As Curtis Compton worked his camera, he sensed the onset of one of those moments that come occasionally to news people.
A veteran AJC photojournalist, he had come to Nelda’s Hair Salon at the Omni Hotel downtown to photograph Joel Hartman’s appointment with a stylist. You would remember Hartman as the “Homeless Hero,” the 36-year-old man made famous by finding a wallet in a downtown trash can and then trying to return it to its owner.
Compton has known other such moments – the ones when you encounter people whose stories seep into the space journalists like to keep between themselves and the people they cover. You want to keep that space in part to maintain your objectivity, but you also must protect against becoming entangled in the many human dramas you encounter over the years. Even so, we don’t have to trade our humanity for our notebooks.
For Compton, who has worked here 20 years, perhaps the biggest such moment came in 2005 when he was on assignment for us in Iraq. In the slums of Abu Ghraib, some Georgia National Guardsmen led him to Noor al-Zahra, a baby they had discovered with spina bifida and little chance of survival.
He and reporter Moni Basu, who now works at CNN, knew that telling this baby’s story to an Atlanta audience was probably Baby Noor’s best hope. The guys from Charlie Company worked to bring her to Atlanta, where the Christian non-profit group Child Spring International arranged for her to receive life-saving surgery before returning to Iraq.
Earlier this year, Basu produced a piece on Baby Noor from Iraq. Now a sweet-faced 7 year old, Noor still struggles with her complex medical condition, but she seems to getting by. Compton itches to see her again for himself.
Hartman’s story also resonated with readers. It came around Thanksgiving, a time when editors like me are looking for affirming human stories. After finding the wallet, Hartman made the rounds to downtown hotels until he found that she had been a guest at the Omni. He left the wallet and wandered away.
Impressed by the good deed, the hotel’s general manager contacted the media for help in finding the Good Samaritan. With the help of security camera photos, Hartman was found. The hotel gave him a $500 reward and a nice room for a week.
The story went global. Within a few weeks, Hartman was reunited with his family. A few job offers came his way. He was moved by the mass generosity. “The whole thing has just been awesome,” he said. “I’d like to turn this around and help other homeless people. It would really go a long away to help a lot of people.”
As Compton captured images of the stylist bringing order to Hartman’s hair and beard, he knew this was no ordinary assignment. When Hartman saw his transformed self in a mirror, he was overcome.
“He cried,” Compton recalls. “He was genuinely moved.”
“It struck me right then that this guy’s life was changing right before my eyes,” Compton said.
Compton wanted to help, while maintaining his role as a journalist. After some thought and prayer, he didn’t see a conflict between doing his job and being a caring human being. Hartman didn’t have much of a support system, so Compton gave him rides to the laundromat and appointments. “He just needed a friend,” Compton said. “We obviously had a connection.”
Compton continues providing Hartman rides and conversation. “I don’t think of myself as a hero,” Hartman told him last week. “That’s an awful big label to live up to. Just because you are out on the street homeless doesn’t mean you lost your ability to know right from wrong.”
Compton hopes to chronicle Hartman’s story for a Personal Journey, the newspaper’s regular feature that focuses often on the challenges that confront ordinary people.
“This is going to be a real journey,” Compton said. “And Joel has as good a chance as he’s ever going to get.”
Compton knows that he will have to walk a sometimes difficult line. But he believes it’s worth it.
“I’m trying to be a journalist,” he said. “But I also want to be there to be helpful.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bert Roughton Jr., managing editor and senior editorial director, has spent most of his 32-year career at the AJC as a reporter. In the 1990s, he covered Atlanta’s bid for the 1996 Olympics and led the newspaper’s reporting team that followed the city’s preparations. He also was London correspondent for Cox Newspapers, covering the violence in Northern Ireland, the war in Kosovo and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. In 2000, he received a National Headliner Award for stories about the plight of AIDS orphans in Africa.
