Struggling socially, Besecker befriended a young Seneca Indian boy named John Wallace, who proudly displayed his heritage on a brown leather jacket. Besecker’s classmates took issue with John’s heritage, beat him into the ground and ripped apart his prized leather jacket.
The next day at school, John returned the favor in full, pummeling his bullies every bit as bad as they got him.
A year later both John and Besecker had moved out of East Aurora, the latter to Illinois for a brief period, but their friendship left a spark in the soon-to-be writer’s imagination.
In the decades that followed, Besecker graduated from St. Bonaventure (a marketing management major), moved to Orchard Park, started a family, found well-paying work and continued to write fiction here and there.
You can read the entire article here, and you can hear my interview with Steve on Wednesday's (9-17-14) LiveLine on 1490 WESB (and online at WESB.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment