Looking Back

➽ ABOVE: The June 1989 issue of DallasChild featuring Dallas’ then-mayor Annette Strauss, and local kids, including the author and the photographer’s son.

Looking

I DON’T REMEMBER MUCH

about the actual photoshoot, but I do remember finding just the right spot for it. I rode in the backseat of my mother’s old vanilla-colored Mercedes-Benz station wagon while she and our then-editor, Nina Flournoy, drove around Dallas scouting locations for the cover shoot.

We pulled off Sylvan Avenue and parked near the levy overlooking downtown Dallas. My mom and Nina saw something, and told me to wait in the car. To 5-year-old me it just looked like a fallen tree limb, but they rushed back to the car with unusual urgency. We sped to the Anatole Hotel where we used their landline phone (this was 1989, remember).

A true journalist, Nina’s first call was to the Dallas Morning News newsroom, where her husband, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Craig Flournoy, worked. What was she calling for? To report a dead body. Naturally, her second call was to the police, my mother recalls.

Sixteen years later I’m sitting in Nina’s Corporate Communications class at SMU when she holds up the day’s Dallas Morning News and asks, “Lauren, does this remind you of anything?” Without hesitation I recognized the view and said, “Yes!”

“Lauren and I found a dead body together,” Nina tells the stunned class.

Unsurprisingly, we didn’t end up shooting the cover at the levy. Finding a dead body where you’re going to bring together the mayor and some children for an issue celebrating kid-friendly Dallas didn’t quite mesh. Instead, we found a field near the Dallas Arboretum with equally stunning views for our shoot, which featured then-mayor Annette Strauss and a cluster of kids including two of her grandchildren; former Dallas Mavericks player Rolondo Blackman’s daughter; the photographer’s son, and me, in the pink jumper.

WORDS LAUREN NIEBES back