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Randy Leach of Salisbury might become the most easily recognized graduate Appalachian State University has ever had.
He’ll be pictured on 24,000 folders, pins, and information sheets promoting an expanded and unique Summer Reading Program at ASU — and throughout Watauga County — when the university’s 2001-02 term opens at the end of August.
And nobody could be more surprised than Randy Leach was when he opened an envelope and out came a folder full of materials from Appalachian with his picture everywhere.
Truth is, he won’t know exactly how many times his picture will be the logo on materials promoting the reading program until he reads today’s Post and learns that the university is preparing 4,000 folders like the one he got, and each of them has five other items inside showing the same logo.
So do the math yourself.
Six pictures times 4,000 folders is ...
You got it — and we set up the problem because his grandmother, Johnnie Leach, didn’t know the numbers but she knew it was something special. And the numbers show how special.
Something about this ought to go in the paper, she told his parents, Cindy and Magellan Stevenson, but Cindy wondered about it.
“Do you think it’s important?” she asked her mother.
“Yes, it is important,” Johnnie said. “It’s important to me. I’m his grandmother.”
If Randy’s picture’s is on a program used by a lot of people in Boone and Watauga County who’re going to read the same book, and the book is an Oprah book, well, how could she help being proud?
That’s reason enough.
But it’s not the whole story.
For Randy it all started last winter. He was an ASU senior about to graduate cum laude with a degree in studio art — and one of his art professors, Dr. Marianne Suggs, told him people planning the Summer Reading Program were looking for ideas for a folder cover.
“And she asked me to talk to someone who was getting the package together for all the incoming freshman,” he says, and he assumed it was because he was an art student and the person she wanted him to talk to needed some artistic ideas.
And maybe because he’s black.
Appalachian doesn’t have a lot of black students. He figures maybe 300 in a student body of 12,000 or more. Incoming freshmen have been asked to read the book, “A Lesson Before Dying,” by Ernest J. Gaines.
It’s a story of a young black man wrongly condemned to die for a crime he didn’t commit and a young teacher who is asked by relatives to teach him to be a man as he faces death. It deals with universal themes — political and cultural differences, integrity, justice, heroism, and mostly what it means to be human.
“They wanted an image to illustrate the African-American male who’s the main character in the book,” he says, “so I went to talk art, to help them decide what to do. I figured I was just going to give my input on what would be appropriate.”
But Mary Wells, the graphic artist, didn’t discuss art with him.
“She said, ‘Let me get your picture.’ ”
“I was surprised,” he says, but figured she was going to use his picture with pictures of other students, so he didn’t think a lot about it.
He remembers they went outside to take the picture.
“It was a snowy day,” he says, “and pretty cold and windy.”
She took the picture, and he heard no more until it was hot summertime here in Salisbury, and a packet came from the Reading Program director, Nancy Spann.
“I thought I needed to send Randy one of these packets, so he’ll know what we’ve done,” she said.
So now he knows. He’s seen his picture. But she didn’t get very specific.
So now he knows, but he hardly believes.
“I’ve never seen the summer reading program papers,” he says. It started a year after he entered as a freshman. And this year it’s expanded to the whole county,
“Just to think about my picture on the outside of the folder going to all those freshmen and then seeing all those smaller pictures inside, too, because they want to explain they’re making it a county-wide reading program and sending it out to other places in Watauga County ... ”
He’s a little more than slightly taken aback.
Originally, says Nancy Spann, its purpose was to have all freshman read a particular book and discuss it during orientation, creating a common experience for the students and faculty and staff that would set an academic tone for the beginning of the school year.
“We’re giving the book to all 2,400 incoming freshmen.”
But then somebody had a new idea.
What if all Watauga citizens were reading and talking about the same book?
And the thought brought action. This year the book is not only going to all 2,400 incoming freshmen but the program is being extended to the whole Watauga County community through the library, the community college and Watauga High.
Many programs are being planned during three days of orientation at ASU and beyond. One hundred other groups will discuss the book. Author Ernest Gaines will spend two days on campus speaking, giving readings, signing books. And the theater department will present a play adapted from the book.
Randy plans to go, meet the author and get his autograph though he expects to be busy by then at East Carolina University where he has a graduate assistantship to pursue a master of fine arts in painting.
That’s been his dream since he was in the second grade and was inspired by art teacher Rosemary Johnson’s visits.
“I really looked forward to them,” he says, and he’s still looking forward to practicing his art and putting it to work. He’s shown his series of paintings on Civil Rights widely. That grew out of his desire to learn more about the Civil Rights movement and help keep its goals alive.
And to be part of his alma mater’s focussing on those same issues — political and cultural differences, courage in the face of adversity, individual integrity, defining humanity — is great.
Even if no one ever knows that the young black man is pictured on all those promotional materials to say nothing of being on all those freshman orientation binders — well, Randy Leach picture is going to be all over the place at ASU and Watauga County.
But his name won’t be anywhere.
And that’s deliberate.
Mary Wells, the graphic designer who took his picture on that snowy day last winter, has put it on a computer and created an image that looks like it’s made of cut-out pieces of paper.
And that turns Randy Leach of Salisbury into an anonymous Everyman.
Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com
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