Life...
As Good as it Geatz

A Cumberland journalist's career takes him to far away
places with those strange sounding names...

Featuring photography by Ron Geatz

"My dad and I used to play a game where we would challenge each other to name the capitals of obscure countries around the world. I think that's where I got my wanderlust," explained Cumberland native Ron Geatz. "But growing up in the 50s and 60s, I never dreamed I'd actually be able to visit the places my dad knew only from an Almanac."

Geatz now travels the world writing, filming and taking photographs for The Nature Conservancy, an international nonprofit that operates in 34 countries. The organization has its own magazine which routinely showcases Geatz's work -- both photography and writing.

Geatz is a 1971 graduate of Allegany High School and an alumnus of both Allegany College and Frostburg State University, where he received the Alumni Achievement Award in 1983. Graduate film school took him to American University in Washington, D.C. where he continues to live with his partner of 24 years-that is, when he's not on a 20-hour flight to Singapore.

"I've been with The Nature Conservancy for 20 years, and I get to go to some amazing places," he said. "But I'm a writer first and a photographer very much second."

But does Geatz ever think of turning his award winning camera lens homeward?

"I sometimes think about returning to Cumberland when I retire," he said. "Maybe then I can devote more time to photography and really become good."

To see some of Ron Geatz's amazing photographs, click here

If necessity is the mother of invention, meet the mother's son...

How an April Fool's joke made a Fort Hill grad
one of the most successful inventors of modern times

By SHANE RIGGS Managing Editor

It was 1961 and a young fresh faced Woody Norris felt he was about to enter a golden age of new inventions. There was talk that in the next five years, the government would even put a man on the moon. Anything seemed a reachable possibility.

"I was fairly fresh out of college and in the Air Force and was repairing some high tech equipment and I was reading about a new shaver that didn't use razors," Norris said. "It seemed to me to be kind of hokey. Sure enough, when I read the end of the article it said 'April Fools!' The editor challenged people to write next year's April Fool's story."

A 1956 graduate of Fort Hill High School, Norris decided to accept the challenge and so he penned a science fiction piece about a record player invention that played on a linear track and without the usual needles.

"I was ready to send it out and then I decided to try it out and see if it would really work," Norris recalled with a laugh. "I called up a stereo store and found out no one had invented one. So I invented it."

On the heels of that invention -- which was picked up and sold by stores in Washington State and California -- Norris was asked to join a company where his salary would be equal shares in stock. Being a man in his early 20s, he accepted the deal and went to work.

"While there, I came up with an idea for a Doppler Sonar unit that would take photographs inside the body," he said.

The company bought the idea and developed the product. Within a year the stock in that company tripled and at the age of 27, Norris was a millionaire. A few years later, the company redeveloped the premise of Norris' brainchild. Most people know that invention today simply as the sonogram.

"After that, I dreamed up an idea for a ...

To read more about Woody Norris and his amazing inventions, click here...

Making Beautiful Music

The ballad of Westernport's Mandolin Maker

By SHANE RIGGS Managing Editor

Photos by Shane Riggs

"I was hoping you would come to that door since I forgot to tell you which door," says Fred Proffitt, as he welcomes a magazine editor about to interview him for a feature story. He smiles and extends a hand to be shaken and takes the jacket of his visitor.

"It'll be right here waiting for you after we've had a chance to talk," he promises and guides the stranger from the local publication into his home. His cheery wife, Thelma, of 56 years is sitting on a sofa in a family room watching television.

Fred Proffitt then leads the way into the rest of the modest ranch style home located near the top of an uphill winding road in Westernport. He has lived at this same address for nearly 41 years. His wife and three children -- two girls and a boy - moved to the house in 1967 when Fred accepted a job with the Luke Paper Mill. He retired the year he turned 65 from what was then Westvaco in 1993. Do the math. That's right. Fred will be 81 this August.

"I started out in my family's funeral business," he says, as he walks through an entryway containing a hand carved totem pole, a replica of one found in Alaska. Fred carved and painted the smaller version himself. "I went to mortuary school and had my embalmer's license when I was 21."

He walks through a bright kitchen, containing blue and white tiles that Fred cut and laid himself. The kitchen cabinets are all his handiwork too. Right down to the mother of pearl knobs and handles.

Then he explains that the secretary's desk, the curio cabinet and the buffet table are all his designs and creations -- right down to the ornate claw feet and hand carved shells on pull out drawers. The contents of the cabinet -- the glass and cutlery -- are all from his hands too. And the wooden birds on the buffet table? Fred carved them as well and even won ribbons for his work at an international carving contest in Ocean City in 1999.

It is then Fred pulls over two black instrument cases. He snaps the latches and lifts the lids, revealing a red velveteen lining in each box. Sitting upon the fabric are two instruments. One is a guitar crafted from mahogany and rosewood. The neck of the item contains mother of pearl and ebony. The other instrument is a handmade mandolin with an impressive array of pearl stones and jade laid in a bed of ebony wood. The body of the mandolin is made from an expensive curly maple wood, shipped from an exclusive lumberyard in California.

Both pieces of musical equipment are impressive on their own. They each look like they have been made by the finest music masters from Europe. Instead, they were made in Westernport. By Fred Proffitt.

"When you make a mandolin, it is probably one of the hardest instruments to make," he says, picking the item up and cradling it, for a moment like a mother holds a child. It is evident he is proud of his work. This mandolin he holds is his third. And the most valuable. It was recently appraised as having a value of ...

To learn more about Westernport's mandolin man, click here...

Trying to swim upstream

How drainage from one abandoned mine hurt our wildlife
And what's being done to correct the problem

An Allegany Magazine special report

By JEREMY BRUNO Correspondent

Photographs by Shane Riggs

Professor William Pegg leans over the steep incline, about 15 feet from the orange, churning waters of Vale Summit. His students crowd around him, gripping each other's arms for support, peering over shoulders and knit caps.

"Do you see where the water bubbles up?" he asks, raising his voice above the churning rust colored waters. He's met with general acknowledgment. "That's the Hoffman drainage tunnel."

Everyone stares. Heads shake, and a few students mumble something less than privately. It's obvious that Hoffman is not a natural stream.

Pegg, an ecologist and associate professor at Frostburg State University, has been bringing his ecology students to this site for almost 30 years. Two waterways meet at Vale Summit; old coal mine drainage from the Hoffman tunnel washing iron oxides and sulfates over rocks and tree limbs confluences Preston Run, smaller, slower, moderately populated with invertebrates and small fish.

"We began doing [this] lab activity because Hoffman is the primary source of acid mine drainage pollution on Braddock Run," says Pegg.

The site provides a comparative experiment for Pegg, complete with a control. Students take water samples, test flow velocity and glide seines through the water, collecting a small cross section of the endemic aquatic life.

The slow moving brown creek exhibits all the attributes of a healthy stream: Neutral pH, low iron levels and a diverse scatter of mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly larvae. The rushing waters from the Hoffman tunnel are unable to support any benthic life aside from persistent species of algae.

Hoffman is only one of dozens sources of acid mine drainage (AMD) in Western Maryland, and Professor Pegg is only one of many addressing the problem.

To read the entire special report, click here...

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