Grant Wahl
Cross country runs have been called everything from the seventh circle of hell to a blissful burst of endorphins. For Grant Wahl, cross country was his greatest teacher, aside from his eighth grade creative writing teacher Judy Dunfeth. It taught him that it takes hard work and motivation. Now working as a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, Wahl credits much of his success to his experiences at his alma mater East.
“East taught me that no matter how talented you are, the talent means nothing if you aren’t working hard,” Wahl said. “They don’t baby you. I probably got less sleep in high school than I did in college. But it was worth it, because East allows you to explore many different potential areas of study.”
Unlike many of his fellow classmates, according to Wahl, he knew exactly what he wanted to do when he graduated.
“I was dumb enough to mention to a few of my friends that I wanted to work for Sports Illustrated,” Wahl said, “I became ‘that guy’ and it became a kind of joke amongst my friends.”
Despite their teasing, Wahl was determined to secure his spot and took their comments in stride. He worked on the Hauberk during high school and wrote for the Princeton newspaper The Daily Princetonian. He got his foot in the door after being recommended by David Remnick, a writer for Sports Illustrated and one of the people that inspired Wahl to want to work for the magazine, for the post of fact checker for Sports Illustrated. He said it was a thankless job, and that “you only got noticed if you screw up.”
After three years, he was seriously looking to further his career. Around this time, ESPN The Magazine had just taken off and tried to hire Wahl away from Sports Illustrated as a full time writer. However, Sports Illustrated offered Wahl the same deal, so he remained at the publication, achieving the opportunity to work at his dream job.
One of his favorite stories was a feature about a promising high school athlete named Lebron James. It was titled “The Chosen One,” which later became one of James’s tattoos.
Yet Wahl’s career gained critical attention after co-writing the article “Where’s Daddy?,” an expose on the rising number of children born out-of-wedlock to professional basketball players. He was asked to appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for the article.
Since writing this article, Wahl has covered three Olympics, 12 NCAA basketball championships, five World Cups and wrote over 240 articles with 31 cover stories. He also wrote the New York Times bestselling novel The Beckham Experiment.
Yet despite his success, Wahl doesn’t forget his roots.
“Most people meet their lifelong friends in college,” Wahl said. “For me, it’s the guys that I went on the long cross country runs with. They’re a group of great guys who I still talk to and see every year.”
W. Bruce Cameron
Author W. Bruce Cameron will accredit much of his writing talent from his high school English teacher, Mrs. Stucker, who through “marine seargent-like drilling” of expository writing solidified much of his editing and voice skills. He already knew he wanted to be a writer, and even sold his first story he ever tried to publish to the Star Magazine while attending East.
However, Cameron soon learned that getting published is rarely ever that easy.
After getting out of college, Cameron worked several day jobs ranging from finance at General Motors to programming software startups, but finally settled down in the mountains of Colorado and worked as a columnist for the Denver Rocky Mountain Times.
It was a column called “Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter” that caused hundreds of letters to flood into Cameron’s mailbox.
“I’d touched a nerve –I knew I had something,” Cameron said.
The column was expanded into a novel of the same name, which spent time on the New York Times bestsellers list and was then picked up by ABC as a T.V. series, for which Cameron wrote the third season.
Although he seems to have risen to prestige quite swiftly, Cameron claims the experience has been the complete opposite.
“It’s not like one day I’m sitting around in my boxers with three-day-old stubble and the next I’m on national television. ”When I go out in public, I’m not stalked by people or bombarded for autographs. It’s a sad truth that authors are not superstars, but I also love the anonymity I still get to have alongside the success of my novels.”
His next bestseller was titled “A Dog’s Purpose,” which chronicles a dog’s different purposes after being reincarnated three times throughout the course of the book.
“I wanted to write a dog book where the dog didn’t die, basically,” Cameron said. “It seems that in most of those types of books, the author just digs a hole and throws the dog in it. The End. I hate it!”
The film was picked up by Dreamworks Pictures, and the adaptation is due out in 2013.
When he’s not working on his columns, he enjoys writing thrillers and espionage novels. He said he has written over 100 unpublished novels, though Cameron claims that “unpublishable” would be a more fitting term.
“I love to write complicated plots, but sometimes they get so intricate that I can’t even understand them.”
For this reason, he has found the most success for writing humor columns. Even though he claims it’s one of the toughest genres to write, he loves the challenge.
“I got better responses from readers when I wrote funny stuff,” Cameron said. “That’s why I loved writing “A Dog’s Purpose”; I got to touch on serious themes, but I still was able to make it enjoyable. I laughed out loud more than once while writing it.”
Concerning plans for the future, Cameron plans to continue to do what he loves: writing.
“I’m very fortunate for the success of my novels, but I really don’t care too much about the money or fame aspect,” Cameron said. “Their success has enabled me to be able to keep doing what I do without worrying about financial problems. I’m very lucky for that.”
Sandahl Bergman (1969)
An East graduate in 1969, Bergman started out performing in several Broadway productions, including A Chorus Line, and Pippin. She gained acclaim for her role in A Chorus Line since it had some of the best actors of the time in the cast, but then moved to Hollywood to pursue a career in film. She landed her first major film role as one of the muses in “Xanadu.” However, her career peaked with her portrayal as Valeria opposite Arnold Schwarzenneger in “Conan the Barbarian.” For this role, she won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. She later appeared in more minor roles in films like “Airplane! 2” and “Red Sonja.” As of late, she has appeared in several episodes of “Law and Order.”
John D. Carmack (1989)
After graduating in 1989, Carmack went on to become the lead programmer of the video game “Doom,” which pioneered the way for other first-person shooter games. Aside from programming, Carmack also became the co-founder of id Software, a video game development company that spawned the “Dangerous Dean” series, the “Commander Keen” series and the “Doom” series.
Eric Darnell (1983)
Darnell is a Harbinger alumni. Darnell’s writing and videography skills helped him get accepted into California Institute of the Arts. He became intrigued by the film industry, and started dabbling in every aspect. After making his directorial debut for R.E.M.’s music video “Get Up,” he directed the animated film “Antz,” for which he also produced and wrote, and was a story artist for “Shrek.” He is best known as the mastermind behind the “Madagascar” film franchise, which he directed, wrote and produced. He featured an early screening of “Madagascar” at his old elementary school, Briarwood. It was well received by both students and teachers.
Nancy Opel (1975)
Opel has achieved what most actors on Broadway hope for: being a part of multiple critically acclaimed casts and a nomination for a Tony award. After earning a degree in performing arts from Julliard, she participated in revivals of several Broadway classics, including Evita, Anything Goes and Gypsy. She played the title character in the first national tour of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone. However, her most successful role was her portrayal of Penelope Pennywise in the Urinetown, for which she was nominated for a Tony in the category of Best Leading Actress in a Musical. She now works as an acting coach in Manhattan, NY, where she resides with her partner and two daughters.
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