm, and Seabiscuit.
During my final two years at the Baltimore Sun, I began researching my first book, Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman (Crown, 2004). I then left the Sun and moved to North Carolina to research and write my next book, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels and the Birth of NASCAR (Crown, 2006). That was followed by Hurricane Season: A Coach, His Team, and their Triumph in the Time of Katrina (Free Press, 2007). In mid-2010, I'm working on my fourth book, a biography of the eccentric world-traveling cartoonist Robert "Believe it or Not" Ripley. [See reviews, excerpts, photos and videos at NealThompson.com]
