There were many things John Best loved.
A former Abilene Reporter-News photojournalist who went on to become General Manager at KACU FM, John died Jan. 8 in Cedar Park. He was 75. There will be a memorial service for John Best from 2-4 p.m. Saturday March 14 at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St. in Abilene.
Of course, chief among John’s loves was his wife of 54 years, Jeannie. The cello was another. John even played with the Abilene Philharmonic at one time.
But in an email, Jeannie wrote to me, “Other than music, photography and journalism was his passion.”
And that’s how I came to know him.
It’s funny how one meets their mentors. John had been out of the newspaper business for over 10 years when I met him around 2002 in a chance encounter on an airplane.
Making friends in high places
It was after Christmas and I was flying home from my mom’s house. Contest season was coming up, and I had my laptop open, as usual obsessing over my pictures.
Unknown to me and seated a few rows to the back, John found himself going through those pictures at the same time. When we landed, he introduced himself and remarked that he enjoyed my pictures.
His photo skills were apparent, and I thanked him for his insights. A gentle, affirmative presence surrounded John, and his lessons weren’t about photography per se but on how to live that life. Whenever I had the time, I’d drop by to see him at KACU.
A life in pictures
John lived in the heyday of photojournalism, a time of film and obscure darkroom tricks. The camaraderie of a larger photographic community that’s dwindled since.
Thinking about his passing, last month I dug through the newspaper archives to find a folder with John’s name on it. Contained within was a treasure of maybe 15 or so pictures starting in the early 1970s.
Of course, there are thousands of his pictures spreading across our archive from a kaleidoscope of assignments. But these moments seemed to matter enough to either John, or those who knew him, to be included in this folder.
There was a selfie of him on assignment with scouts in the Guadalupe Mountains and a photo of silhouetted flowers captured reaching skyward. One series from around 1971 featured a very young John with coworkers showing off the paper’s new darkrooms.
The darkroom photos made me laugh, I was likely in kindergarten then. Forty years later and a decade after going to digital, I’d gotten an itch to develop black and white pictures again and turned to those rooms.
I tried setting one up for making prints, cleaning the enlargers and getting everything in order. But when I hooked up the print washer to the tap, the ARN’s old pipes blew a cloud of rusty water into the tub. The only thing washed away were my black and white aspirations.
I told John about that, and he laughed. Whenever I saw him, I always had a story about my latest misadventure. He’d commiserate and respond with one of his own.
The everlasting clubhouse
John joins Gerald Ewing, David Leeson, Ken Ellsworth and Don Blakely, along with other photographers whom I never met. It’s funny, sometimes I almost feel them on my shoulders, passing tips on what’s around the corner.
I don’t know if there’s a Great Darkroom in the sky — why would it be dark? — but I’m sure there’s a newspaper photo lab. For sure it’s got editors outside the door complaining about the clubhouse-vibe within where all the photographers are laughing too loud.
In that welcoming space, John is in good company.
This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Photojournalist, musician, teacher John Best to be remembered
Reporting by Ronald W. Erdrich, Abilene Reporter-News / Abilene Reporter-News
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