By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
It’s taken almost 15 years from conception to birth, but Michael Schein has published his first novel, Just Deceits, a work of historical fiction set in post-revolutionary Virginia. At its heart is the infanticide case brought against Nancy Randolph and Richard Randolph, one of the most notorious trials of its time.
Michael credits an inspirational high school English teacher for his interest in poetry, which has primarily been what he’s published up until now.
“I was not a writing or English major,” he says, although he occasionally wrote poems and drew cartoons for his college paper.
He wrote a little poetry in law school, “just to maintain my sanity. Then I embarked on a career and got married [to Carol Trenga] and had kids, all that stuff.”
After moving to Seattle in 1990, he got serious about writing again. While moving his office one day he observed, “I had this huge stack of legal briefs…I’d worked very hard on them and I thought they were pretty good, but I realized that no one on earth—including myself—would ever want to read them again… I thought it would be nice to write something people would want to read.”
At the same time he was teaching American Legal History and read a footnote about the trial in a biography of John Marshall. Through the Virginia Historical Society, he discovered that Marshall’s notes still existed.
“I got the trial notes and I was off and running,” he said.
In the interim, he found and lost two agents and was under consideration by Harper Collins. But the vagaries of the publishing industry intervened (ask any writer, they’ll tell you) and he finally, happily, ended up with Bennet & Hastings, “my little local Seattle publisher…that does tree planting offsets and…a lot of high school and community events.”
In addition to his practice and the second historical novel he’s started, Michael is the volunteer director of LitFuse, an annual weekend-long poetry workshop held in Tieton, Wash.
You can read an excerpt of Just Deceits and buy the book at www.michaelschein.com.
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Deb Crespin’s career of helping nonprofits raise money has circled around human services and the environment for a number of years and now she’s landed once more on the human services side as development director for the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s northwest office.
A transplant, like so many of us, she was born in the Bronx, raised in Southern California and calls herself “Ashkephardic,” with roots in Turkey, Greece and Poland. She says she “escaped” from home to Berkeley and Vermont (with the requisite travels around Europe and a kibbutz stay in between) where she began her work in fund raising.
“I was working at Goddard College as assistant to the president and he said, “˜I want you to be my development director.’ I said, “˜Great! What does that mean?'” she recalls.
But she found she was good at it, especially when raising money for organizations she loved.
The 1990s brought her to Seattle and to Jewish Family Service, where she worked on the campaign to raise money for their new building. She then moved “from Jews to zoos,” to Woodland Park Zoo, eventually taking the job of chief development director when it was vacated by Merrily Laytner. That job allowed her to work closely with the education department and bond with Melati, one of the orangutans, “an incredible ape.”
After a few years at Cascade Land Conservancy, she’s to her current job where, “instead of changing the [whole] world, we’re changing it one family at a time.”
The international organization has 70 chapters in this country and 22 around the world, granting wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses, a quest she considers, “almost at the highest level of tzedaka.”
Children are referred by health care professionals who “see the granting of the wish as part of the treatment,” she adds. “It treats the spirit of the child and family.”
Deb enjoys singing with the Seattle Women’s Chorus along with hiking and birding. “I’m more of a nature Jew. In the Northwest, we’re always on the verge of a hike.”
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Longtime Chehalis resident Joanne Schwartz has been appointed by Governor Chris Gregoire to a 5-year term on the Centralia Community College Board of Trustees.
Joanne’s long history of community involvement and participation includes serving two terms as Lewis County Commissioner and as the city’s economic development officer. She has chaired the Providence Centralia Hospital community board, served on two fund raising boards for the college, and was a founding member of the Lewis County Economic Development Council.
Joanne grew up in Seattle and moved to Chehalis as a Bride in 1993. She is the daughter of the late Dorothy and Dr. Boris Schuster and her late birth mother, Helen Schuster. She still has children and grandchildren in the Seattle area and one daughter in L.A.