Cliff Hollis New Page page

Berlin

Berlin When we are young there are ideas that come to us that might be looked at differently as time passes. In 1990 I had the opportunity to travel with two doctors from Greenville, NC to Nigeria on a medical mission. While preparing for this month-long trip the Berlin Wall came down and the world was changed. I decided to leave early and spend some time there before meeting the docs in Amsterdam to fly to Africa. A four-week trip turned into a six-week trip and I had never left the East Coast before in my life. I thought it was perfectly normal for my first trip abroad to include two weeks in a recently unified Germany. Travel is a great thing. It changes the traveler. You grow, realizing you are not the center of the universe and see that people are different and you are better for it. I learned those things and more. On thing I learned early into the trip was the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit. When someone told me the temperature in Berlin was 32 degrees and I stepped of the train at 3am wearing a bulky jacket. I was also carrying a suitcase, camera gear and 600 rolls of film so I am pretty sure I might have looked like I was from out of town? I did not have a hotel room so I wandered around and the only room I could find was a four-star hotel. I did not care. I spent days at the wall and Checkpoint Charlie looking for images that would signal the start of my world career. Yeah. It didn’t quite happen. All the excitement seemed to be gone but it was exciting for me anyway. I still get nostalgic when I run across the chunks of wall I brought back with me. I tried to get some barbed wire from the death strip between the east and well walls. I slipped through a hole and was bending wire when a soldier politely told me to beat it. I am actually not sure what he said but I figured it out. You can see the bend in the roll under the R and the holes where mines would have been. This would be my first selfie as well. I am still convinced I have time to reignite my world traveling career. Maybe being young and naïve leads to being delusional as I get older. I think I am OK with that.

My favorite image from the trip.

One of many people taking parts of the wall.

I wish I knew more about this person. We were near the Brandenburg Gate and I liked the joy and the hat.

Wire in the death strip between the east and west.. Mines had been removed from the holes in the ground.

My first selfie.

Every photo has a story

Fun Day at the ECU Community School. The last half day of the school year was celebrated with games and laughs. (ECU Photo by Cliff Hollis)

One thing ECU did well was the community school in Greenville. I would look for and make excuses to shoot photos there. The staff was outstanding the students were always fun. During a fun day at the end of school I was getting photos and gave one student encouragement during an activity. The student isn't pictured because all of a sudden they stopped and stared at me. I was thinking I had thrown off the concentration needed for the game. Then the student ran over to me and gave me a hug. I froze in panic. I hugged the student back awkwardly not knowing what to do. I quickly talked to the principal. She told me that students responded very strongly to encouragement and positive input. I missed a photo but came away with a memory I think of often. My simple words and his big hug help me remember we need each other and to be kind.

While working at the Daily Reflector in Greenville, NC in 1988, I received press credentials to cover the launch Discovery and NASA’s return to flight. The Space Race was always a part of my life. Watching the Moon Landing, six-year-old me assumed space travel would be a normal part of my future. I put in for credentials with NASA while I was still in school. I hoped I’d one day get the chance to cover shuttle launches. On Jan. 28, 1986, I was driving back to school in Asheboro, NC and heard on the radio that the Shuttle Challenger disintegrated and the crew had been lost 73 seconds into its flight. Flash forward to 1988 and covering the Discovery Launch. I researched and built a sound trigger to try to fire a Nikon F2 on site with dozens of other cameras. I rigged it up from parts I got at RadioShack and powered it with a full-size car battery. I think back on all the gear I had on the press bus and marvel that I thought I could make it work. This launch photo is the only angle I have because my homemade sound trigger from Radio Shack did not work. Still one of the best days of my career.

I was driving to Farmville, NC with low expectations. I had been covering National Guard deployments for Desert Storm routinely and this was a unit out of a small town. I’m in the press area and I see a little boy break from the family section and run into the crowd. I broke out of the press area and ran down the side of the ranks to get a clear view of the boy. Time optioned the photo and it was published in the Dec. 10, 1990 issue. That year, I entered this image in the Pulitzer Prize competition. My entry got stuck in the FedEx box.

This is an image I had forgotten about until I was putting this page together. I shot this photo in 1986 after walking out of an ice cream shop and seeing this dog across a parking lot. The ice cream shop and the Wendy's are gone. I am glad the photo lasted. For anyone familiar with ECU's campus this is the front corner of the main entrance to the student center.