Lincoln Sklar

The year is 2006. The place is Bridgeport, West Virginia. The controversy is about Walter Sallman’s portrait of Jesus Christ. The sleepy little town awoke on March 8 with a battle on their hands. The portrait might not have matter in any other setting than right outside the principal’s office at the local high school. This was the day that my world was changed, and it hasn’t been the same since.

My father had gone the night before to the county board of education meeting to ask for the picture to be removed. We were not the only non-Christian family in the area; we were not the only ones being cast as outsiders. Never did he think that the town would go into an uproar; growing up as a young Jewish boy in racially diverse schools in Brooklyn, he thought that once he pointed out the fact that the painting’s existence in the high school was illegal, the BOE would be more than willing to take it down. Little did he know that his daughters would be launched into a nightmare-like situation.

As we rode in the car down Johnson Avenue, we noted the unusual sound of multiple honks. It wasn’t until we neared the school that I saw the sign and the protestors. “Honk for Jesus” the white banner, parked in front of the high school said. Honestly, I was shocked. How could people be so ignorant? Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

Entering the school, all eyes were on me and my sister. I was quiet, and rarely talked in class, so to be receiving this much attention was not something I was used to. That’s when the whispers started, and the noise level in the middle school cafeteria rose so that I knew I was blushing. In class, it didn’t get any better. People passed around petitions right in front of me, and one student even stood up and gave a speech about how “stupid” my father was and about how he needed to be stopped. Some that I thought were friends turned their backs on me as I walked by.

The poor treatment of me and my family continued up until the painting was stolen in the middle of the night before proper legislation could be brought against the case. Slowly, things quieted down, but as I prepared to enter high school, I was nervous about what would happen. When I first started at Bridgeport High School, I was extremely shy; I was starting in a place where I didn’t know who was my friend or my enemy. I stuck to clubs that were “safe,” that kids I knew were in instead of branching out. That was before I took journalism.

I was asked to write a story for the yearbook, and after reading it, the journalism teacher, Mrs. Alice Rowe, approached me to tell me I would be taking her class the next semester even if she had to change my schedule herself. Needless to say, come second semester, I found myself in second block Journalism one. My eyes were opened as I learned of a world full of intrigue, of libel and sedition, a world where the truth must be told and journalist are the ones to do it. I also learned that journalists not only tell the stories of the world, but shape the way people look at what is going on around them. It is reporters who are down in the trenches with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, up in the heights of Whistler Mountain at the Olympics, and at the proceedings of the White House. As the way I viewed the world changed, so did the way I viewed myself.

My past has made me realize who I am. I am no longer the shy girl who attempted to stay out of the fray while others tried to tell me how I could and could not feel. I believe in a world free of the kind of ignorance displayed by the small (in both size and mind) town of Bridgeport. I believe in a world of acceptance.