Culture

Jim Renke nearly lost his right index finger while operating a press brake at a metal fabrication shop in California decades ago. He was nearly 20 at the time, a community college student toiling in the summer for pizza and gas money for the fall semester. A press brake bends metal bars or sheets—and always

Well before he wrote lines for television characters Laverne and Shirley, penned jokes for Chevy Chase, and screen-wrote the movie The ’Burbs—starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, and Carrie Fisher—a young Dana Olsen entertained an audience of two at home. Older sisters Virginia and Jane. “They told me I was funny,” says Olsen, a Northwestern University

Terence Blanchard had a pair of audacious dreams while growing up in New Orleans. He’d be a hard-hitting linebacker in the National Football League and a serial hitmaker in the field of jazz. He’d recover fumbles and run in for scores in the fall and winter months and compose scores for movies in the offseason.