Jim Amidon — About midway through my career at Wabash College, I was promoted to a leadership position in the public relations office and not long after I had to conduct my first personnel search — for the editor of Wabash Magazine.
I had worked with several editors in the previous eight or nine years, so I had some idea what the job entailed — produce the alumni magazine every few months and crank out a range of Wabash publications, from calendars to handbooks to invitations.
My colleagues and I interviewed several talented candidates over the course of a week or so. One of them wowed me with her amazing gift for artistic, creative design, which was something Wabash had never boasted. Another candidate had a range of talents, but I figured we had the only true generalist we needed in the office — me.
The third candidate was scared to death when he came in for the interview. He nervously squirmed in the chair aside my desk, and at one point had moved from the chair to the floor in a crouched position as we talked about the College and the job.
That person was Steve Charles. And I almost didn’t hire him.
See, with a strong Type A personality like mine, having someone in the office so obviously nervous and shy might be akin to mixing oil and water. Fortunately, I sensed in Steve a clear desire to find a place he could believe in; a place with a mission and people who genuinely cared about students and teaching and learning.
A found a person who would eventually teach this talker his gift of listening.
I offered Steve the job, and all these years later it still stands as the best decision I’ve made in my professional career; probably my biggest accomplishment.
The proof came on Saturday at the Homecoming Alumni Chapel, when the National Association of Wabash Men named Steve Charles an Honorary Alumnus.
To those who don’t know, that’s a really big deal. And it’s an even bigger deal when you consider most people are granted the honor for lifetime achievement. Steve’s been at Wabash a little over a dozen years.
But what an impact he’s had.
He took a pretty standard alumni magazine chalked full of “grip and grin” photos and class notes, and he turned it into the quarterly journal of Wabash College.
Through his diligent work, unbelievable ability to listen carefully, and his desire to fully tell a person’s story, he transformed Wabash Magazine into a must-read for our alumni and their families, and a whole slew of other people with little or no connection to the place.
Because I work with Steve every day and contribute to the magazine, perhaps I have been slow to realize how popular it has become with our constituents. Maybe the way in which Steve writes and edits and photographs for the magazine has become such a part of the culture of this office that I was unaware of the far-reaching impact the magazine has on our alumni, from coast to coast and around the world.
So when it was time to write the citation that would officially make Steve an honorary alumnus, I — for probably the first time in my life — struggled for words. So I reached out to a pair of alumni, Time magazine’s Tim Padgett and award-winning fiction writer Dan Simmons — to provide their sense of how much Steve has meant to Wabash.
Simmons wrote, “For me, Steve Charles has been not only a fine editor and avatar of fine writing, but is also a living link to the College I once loved so much. When that affection for Wabash has threatened to wane for me, my connection with Steve Charles has not only kept it alive but renewed it — by reconnecting it to the living, breathing, and constantly changing place that Steve chronicles so brilliantly in the pages of Wabash Magazine.
Padgett said, “Part of the reason is that Steve is so talented at listening to people and learning their stories. His deep, patient intellectual curiosity is a perfect complement to the college he’s writing about.”
Both men know good writing and good editing, and both have had difficult relationships with their alma mater. Both say Steve Charles and his work with the magazine has kept alive in their hearts and minds the love they have for Wabash. And that, indeed, is a gift worthy of high praise and high honor.
Or, as we like to say around Wabash, Steve Charles is Some Little Giant!
