From the walls of the Banner-News to the media of Southern Arkansas University to the streets of Magnolia, Aaron Street has made a positive impact on Magnolia
Street grew up in Batesville. His parents, who divorced when he was a young child, were both from Magnolia.
“Both of my sets of grandparents lived in Magnolia, so a lot of my trips were down to Magnolia,” Street, SAU’s assistant dean for Integrated Marketing and Media Relations, said.
“So to me it was always like a vacation to come down here. When it came time to go to college, a lot of people up there were going to universities in central and north Arkansas but I knew all along I was going to SAU.”
Street majored in business starting out.
“My second year of college, I was in speech, and one of my golfer friends sat in front of me and I asked him what class he had been to. He said, ‘photography,’ and I didn’t even know we had that.”
“The next time I went to register, I enrolled in photography. I fell in love right away.”
Street had been interested in photography since he was a child. “I got my first camera when I was 12. I was borrowing my mom’s point-and-shoot camera all the time. I would go out in the yard to take pictures and she saw something in that, so I have to give a lot of credit to my mom, Janet Street. We went to the pawn shop and got a Pentax K1000. I didn’t know anything about aperture or shutter speed but I just toyed with it and started developing my skill.”
“In high school, I took pictures for year book and then in my second year of college is when it all clicked,” Street said.
“The next thing I knew, I switched my major to mass communications with an emphasis in print journalism, and I had enough hours in business and I liked business, so I was also able to get a minor in it.”
“I had taken some pictures in black and white and color and I showed them to my grandfather, Joe Street, with whom I had lunch with every week,” Street said.
“There just so happened to be a lady who worked at SAU at the time, Ronnie Birdsong, and (Joe) said we needed to show her the pictures. She said, ‘wow, we could use a student photographer to take pictures for SAU.’ So I started taking pictures for the Bray and other publications at SAU, which was really good experience.”
“When I switched to mass communications, me and my advisor got really close and I really enjoyed the people I worked with at the Bray, so journalism became the natural progression,” Street said.
“My advisor heard that the Banner-News needed a photographer, and I still had another semester of school left. He went up there with me. I’m very grateful to him, I guess he knew that I was a little shy still,” Street said.
“I was working full-time at the Banner-News my last semester at school. Between working at the Banner, going to school and taking a few pictures for The Bray, it was a tough semester.”
“That was 2001, and I remember that because my first or second week there was Sept. 11,” Street said.
“I have always given so much credit to the Banner-News. It was such an amazing learning experience for me because when I was at SAU I did learn some about photography and journalism but to jump into the deep in at the Banner-News was amazing,” Street said.
“It was a small staff and I am just so thankful for the nice group of people I worked with. I had the opportunity to try new things.”
“I had some difficult assignments that I had to go out and do. The breaking news was always challenging for me because I cared so much about the people and breaking news is a lot of times unexpected hard times for people. It gave me a hard time.”
“I was fortunate to win a lot of awards,” Street said. “I never took pictures for awards. I took pictures because I love to take pictures. Some of them were recognized and I would get awards, but the awards came because I loved what I was doing.”
Street worked at the Banner-News from 2001 to 2005 before moving on to the Texarkana Gazette.
“Texarkana heard about me because we are in the same newspaper company and my name had been mentioned because I was winning awards,” Street said. “I was young still and I’ve always looked really young. When I was working at the Banner-News, people thought I was a student the whole time,” Street said.
“When I went to the Texarkana Gazette, I was a manager over the photography department. I had two photographers and several freelancers working under me, but it was funny because ... I was the youngest person in my department and I was managing two guys older than me.”
“It all went really well It is a great group of people in Texarkana. Going from Magnolia to Texarkana I was thinking it was a bigger place so it would be easier to find pictures, but not necessarily. I would drive around for hours looking for art.”
“I believe that everything happens for a reason, I was visiting my friend that I had worked with at the Bray, Bryce Harman. He told me that Mark Trout, the past director of communications, was leaving and that I should apply for that job,” Street said.
“He told me it wasn’t a very stressful job, was a certain amount of work but it’s fun and enjoyable. So I went back, updated my resume and sent in the application.”
“Decisions and processes because everyone is really busy. So I applied and hadn’t heard anything. I called and asked them for an update and they called me in for an interview,” Street said.
“Everybody at the interview process was really nice. I talked to Dr. Rankin. I had met him before so it was comfortable, and he said, ‘you know you’re going to be the youngest director that we ever had for communications. Do you think you're ready for that?” I said, ‘Yes, sir. I was the youngest in Texarkana, too, so I think I’m ready.’”
