#17 - Dr. John Newton MacCormack M.D. August 5-6, 2017 - Raleigh, North Carolina

My father, pictured below, turned 81 years old a few days prior to making these images.  He was born in Chester, South Carolina in 1936 and grew up in the small town of Spindale, North Carolina.  The middle child of three boys, he learned to play cornet as a boy and became an Eagle Scout, serving on the staff of the Piedmont Boy Scout Camp near Tryon, North Carolina, for 10 summers.  He earned a scholarship to Duke University where he played cornet in the marching band while earning a degree in chemistry.  After graduating from Duke, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a medical degree and, later, a masters degree in public health.  While he was an intern at the Medical College of Virginia (later Virginia Commonwealth University) in Richmond, Virginia he met my mother who was working as a registered nurse.  After my folks got married my father joined the US Navy as a medical officer and was stationed in Seattle and Cleveland.  My older sister was born in Seattle.  

After the military, my folks settled in North Carolina (where I was born) and, after a residency in Chapel Hill, my father went to work for the North Carolina Division of Public Health.  He served as an epidemiologist for the state for over 30 years.  He retired in 2001 but, after 9/11, he was needed back at work.  Finding his replacement was a challenge for the state, so he went back for several years to work part-time in areas in which he had decades of experience.  

My father has played cornet/trumpet and euphonium in several community bands since the 1960's, sometimes playing a concert or two per week.  He also has an extensive music collection with hundreds of LP records dating back to the 1950's when he started collecting.  He no longer buys records but now collects CD's.

About ten years ago my father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. (cancer of the blood) and underwent some pretty extensive chemotherapy.  He has weathered the storms of cancer and chemo over the years pretty well.

I recently went back home to visit my folks in Raleigh.  My parents live in the same home they bought in 1968.  I was born in 1969 and still sleep in the same bedroom I was raised in when I visit.  Over the years my folks have done quite a bit of work on the house, remodeling it, adding an addition and a separate office space/house in the back.   For this shoot I asked my father to step outside a bit for the photos, I made these over the course of two days.  My dad was having some knee pain, so he needed to sit for the shoot.