COLEMAN – It was March of 1962 when Coleman High School Wrestling Coach and future National Wrestling Hall of Fame member Jim Douglas, led his team to a historic victory, the first in a three-year WIAA Wrestling Team Championship legacy.
However, standing on the sidelines and armed with a borrowed Leica camera was the coach’s son, a high school senior named Jim Douglas, who was beginning his own legacy that same day.
Douglas’ talent and fervor for photography would lead him far beyond Coleman to Japan, Germany and many more picturesque places where he would forge bonds and win impressive awards.
But, until then, it was still 1962 and Douglas needed to return the borrowed camera.
Despite knowing “diddly squat about photography,” as Douglas put it, his experience competing as a wrestler and using a polaroid camera from the yearbook department at Coleman High School resulted in impressive shots.
The photos were published by Leo Pesch Jr., former sports writer and photographer for the Peshtigo Times. Pesch didn’t just put the images in the newspaper, he also sent them to the state-wide journalism competition. Afterwards, Douglas found out that one of the wrestling images had won for the Peshtigo Times’ division.
“I think that was the first time I took a picture that was noteworthy, just after I had turned 18. So, that’s the beginning of what would become my journalism career,” Douglas said.
From there, Douglas dreamed of receiving an appointment to the United States Naval Academy to serve the county like his father did and receive a free education.
Despite “eating so many carrots my skin virtually turned orange,” as he stated, Douglas’ imperfect vision prevented him from joining the academy.
During his training and testing at the station, Douglas discussed his hope to learn photography. Instead, he was again pulled in a different direction — photographic intelligence.
“I remember this word-by-word. [The testing instructor] said, ‘Navy photographers are a dime a dozen. You have qualified for Navy Photographic Intelligence,’” Douglas recounted.
This highly-specialized role, referred to today as intelligence specialists, involved analyzing aerial photographs, identifying the equipment used and completing reconnaissance. What it did not include was photography.
Undeterred, Douglas used his connections to further his interest in photography. He described going on rest and recuperation in Japan, where he would travel around with intelligence officers and photographers and documenting the country together.
“I bought my first real, professional camera and shot pictures wherever I was. So, I didn’t have the opportunity to get training, but my pals taught me some of the basics of photography,” Douglas said.
Years passed and Douglas put the money he had earned during his years of service towards his education at UW-Green Bay.
Just six credits shy of a degree, Douglas found himself being pulled towards news videography and photography at WLUK in Green Bay.
“That was the genesis of a career that lasted many, many years. It took me all over the world not as a still photographer, but in television news photography.”
Douglas delved into this cornerstone of his career, “I found an opening here, an opportunity to pursue what I really, really wanted to do — and that was to tell stories visually and powerfully.”
He credited this ability to pursue a high level of creativity to Tom Kirby, the Minneapolis news director that hired him, who Douglas said created one of the best photography staffs in television in the country at that time.
For Douglas, his chance to document the impact of visual storytelling went hand-in-hand with Paul, a 17-year-old boy from St. Cloud, Minn., with end-stage muscular dystrophy.
Douglas spent 15 days with the family and fostered a close connection with them, documenting “what it’s like to be dying with grace.”
Drawing influence from W. Eugene Smith’s photographic coverage of mercury poisoning victims in Minamata, Japan, Douglas captured the intimate moments of Paul’s daily life.
He arrived in the morning and documented their daily routine of Paul being woken up by his mother, carried from his bed into the bathroom and then bathed by her.
“I said, ‘I want to shoot that. I want viewers to see what this disease has done to your body, but that it hasn’t wrecked your mind,’” Douglas recounted.
“In reflection, it’s probably the strongest piece of journalism I’ve ever done.”
Weeks later, Douglas received the call that Paul had died.
Douglas returned to the family’s home, where he documented not only the final nightly entry Paul’s mother made in the journal she had kept since his diagnosis — but her final message to her son.
The story premiered on PBS and resulted in Douglas winning a Network News Emmy Award for Best Feature News Story.
This launched what Douglas called a “pretty good run” of a career — National Television News Photographer of the Year, four Network News Emmy Awards for Best Photography, International Monitor Award for Best News Feature and Best Photography, to name just a few.
Though Douglas has retired from television news, he has been using his time at Castle Douglas — “because Irishmen do not live in houses, we live in castles” — to volunteer with local organizations as a photographer.
Excelsior Fire Department, Special Olympics Minnesota and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans are a few of the groups he covers as a way to continue his creative endeavors and share visual stories.
“All these years later, and I’m as passionate [about photography] as I was when I won the state sports photo contest as a brand-new 18-year-old,” Douglas said.
“I’ve had a hell of a ride in journalism. I reflect on the travels, the wonderful people I’ve met, the international awards that are on the shelves and I think, ‘How did this farm kid from Coleman, Wis., take this journey and have so much fun?’”
He added some advice for the aspiring journalists and photographers back home in Marinette County — draw inspiration from work that motivates, tap into professional mentors and when entering a burning house, “don’t inhale black smoke with no way out.”
This, like everything else in his career, is a story best told by Douglas himself.
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