“I came in as Director of Communications in March of 2007 and Vicki Butler, who I still am lucky to work with, has always been right there beside me the whole time. I came in and she showed me my office along with a stack of stuff on my desk ready to go,” Street said.
“One of the first things I had to do when I came, they said, “Oh, by the way, next week we have a video crew from Little Rock coming and they are going to make a 30-second commercial. They’re going to be here Thursday afternoon from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.’ Thursday afternoons are slow, so I started calling and setting up all these different shots frantically,” Street said.
“I borrowed a camera from the art department and put a little commercial together and it was actually pretty good. The administration liked it, so I proposed that if they would like to buy a video camera for my office then we can go to the events like we already do and get actual footage and it won’t be shots that had been set up. That was when video started at SAU.”
“We are really proud of the work that we do and we have such a close knit group. The Mulerider Style video is a perfect example of this,” Street said.
“My stepdaughter, Lera, who is a college student here, showed me the video one Saturday and it just kind of clicked in my mind that we had never done anything like this at SAU. I emailed my student worker at the time, Michael Kornegay, and I said I had an idea for a new video. Monday afternoon we had our first video shoot. So the idea was Saturday and we started shooting Monday. In two weeks, we had the film all shot. I was so excited about it. I could see it coming together. I was coming in to work at 4:30 in the morning. Michael and I were working late at night together on it.”
“Dr. Rankin was so amazing, he let us come into his office and film. I asked him if there was any chance that he would dance for us for one second? From that moment on, all I had to tell anybody is that Dr. Rankin danced in the video so surely you can dance. That was the game changer, really.”
Street is committed to helping his town through volunteer efforts. In the last year, he helped create Making Magnolia Blossom, which is dedicated to helping keep the city of Magnolia beautiful.
“My wife, Viktoriya, and I were driving down Main Street and it just kind of came to me,” Street said.
“If I was a photographer wanting to promote Magnolia and I needed to take a picture of Main Street where would I take it? I started looking and it would be challenging because the are a lot of different signs and your eyes doesn’t know where to look. There are also a lot of telephone poles and lines.We all drive Main Street a lot, because we live here, but if we take a step out of our normal routine and look at it as though maybe I want to open a business in Magnolia or my child was thinking of coming to SAU as a student, how would they see our Main Street?”
“I told Viktoriya, we talked about it and kind of expanded on the idea, I really feel like it was divine inspiration. The idea was to use the strong student body and commitment to community involvement that we have here at SAU,” Street said.
“My department, along with some other people from around campus, started having small meetings to think of ideas. We called ourselves the Dream Team because they were brainstorming meetings and we would throw out ideas. No idea was a bad idea.”
“We worked throughout the summer planning the Big Splash, which was on Oct. 25. It became such a huge thing so we were having multiple meetings a week and working closely with the city and Chamber of Commerce. Everybody from the city that we called and asked were all so wonderful to work with and they were so excited about the project. too. We would tell people in the community and they would get so excited so there started to be this buzz. Then to have 500 people come out at the Big Splash made it such an amazing day. There was such a diverse group of students that came out that included international students, students from out of state and local students, and to see them working side by side with our community members was really neat,” Street said.
“Since then, there has been nothing but positive feedback. Business owners and other people have said it was such a wonderful thing.”
“Now the trick is going to be continuing it forward but we are still excited about it. We meet every week and we want to create some kind of governing board for Making Magnolia Blossom so it will last and turn into a 501C3 Non profit,” Street said.
A follow-up, Big Splash, was held Dec. 6. They also hosted there first fund-raiser that day which was an Ugly Sweater 5K.
“I feel like scheduling was off because it was kind of an awkward time. We were going to have it before Thanksgiving but the weather wasn’t good so it was in between Thanksgiving and Christmas so the turnout wasn’t huge but it was a great experience for us to have a fundraiser,” Street said.
“We have already set that the first Saturday in April every year we will have a Spring event. This year it is April 4th and we are going to go back on Main Street and hit a few areas that could use a little bit more work and paint,” Street said.
“We will have our fall event the third Saturday in October. That way the community knows first Saturday in April, third Saturday in October and they know what to look forward to.”
“I look forward to just keeping on doing what I’m doing for the future and trying to incorporate my joy, love of life, things I learn from reading books and the things I learn from talking to Viktoriya into my daily life. I try to share that on a daily basis, even if it’s just the way I carry myself. People who I cross, if I give them a moment of presence and say hi or whatever that passes a good feeling along,” Street said.